Happy Halloween Everybody!

Where Did My Sweet Boy Go?

Something has changed.

Lib doesn't like to be told no, won't obey me, and screeched and screams when he doesn't get his way.

Is this some phase he is going through? He got mad because I would not let him take all of the items stored in our bathroom vanity out and play with them. These would include shampoo bottles, soap, little travel-sized items and my make-up. I cannot count how many times I sent him to his room after I counted to three and he would not clean up his mess. This morning, he got up and the first thing he did was head for our bathroom vanity to begin taking items out. And, if it's not that, then its DVDs. I have had to put up lots of items around the house just so they won't be made available to him to display this dumping behavior. He likes to dump and then take each item, observe it, rub it on his lips and put it behind him in stack.

I don't get it. Somebody stole my kid and left Dennis the Menace in his place.

Horse Love

Saturday, we took Liberty to the Equestrian Center out in the country, about 30 minutes from where we live. I heard that a group called The Leaning Post Ranch was going to be there. They teach special needs children with varying disabilities to ride horses. I don't completely understand how the riding of a horse can be therapeutic, but it was explained to me that the horse's movements are similar to the child's and, especially in those children with sensory integration problems, the horse can help to stabilize or regulate them. Not only do the children learn to ride a horse, but they also participate in the care of the horse they ride with activities such as grooming.

That's a simplified description of a program I have yet to learn more about.

Meanwhile, I walked around the grounds and found the woman who runs the program. A beautiful woman with long flowing white hair loosely tied in a ribbon, and intense marble-blue eyes dressed in brown gauchos and riding boots. I have to tell you I was really drawn to her.

I told her a little bit about my son. She asked me if I wanted to try him with a horse and see how he does. Well, Liberty was hungry and he had not been interested in the petting zoo or any of the other horses that were being shown for adoption or sale that day. The humane society was even there with puppies and he really was not the least bit interested. So, I agreed hesitantly, and told her that Lib was either tired or having an "off" day and so I really was unsure of how he would react.

We walked to the stables and stopped in front of a stall with a sign on the outside that read, "Minnie - Therapy Horse." This horse was anything but small. She was a very large, sort of pale brown with mottled dark brown to black spots scattered about her skin. Actually, she was a very beautiful horse. The woman put a pretty purple rope bridle around her muzzle and held her steady as my husband carried Lib into the stall with Minnie. I watched as my son, immediately and without hesitation, reached out and touched her! My hand flew to my mouth and my eyes filled with tears. Liberty smiled and made some sounds and then he leaned into the horse's thick neck and mane. I tell you I about fainted. It was such a beautiful moment. The woman turned to me and smiled and said, "See? She's a therapy horse. The horse knows the child is different." I told her this seemed kind of like a dolphin experience and she said, "It's exactly like that! The horse knows what the child needs."

I walked out of the stables on a high.

I hope to be taking my son to learn to ride a horse soon. But, first, we deal with the wearing of a helmet. That oughta keep us busy for awhile.

More to come...

"It's th' unblessed food that makes you fat." *

I first found Edward Espe Brown, a Buddhist monk and chef, when I was given his Tassajara Bread Book in the 1980s. I learned how to make all kinds of bread from that wonderful book. He put out a video last year and this is a clip from it.

Since I have been working in the kitchen coming up with juicing recipes and smoothie recipes and figuring out how to get good food into my child who has texture issues, coupled with a horrendous bout of intestinal flu last week I suddenly came down with...my appreciation of food in general, my kitchen, and preparing meals has greatly increased.

Liberty is doing great. The kid with chronic constipation for two years is moving his bowels on a daily basis. Yes. A daily basis. I am making pear + spinach + a little apple juice in the mornings for him. I am adding Hemp Powder to smoothies. I added flax seed oil to the regimen. I added a supplement called MagC. All of this has worked, but in case you didn't know, like me, pear juice is fantastic for constipation. See how just that tiny bit of information could have changed my life a few years ago? (By the way, I'm using a Jack LaLane juicer I bought from an infomercial after Lib was born and did not hardly use, go figure).

Liberty looks happier. I'm happier knowing my child is eating WELL. I have found that it doesn't take much to get the benefits of juices, vegetable or fruit, so buying organic produce can last longer. It's actually starting to be fun.

I am beginning to treat my kitchen as sacred ground and my food preparation, a prayer!

* quote from At Home in Mitford series

Hen's Teeth

On the phone with Lib's new doctor, we hang up. She calls back again, she looked at some labs and forgot to ask one thing. We talk for 30 minutes, asking questions of each other, kicking around ideas, talking about our plan.

Happens all the time, right?

Not.

As my father would probably say, good doctors, at least wise ones, patient and kind ones, the ones who treat you as an equal with respect...are as scarce as hen's teeth.

More to follow. Let's just say I'm juicing up a storm and things are starting to move along.

Knock me over with a feather...

I now have a doctor who calls me at home to check on my son.

We are in the process of juicing and I just started giving Lib the flax seed oil. We're hoping for things to get moving if you catch my drift. (I'm sparing you more potty talk).

So far, he has had three fabulous days at school. I started giving Curcumin faithfully last Friday when I got to thinking about what I heard at a talk by a DAN doctor. She said, "Ten years from now, autism will be called the disease of inflammation." Curcumin was prescribed by Dr. Bock as an anti-inflammatory but there were so many other supplements I was trying to give, I let if fall by the wayside. I have since cut out more than half of his supplements, focusing only on anti-oxidants, fatty acids, probiotics, and now this anti-inflammatory.

After I started giving it to him, I noticed my son seems calmer, and he's been sleeping like a log! I'll keep you posted on this.

