My family's life w/ Aspergers syndrome part 1

I decided to write about my family's experiences because I feel that there isn't enough information from the parents who are dealing, coping and living with this condition.

Our oldest child has Aspergers and this has proven to be at times a very hard and frustrating condition.

It wasn't until our son started school that anyone thought there was something wrong. His first teacher thought that he might have ADHD because of his lack of attention. I am so thankful to her for seeing something that up until then no one else had caught. She might not have known exactly what was wrong, but at least she noticed something. Unfortunately it took another year before anyone else in the school system saw it. After some private testing he was diagnosed with ADHD. He was put on medication and everyone thought that was it. Over the following year doctors tried 3 different kinds of meds still thinking he was ADHD. They did not work, it was a horrible experience for him and for us as a family. He would become very mad and difficult to deal with. My other child was the one who had it the worst when my son would have these outbursts. Before we were done with the ADHD meds my son went from being angry and aggressive to clinically depressed from these meds. As a parent who was desperate to find out what was wrong and how we could make things better I researched and researched until I found a doctor who was well known for treating and diagnosing kids with ADHD, thankfully he was only a one hour car ride away. With some luck I was able to get my son into his program. They did their own testing and came back to my husband and I with a different diagnoses. Now we were being told our son had ADHD and Bipolar disorder. Again we had to find another doctor/hospital to help our son. We were told about a clinical trial that was being done by Mass General Hospital that our son qualified for. We decided that this was our best option at the time. This clinical trial also helped us bypass the system so we didn't have to wait months for our son to be seen. Thankfully we did make the right choice. Over a year went by trying different meds, nothing was really working for him. Then another doctor who was part of the clinical trial got involved with our sons case and he started to think that there was more going on than Bipolar. For a few months he was just collecting info and watching how things progressed with our son. (only problem was we didn't know he was doing this, he did not tell us that he was considering that our son had Aspergers) At one of our appointments he told me to look up Aspergers and do some research, so I did not knowing exactly what the reason was for this. I have to say that reading about kids with this condition brought me to tears because it was my child. My son's doctor explained to us that our son has Aspergers with a mood disorder and that it is not uncommon for children/adults to also have anxiety problems too. Which by this point our son definitely had. My husband and I felt like the mystery was finally solved. But what does this mean?? What can we do?? How do we get our sons school to help him in the best way possible?? We were left with a whole new set of questions that needed to be answered.