It’s been seven years since we began biomedical interventions aimed at recovering Martin from autism, and though I always wish wellness would hurry up and get here, overall I am pleased with our success. Last semester we had a CSE meeting with our school district and, at our request, reduced the special-education services Martin receives. With newfound social awareness, Martin has grown resistant to being pulled so often from his mainstream classroom. We decided that we can still meet his needs even without physical therapy (taekwondo helps) or resource room (we’ve hired a reading tutor instead), and we’re cutting speech therapy from three sessions per week to two. Outside of school, Martin recently had a successful play date with typically developing twins, albeit 17 months younger than he is. Progress, progress.

How have we reached this point? Through utter, over-the-top lunacy. By my leaving my law-firm job to work on Martin’s recovery. By moving out of New York City, and into a house adjusted to meet his needs, from electromagnetic-shielding to environmentally sensitive paint. Through a variety of specialty and highly restricted diets, all home-prepared and as organic as possible. With homeopathy and, early on, homotoxicology. Through large medical bills (on top of pushing the limits of our insurance) for a team of MAPS(-ish) practitioners, an LLMD, geneticists, traditional and nontraditional allergists, developmental optometrist, neurofeedback practitioner, HBOT therapist. By insulating Martin from the commonplace, like fluoride, chlorine, harsh cleaning agents. On the non-biomed side, through special-education settings, hippotherapy, social-skills playgroups, a psychologist. And of course, by summer relocation to Nicaragua.

From the beginning, I have had to acknowledge the privilege inherent in what I can do for Martin. We are a two-parent family with one child. Adrian’s income as a law-firm partner made it possible for me to stop working and focus on Martin, and for us nevertheless to cover the expense of biomed. We live in an area rich with resources. Adrian himself believes in the biomedical approach. While he may select restaurants without enough regard for Martin’s restrictions, or plan trips that make it difficult to adhere to our supplementation routine &c., he never questions my research or seeks to undermine.

What we do for Martin appears extreme, to a good many folks, and that’s okay. It is extreme. I’ve always said I would do anything necessary for Martin’s recovery.

Yet, more and more often, I encounter parents who do more than I do.

Example: Parents who homeschool. That’s not happening for us. I love Martin and cherish our time together, enough so that—other than cooking—I get nothing done when we’re together. I need the six-hour break when he’s in school. I need the time to work, to shop, to research, to order supplements, to breathe.

Example: Parents who truly master the science behind medical challenges and recovery. When my family makes a big decision like medical marijuana, I try to do a lot of research. I read summaries and abstracts and, where necessary, delve into scholarly articles—which is tough. I’m no good at the science component. I’m forever amazed by parents who seem able to answer extremely complicated questions of physiology or neurology at the drop of a hat. Perhaps they were doctors in their pre-autism lives. Or perhaps they just managed to complete something more impressive than “Chemistry for Non-Science Majors,” which was the class through which I fulfilled my core science requirement in college.

Caveat: One could argue that anything biomedical we do with Martin is a “big decision,” because anything has the potential to affect his health short- or long-term. True. On the other hand, my anxiety is satisfied with comparatively less investigation when it comes to, say, Vitamin C supplementation than when it comes to, say, chelation.

Caveat: There are also plenty of parents in my on-line groups who, even to my weak eye, get science and even basic facts wrong. I wasted time one evening explaining why the statement “All soy contains GMO estrogen” was untrue (in varying ways). Another occasion, I spent hours trying to track down the source of a statistic about MTHFR mutation and autism that was being thrown around as gospel. I failed, even after looking through all eight articles in the medical journal to which the statistic was vaguely attributed.

The core point is this: In the event anyone feels disheartened because s/he can’t manage what we do for Martin, know that I too become disheartened by what others manage that I cannot.

Martin needs more detox support. For detox support, he takes a few herbal remedies, does a detox bath (two cups Epsom salt, half a cup baking soda, and essential oils) several times per week, and when we have time, sweats in our infrared sauna. But he needs more. I can tell because he becomes silly and inattentive (behavior I associate with detoxing) at certain times each day, usually when his antimicrobials are taking effect. So I went searching for a supplemental detox protocol and found a post, from the excellent blog Regarding Caroline, titled, “DETOX the Die-off and feel amazing again! [our roadmap to success].”

