Visit to KKI

Well, yesterday we got the kids up early, piled into the car and took the just over an hour drive to Kennedy Krieger Institute. Funnily enough, it's only about a mile away from my brother's former apartment (when he lived in Baltimore). Overall, we were there from about 8:15 or so until nearly 3:30 for the 2 appointments (developmental pediatrician for both kids). It was, needless to say, a VERY long day.

When we left the clinic, we did so having learned nothing new. Most of what was done was a repeat of what the psychologist did last month. Even the impressions were the same. The only new thing we walked out of KKI with that we didn't have before was a lab slip so that each of the twins could undergo genetic testing to see if this would reveal an underlying cause. However, her impressions were that these tests wouldn't reveal anything.

I was very disappointed. I'm not completely sure why. I didn't think we would be leaving there with any new revelations. We weren't going to learn the cause in this one visit. We weren't going to answer all the questions with one doctor taking a little bit of time to look them over and test them. But I think I expected to walk out of there feeling like we were getting closer to an answer. Or, if not, be more frustrated by having a bunch of NEW questions that I hadn't considered before. But instead, it felt like the visit was a big waste of everyone's time. Most of what the doctor collected she could have gathered by arranging a phone interview (or 2) with me while the kids were napping and pulling data from the county psychologist's reports.

I suppose this is an oversimplification of what the visit was like. The doctor DID examine each of them, and was observing them closely while she was interviewing me. And by re-doing the tests previously performed by the psychologist, she was also able to make her own judgments as to where they are and where their needs lie. But it really just felt that the time could have been better spent in other ways. And in all the hype and waiting to get this appointment, I really thought it would be much more.