Tag Archives: homeopathy

Just Had to Get That Out

Posted on by findingmykid
4

Some themes get old on Finding My Kid. If you’re a regular reader, you can probably name a few: sleeplessness, detox and die-off, food, the New York Rangers. These are the light motifs that underlie our journey. They are the stuff of my day-to-day.

I have to add another theme to the list: skepticism and rebuke. At least, skepticism and rebuke as pertain to Heilkunst. Recall that we started Heilkunst late in 2014, and that it’s a method of sequential homeopathy designed to help the immune system clear various insults it has suffered. I went into the process with doubts. Then the first clear Martin received (for coxsackie) made him puke and also produced a light coxsackie rash, and I started to see the light. Later, when we cleared the H1N1 and MMR vaccines, plus antibiotics we’d previously used to treat SIBO, Martin’s reactions and improvements were so dramatic that I became “non-skeptical.”

At least for a time. But there were no dramatic improvements for a while, and I grew complacent, and complacency, evidently, reopens the door to doubt. I asked myself: Is Martin still benefiting from Heilkunst?

If you happen to write fiction, you’re probably familiar with Chekov’s gun, which is the rule that a story (or play, or scene, or essay) should be free from extraneous detail. I poked around and found that the gun is usually attributed to a letter Chekov wrote in 1889 to playwright Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev: “One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.”

Writing rules are meant to be broken, but I will respect the gun—which is to say: I raise my Heilkunst doubts because I intend to erase those doubts.

It isn’t supposed to be all about me. Is it?

To this day, I carry guilt about Martin’s birth. I won’t describe all the circumstances again, except this brief enumeration: In the 42nd week, against my better judgment, I allowed induction by Pitocin, which led to Martin getting “stuck” sideways, which led to continual drops in his heart rate, which led to an unplanned C-section, which upset me so much that I got a fever, which (“maternal fever”) caused the hospital to place my healthy baby in the NICU and pump him with intravenous antibiotics, in an incubator away from skin-to-skin contact.

Here’s a portion of the story I haven’t shared before on this blog: After Martin was taken, I was wheeled into a “recovery room” and told to sleep. Even then, my instinct told me that something was wrong. I needed to get to my child, and so, fresh off a surgical table, I pulled myself from the hospital bed and tried to find Martin. I made it only a few paces before blood collected around my feet and I slipped. A nurse entered and found me on the floor, a mess, trying to rise again. The nurse insisted that I get back into bed. I said, “No. My child. I have to get to my child.” Finally, I agreed to lie on the bed on the condition that she find Adrian: “Get my husband! Go get my husband!”

She left the room. Somehow, Adrian and my mother appeared in the recovery room with Starbucks drinks. (It was early morning.) Though even I didn’t know why, the sight of Adrian and my mother smiling with Starbucks drinks in their hands enraged me. When our child needed us, they’d gone to Starbucks. I told Adrian to go to Martin, to find Martin and protect him. Adrian said Martin was fine, that the doctors were taking care of him, and that I needed to go to sleep. I said Martin needed to be with me, and that Adrian needed to find Martin immediately.

I don’t know what happened after then. I have no more recollection. My next memory is being wheeled into my own hospital room. I may have fallen asleep, or fainted, or become delirious (if I wasn’t already). Or maybe I’ve blocked the memory. In any event, what remained was the impression that Martin was in danger, and I was at fault, and Adrian was at fault, and nonsensically even my mother was at fault. Three years later, when I began to understand what antibiotics do to the gut biome, and the gut biome’s connection to autism, I wanted nothing more than return to the day before Martin’s birth and refuse the Pitocin, and refuse to surrender him to the NICU.

Please don’t chime in and point out that my guilt is unjustified, or that it is ridiculous to be angry with Adrian and my mother for getting Starbucks. I know that most first-time parents have neither the foresight nor the wherewithal to realize how destructive our medical birth culture can be. I know all that. Yet, when Martin was five, I attended a wedding and was seated next to the bride’s brother-in-law, who was holding a six-week-old baby and also full of bravado. “They tried to put her in the NICU,” he declared, after describing some minor complications. “They said they’d call family services if I didn’t let her go. So I said, ‘Go ahead and call family services. My lawyer will be here long before they will.’ They gave up and left us alone. Ha! I know my rights!” His performance upset me enough that Adrian and I had to leave the wedding early.