I was telling a friend of mine, we are so focused on all of these parts of recovery: metals, yeast, constipation/diarrhea, pica, etc. Yet, we forget that all of these things together have resulted in inflammatory processes in the body. So, maybe, this is a missing part. Our new doctor told us that the flax seed oil is also an anti-inflammatory. She told me she uses it like butter on everything! Wow. I don't know if I'd go that far, but wow.

Anyway, isn't it GREAT that she called?? I'm liking this woman more and more.

Further Down the Road of Recovery

I took Lib to the new DAN doctor in our little town. Actually, it's another little town past our little town, but all in all it's basically in what you would still call "the country." You'd never expect to find an alternative clinic here that has been quietly offering chelation for 10 years. You just never know what is in your backyard.

The clinic also offers hyperbaric chambers and infrared sauna.

But, that's not why we went. We went to see this doctor, to get Lib established with a developmental pediatrician and the fact that she just got DAN-certified was icing on the cake.

Insurance? Not this appointment but praise GOD, she is going to be on board with insurance next month. A miracle for us! The appointment was expensive and I sucked wind writing the check, but she charged half of what Dr. Bock charged us on our first visit. It's highway robbery, really. I'm sure she is getting insurance because she would not have any patients - who can afford this stuff? It's just so wrong. Here we have an epidemic of ungodly proportion and nothing is covered. We are just so fortunate that we can even go to a DAN and we have had lots of help from family. Oh yes, where would we be without a loving family?

Anyway, do I like her? Yes. She is vegan. She LIVES a "green" life. She is big on learning to eat right and well, and she dislikes pharmaceutical companies. She said she would use a drug if warranted, but will try at all times to do everything naturally to get the body to work properly on its own. She is a new kid on the block in the world of DAN, but she is pretty knowledgeable and I think she is going to add a nice dimension to our "team" here. I still have our Dr. Bock on board and I do still appreciate him, but perhaps we will be able to space our appointments with him out longer now until we eventually turn our care over to someone local.

This new doctor likes the fact that Bock is willing to use homeopathic remedies and natural supplements and probiotics from fermented foods, etc. I don't even know if she has read both of his books The Road to Immunity or Healing the New Childhood Epidemics, but I am willing to lend them to her. I am not touting him as the "best" doctor by any means, but he surely knows a lot about not only autism but asthma, ADHD and allergies and so does his brother who is an expert in Lyme disease.

Our new doc said, absolutely no chelation until the bowels move every day! She has me making smoothies for breakfast with hemp protein powder and flax seed oil, and "green" juices in the afternoon sweetened with fruit or Agave syrup. (I have to give Lib these through a syringe, but who cares?) Dr. Bock gave us a fiber supplement, but the new DAN says she wants fresh organic enzymes going in Lib's little body, not just substitutes.

Although, she DID give us one supplement called MagC and last night, my son moved his bowels on his own for the first time in a very long time! She said that lots of the stimming we are seeing could be just from being backed up with toxins. She wants to see how his behavior changes with the nutritional changes and the daily elimination.

As for chelation, our DAN doctor in NY wants to use DMSA suppositories. I have read different methods and I like the Cutler protocol which uses DMSA but takes the half-life of the drug into account, so you are chelating more frequently on chelation days so the metals don't get re-absorbed. And you introduce ALA which crosses the blood-brain barrier and pulls metals from the brain. Dr. Bock said we have to be careful with yeast being kicked up when we add this in so he said to double up on our probiotic.

The new DAN here thinks we can get the metals out naturally and she has several methods she reeled off to me. I told her that most of us want the "big guns" of chelation (DMSA, EDTA, etc.) simply because we have been on this road for so long and the metals have been in so long. We are scared, we want the gunk out! But, I did see that you have to be careful. I should not have given my son any of the herbal Heavy Metal Detox the herbalist gave us until he was eliminating properly. This stuff contained ALA and NAC and cilantro among others. I saw immediate improvement as I blogged about before because I'm sure he was detoxifying, but then I saw some bad stimming and screaming and disturbed sleep ... we believe because the metals got reabsorbed.

So be careful! Herbs are powerful, too. I see that. The herbalist told me to change Lib's diet and he really should have said for me to do that first and get the bowels moving before I attempted the detox for metals.

But, it's okay. We are moving forward. We are learning. My son is doing well in the middle of the God-awful stimming that has cropped up recently, so I am encouraged. I will stay the course.

Lots of people have told me that I am one of the "warriors" that Jenny talks about, but I really dislike the word. I like the word advocate better. Warrior to me reminds me of all of the pain associated with the diagnosis: The vaccine incidents themselves, the doctors whose ears were closed to me, the desperation and search for help for my son, the sifting through tons of information, wondering what was reliable and what was not.

So, I consider myself an advocate for my son. I've been there and done that and spoken to that person and read from that group. My new DAN here talked about her "smart moms," and how we are the ones teaching the doctors. She actually said that to me! And, for the first time, I looked at her and I said, "Yes. That's right. We are educating you and we have a lot to learn together." She said, "We (referring to doctors in general) were not there for you and have not been there for you for a long time, but hopefully the tide is turning."

God, I pray it's so.

Airport Security

Firsts

Liberty's dad calls last night from the shop and hears Lib chattering away in the background at home. "Put him on the phone," he says. I put the phone up to Lib's ear and for the first time when he hears his daddy's voice, he leans into the phone intently. When I say to him, "Say bye-bye to Daddy," he kisses the phone.

Last night, he looked at me and said, "Mah-ee."

The purple circles are gone from underneath his eyes. His appetite is the best it's ever been. His gut is healing.

Think we got the right herbs. I will never doubt muscle testing again.

And, to the reader who wrote me months ago and begged me to try muscle testing, thank you. I never forgot what you said.