An old friend texted me, asking a favor. The two-year-old son of one of his law partners was just diagnosed with autism. Would I consider having lunch with the man, share with him our experiences?

No problem, I responded. The school/services/therapy side, or the biomed side?

Friend texted: “I told him about the dietary approach you took. Don’t know if they’re ready for that level of discipline but would be good for him to hear.”

“Dietary approach.” Love it.

I texted: “Over the years I’ve learned to approach the newbies gently, and tell them only what they’re ready to hear (plus maybe a little more).”

I have these types of meetings from time to time: friend-or-a-friend arrangements during which, depending on the direction the conversation takes, I tap, nudge, or shove the parents in the biomed direction. “Absolutely,” said Adrian, when I told him about the arranged lunch. It was one more opportunity to show our gratitude for Martin’s recovery thus far—that is, to imagine what our lives would be like today if we still had a son who postured because of gut pain, could not sleep unassisted, and neither acknowledged nor seemed to recognize his own parents.

Six years ago, I wrote about how my family got into biomed, in a series of three posts titled “The A-ha Moment.” Part I described our first realization that autism is medical and recovery may be possible. Part II told how a business contact of Adrian put us in touch with another contact whose wife, Annie, had recovered their son and was willing to talk to me. (A more precise description would be: “whose wife had recovered their son and was willing to spend a ton of time (seriously, an hour to start, and then hours more in follow-up) on the phone with me.”) Part III narrated—

Well, holy crap. In reviewing my blog in order to write this post, I’ve just realized that I never wrote “The A-ha Moment: Part III.” Me acabo dar cuenta de que soy una idiota. I thought I wrote it. I was sure I wrote it! Evidently, I never did. (In my defense, six years ago, I slept very little.) This situation must be remedied. I’ve rummaged through my home office and found the notes of the conversation back in January 2011 on which I intended to base Part III. Without further ado, I present The A-ha Moment: Part III:

The background. “You’ve got to talk to Betty [a pseudonym],” said my then-sister-in-law after Martin was diagnosed. “Her son has autism, and he’s doing amazing.”

I’d met Betty once, ten years earlier at my brother and sister-in-law’s house, when she and her husband brought over their two kids, a girl of about four and a toddler boy. I remembered the boy only vaguely. He’d run around and got into everything, like toddlers do.

I asked my sister-in-law to put me in touch with Betty. We scheduled a phone call, which took place the day after Annie had told me about recovering her son biomedically.

The conversation. I opened the Betty call by explaining that our son was undergoing formal diagnosis but that it was clear that he had autism, and that although we already had him in Early Intervention with ample therapy, we thought there was more we could do, medically.

“Oh, I’m probably not the best one to ask about that side of things,” Betty said. “We didn’t go in for the diet-and-supplementation stuff.”

No?

Betty explained that they had started biomed with their son—which, subsequently, I realized was kind of amazing, because this would have been years earlier, and everything was still pretty cutting-edge even when we started with Martin—but had given up quickly. “The diet was impossible. It just got in the way of all our family activities,” Betty said. Nevertheless, Betty assured me that, despite doing only traditional therapies, their son, now eleven years old, was fine.

Really? Tell me more. I was under the impression that a biomedical approach was necessary to really make progress.

Nope, Betty said. Her son was in a mainstream classroom.

That’s great! How does he relate to the other kids?

He’s able to do the assignments, except when the students pair up or work in groups. He’s not able to work cooperatively, so they let him do those activities alone.

Does he have friends?

Not really. He has one friend. They do a lot together. He doesn’t have any other friends. But he doesn’t care, so why should I? In social situations, he tends to isolate himself. When we’re going to be around other people, we let him bring a portable disc player and earphones to watch a movie.

He’s healthy? He sleeps and eats well?

Yes, he sleeps! No problem there. But his diet is terrible. He has food aversions. I have to send pretzels and potato chips for his school lunch every day, just to make sure he eats something. I feel like people think I’m a bad mother. He loves crunchy texture and salty flavor.

Sports?

No. No sports.

After-school activities?

Video games.

Readers, I’m sure you can imagine that by this point in the conversation I had decided that I did not like Betty’s version of “fine.” The picture she was so dire that I began to doubt my previous call with Annie, who told me about recovering her son. I thanked Betty for her time and insights. She concluded by reminding me that her son was fine and letting me know that my son would also be fine.

The follow-up. As soon as I hung up with Betty, I got back on the phone with Annie. Could she clarify? I asked. When she said her son was “recovered,” what did that mean? Was he quirky? A little bit off, in terms of social skills? Unwilling to eat regular foods, maybe? No, Annie answered. He’s recovered. He looks just like other kids. No one in his current school knows he ever had autism. He plays guitar in a kid-band with his friends. He likes sports.

I continued to press. There must be some difference? Annie seemed to think. Finally she said, “Sometimes when he’s playing basketball and it’s really noisy, he gets a little spacey and I feel like he could pay attention better.” That was it. That was what she came up with. The difference between her son and other children was that sometimes he got a little spacey on the basketball court.

The A-ha Moment, Part III: Behavioral therapy offers fine. Biomed offers recovered. We decided to aim for recovered.

Addendum. It’s not entirely correct to say I never wrote Part III. In a November 2011 post titled “Friendships,” I did reference what occurred in The A-ha Moment, Part III. I wrote: “Another parent once told me, about her eleven-year-old son on the spectrum, ‘He doesn’t have friends except for one. But if he doesn’t care, why should I?’” That came from Betty, about her son who was fine.

Back to 2017. Last week’s lunch with my old friend’s law partner, though peppered with discussion of special-needs preschools and CPSE meetings, steered decidedly in the biomed direction. The man asked science-y questions, which I did my best to answer, and listened to my many self-deprecating observations that began with, “I know this probably sounds a little crazy, and if ten years ago, I’d met today-me, I’d think I was crazy. But I’ve learned a lot about health, the immune system, and how seemingly psychiatric conditions can be tied to the gut . . . .”

Two afternoons later, at Martin’s social-skills playgroup, a mother new to the group overheard another mother and I talking, and asked, “What do you mean, ‘biomed’ and ‘neuroplasticity’? I’m not familiar with any of this.”

I paused, wondering whether I should proceed. Then I said, “This is probably going to sound crazy . . . .”