Two months ago, the envelopes with Martin’s latest two Heilkunst clears arrived by mail. When I had talked with the homeopath, he mentioned which clears were coming, but I hadn’t paid much attention and wasn’t thinking about that when I tore open the big envelope to extract the smaller envelopes with remedies.

As soon as I touched the remedy envelopes, my hands began to shake and I started crying. I had to catch my breath. Unsure what was happening, I set the whole packet down and took a minute to compose myself. Sometimes I experience generalized feelings of unease and have to pause to remember what’s got me anxious—an unaccomplished work project, an upset friend, a fight over a bill, whatever. The feeling that overtook me when I was opening the remedies, however, overran generalized unease or emptiness. It was an immediate affront, and I couldn’t connect it to anything happening in my life.

At length, confused, I retrieved the first remedy envelope and noticed what was inside: the first of several clears related to Martin’s birth trauma and NICU experience.

I have no explanation for this event other than to believe whatever energy was in those envelopes—homeopathy is energetic medicine—provoked a reaction in me, from the spot of my regret.

Just had to get that out.

Along with the clears every few weeks, Martin also takes daily Heilkunst drops. One dropper helps with Lyme disease, and the other is a drainage dropper that helps him move stuff through his system generally.

About a month ago, his drainage dropper became contaminated and I had to order a new one. I could have replaced the drainage dropper with a “paper remedy,” which is where you write the particular remedy on a piece of paper and keep it near the recipient. Believe it or not, however, some aspects of homeopathy, like paper remedies, still seem too far out there even for me. So I ordered a new drainage dropper, which had to be sent from Canada and then reconstituted upon receipt, and a lot was going on, and yadda yadda yadda, Martin went a couple few without his drainage dropper.

Martin’s final week without the drainage dropper was dreadful. He was defiant, resistant, downright crabby. His teachers reported silly and unfocused behavior. His personal trainer said he seemed “out of it.” He demanded constant attention. He couldn’t fall asleep. I had an extra glass or two of wine. (Food for thought on that topic, see this opinion piece.) I connected none of this to homeopathy.

Sunday, the end of that week, was no exception. Martin vacillated between wanting to accompany me to church and wanting to go with Adrian to the gym. Actually, he spent more time complaining about both choices. He wanted to stay home and use his iPad. He wanted to stay home alone. He complained about lunch. He complained when Adrian “made” him go swimming. He whined so much about the notion of going out to dinner that we decided to eat on our back deck instead. (We don’t usually yield to whining. A great blizzard can snap even the most stalwart bough.)

Meanwhile, I finally got my act together and prepared the new drainage dropper, which had arrived at least a week earlier and sat on the counter. Mid-afternoon, Martin had his first drainage drop in several weeks.

He ate dinner without incident, other than grumbling about what I’d prepared. He was two bites into dessert (chocolate quinoa cake, leftover from entertaining Saturday guests) when he said, “My tummy hurts.”

“Why don’t you go to the bathroom?” I asked.

He went in the house.

He didn’t return.

Five minutes later I found him sitting on the toilet, hunched over. “My tummy hurts,” he said.

“Did you go to the bathroom?” I asked.

“I can’t.”

“Let’s see if a warm bath helps.” I ran a warm bath with Epsom salt and baking soda and helped Martin into the tub.

I’m going to yadda yadda some more details here. I’ll report the highlights: a bathtub of water, Epsom salt, baking soda, and puke; Adrian yelling, “Get him to the hardwood!” as Martin started to puke on the family room rug; me grabbing the countertop compost bin to catch more puke.

When Pukefest concluded, Martin said simply, “I need to go to bed.” Within two minutes, he was asleep, at least an hour earlier than usual.

When it comes to Martin, I’m prone to overreacting. Once the house had been scrubbed clean, I proceeded directly to Google to review the signs of delayed drowning, because Martin had spent the afternoon in the pool and now was unwell. Excessive tiredness was on the list. Vomiting, maybe. Martin had none of the other symptoms of delayed drowning, and he’d identified a tummy ache, not any pain in his lungs or chest. None of that stopped me from waking every hour during the night to check on Martin to make sure he was breathing well and not foaming at the mouth. And so I can tell you this: That night, Martin slept. For thirteen hours he barely stirred.

