I wanted to update this post and say that whatever was going on with DS and chess has gone away--the fire is lit again and he is absolutely enthralled with the game once more. He is no longer worries about reading hard books (that was a temporary strange problem, although I do try to be careful with book selection now...it's hard!) He loves his new gifted pull-out. Mysterious.
He still need to complete some further medical testing and pursue one further consult to rule out some things, but he seems in good physical health as well after the course of the medication he took and I am less concerned about him.
Maybe, you can attribute all the troubles to a particularly difficult growth spurt? I have seen a lot of these things happen during growth spurts in younger kids. Thank you for updating, I have wondered about your DS. Good to know that the problems resolved with time.
