My Nephew

A lot of you had the chance to meet my nephew Tristan at the wedding in June. If you need a reminder, he was the one holding my hand at the front of the church and walking around from time to time. Tristan has been through a lot in life so far. He has been diagnosed ADHD, and has had many of his developmental issues blamed on a fairly mysterious virus that attacked his brain when he was very young.
Tristan began hallucinating on Tuesday and after being taken to the ER, he was transferred to a children's hospital in Des Moines, IA. Most of us thought it was a symptom of new medication that he had been placed on to help counteract his ADHD, but the docters thought it wasn't related. After several days of observation at the children's hospital, Tristan has been diagnosed with a Pervasive Developmental Disorder. Tristan's particular disorder is autism, a specific PDD. This combined with the lingering affects of the virus make it difficult for doctors to know how to treat him. They think that when the virus attacked his brain, it caused it to rewire to compensate, thus he reacts to medication in ways that most people wouldn't. In the little bit of research that Bri has done tonight, it looks as though the Autism itself could be a result of the virus as well.
Long story short, this is kinda scary. On the plus side, we finally have an answer to many of the difficulties that Tristan has faced so far, on the down side, this is a diagnosis that isn't really easily treatable. I am not really sure where that leaves us now, but I thought I would share this with you all so you can keep him in your prayers.
I apologize for my lack of updates lately, there are some things I will try to get up in the next few days.
As a short update, I still don't have a job, but there have been some improvements. Bri and I have our plane tickets to return to MN the 11-14 of October. We will be pretty busy, but there should be at least one time during the weekend when we will try to get a group together at Barley John's.