Call up the post, if you have a minute. Read through, past the various strategies of castor oil packs, dry brushing, &c., down to that part subtitled Our Daily Detox Routine. It’s amazing! Herx water and lymph drainage massage before breakfast, cytokine and lymphatic supplements mid-morning and early afternoon, foot bath during dinner, dry brushing before shower, more lymph drainage massage in bed, so on, so forth. Martin would undoubtedly benefit from that type of detox routine. So much detox might eliminate silliness altogether, which would help so much with social skills; just this afternoon, Martin said to me, “I know I shouldn’t laugh at jokes from inside my head when I’m with friends. I can’t calm my body and control the laughing!”

So Martin needs a routine like that.

But—

But I—

I came away from this post feeling, I imagine, the way an autism-recovery newbie might feel after some time on Finding My Kid: What? How? How could I possibly do all that—do anything close to that—on top of the day-to-day grind I already endure? Martin attends school; we’ve established that. He has at least two activities after school every day, which include taekwondo practice, music lessons, psychologist appointments, social-skills playgroup, reading tutor. Then there’s homework (which still takes inordinately long, given his attention issues), trombone and drum practice, (now) chess practice, half an hour of iPad time (as a reward for completing everything else I just mentioned), dinner, two snacks, and school-mandated 20 minutes of reading before bedtime. We do his pills and drops at wake-up, breakfast, immediately after school, before dinner, during dinner, and at bedtime. When the dry brushing? When the detox supplements, which must be separated from everything else?

You may be thinking, hey, why not drop a few activities? I would love to. Here are examples of my excuses and counter-proposals:

• The most cumbersome activity is taekwondo, which Martin does five times per week. He would attend seven times per week if the lessons were available. Most kids attend two or maybe three times per week. We indulge Martin’s habit because (1) taekwondo is one of the few activities that excite him, and (2) even coming twice as much as other kids, he still has trouble keeping up with them, and every time classmates have the opportunity to pass a belt and Martin doesn’t, the experience pains him.
• His music lesson is a combined once-weekly trombone and drum lesson. He wants to join the school band next year, in fourth grade. He’s been at the trombone lessons for two years, and he isn’t very good. Last fall he asked to change to percussion. We don’t like him hopping around on a whim, so we allowed percussion only if he also stuck with trombone. Then he showed a knack for drums and immediately became a better percussionist than trombonist. If he’s going to succeed in band, drums are probably the key.
• Chess is a new activity, at my urging. Our community has an active chess program for elementary kids, and I’d like to have Martin involved in at least one quiet, thoughtful activity with peers. The participants, however, have by and large been playing for a while, and Martin needs to catch up, so I have him taking a lesson once a week and practicing the other days. If I can’t have a hockey player, darn it, I will have a chess player.

The truth is, I would rather keep Martin busy. We still don’t have many play dates to speak of, and when he’s not busy, he’s whining for an iPad or for me to entertain him. Of course he needs to develop the skill of entertaining himself, but at least until he can read for pleasure, we probably aren’t there yet.

So there you have it. There are, indeed, parents who do more for their kids than I do for Martin. Far more—even excluding the subset of parents who must do more because their children are extremely high-need. I, too, become overwhelmed at the thought of all I should be doing.

I hope that a parent who reads Finding My Kid and thinks, “No way!” might nonetheless think also, “Okay, part way. I can do some of that.” So that’s the course I took. I analyzed the Regarding Caroline suggestions, took what seems do-able for us, and came up with a Martinized protocol:

1. We will do a foot bath during iPad time at least four days per week. I prefer Martin to be seated at a table for iPad time in any event, because otherwise he hunches and puts his face too close to the screen.

2. We will attempt dry brushing Saturday (or Sunday), Wednesday, and Friday. Those are the evenings when we tend to be less rushed.

3. I will add herx water before breakfast and after school.

That’s it. Those are the suggestions I think I can manage.

And, mind you, the list is aspirational.