When he woke, at 8:00 Monday morning, Martin was utterly buoyant. He bounded into the kitchen and said, “It’s already 8:00! I slept late!” I replied, “That’s no problem. I will drive you to school after you eat breakfast.” (Martin attends summer school, for which I usually wake him by 6:45.) I steeled myself for protest; Martin will exploit any excuse to get out of school. The protest wasn’t forthcoming. Instead, he said, “Sounds good! I’m going to get dressed.” For breakfast, he ate eggs and veggies in a tortilla. When I picked him up from school, his teachers said he’d had a “fantastic” day. His personal trainer reported “big improvement.” He ate dinner without a whimper. He went to bed and slept soundly again.

Coincidence? Or just undesirable stuff—who knows what?—building up without his dropper?

Once upon a time, I would have said the former.

P.S. According to Wikipedia, Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev was a pseudonym of A.S. Gruzinsky. Other than that, I can’t find out much about him. Poor Lazarev/Gruzinsky appears to be remembered only for Chekov’s gun.

IMG_3972Martin prepares to take a swim lesson.

Those Doubts Are Gone. From a Mainstream Perspective, I Get Crazier by the Day

Posted on by findingmykid
4

Remember my doubts about Heilkunst homeopathy?

Heilkunst is about supporting the body’s natural healing power, allowing its own return to health. I had to go through the dreadful process of enumerating, in reverse chronological order, the many insults to Martin’s immune system, from medications and illnesses to vaccines to home remodeling while I was pregnant. For eight months we’ve done a “clear” every two or three weeks, working backward through what might be hampering Martin’s recovery.

Immediately after we began the first clear, which addressed coxsackie, Martin vomited and woke the next morning with a mild coxsackie-like rash on his hands. Since then we’ve seen what appear to be “healing reactions” of all sorts. Itchy neck. Inner-ear swelling. Tired allergy eyes. More vomiting. ROOS. Ugh, ROOS.

At the same time, Martin has been getting better and better. Seriously, he’s having a homerun 2015. I’ve been “reasonably convinced” the Heilkunst is doing what it’s supposed to.

Time to scratch the “reasonably.”

Our last three clears have been MMR, the H1N1 vaccine, and antibiotics we used when addressing SIBO. The antibiotics actually should have been addressed much earlier, in terms of chronological order; I realized only recently, from reading comments in an on-line group, that antibiotics need to be cleared.

I had a hunch that H1N1 clear would be a tough one. The H1N1 vaccine—why on earth did I fall prey to the unnecessary frenzy over that illness?—was the only injection from which I saw a noticeable difference in Martin, beyond the fever-crying-and-blues we are supposed to accept in a recently vaccinated child. He received the H1N1 shot in November 2009, when he was almost 17 months old. (According to his medical records, a “second” H1N1 shot was administered in January 2010. I have no recollection of that.) The shot was not a bad one, in terms of Martin crying or acting out. Instead, he became very quiet and withdrawn, and then, the same afternoon, I noticed him engaging in repetitive behaviors: moving toddler chairs into formation, stacking them, moving them. It was the first time I’d ever noticed such behaviors. Do I know that the onset of repetitive behaviors was tied to the H1N1 vaccine, instead of coincidental? No. But the timing raises red flags. Plants a whole row of red flags.

So I went into Martin’s Heilkunst H1N1 clear with trepidation. The clear involves three wafers given over three days, and then a two-or-three-week waiting period while Martin’s system works through the effects of the H1N1 shot.

As to what happened, here is the update I sent to Martin’s Heilkunst practitioner following the H1N1 and MMR clears:

With the H1N1, Martin was crabby for more than a week. He also had trouble sleeping and reverted to some behaviors we haven’t seen in a long time, such as uncontrollable perseveration and also verbal stimming (he says “goo-HEN-duh-may” repeatedly, and tries to get others to say it also, by asking, “What did I just say?” or, “Is ‘goo-HEN-duh-may’ a word?”). One afternoon he was super crabby and tired, and at dinner he said abruptly, “Mommy, I need to throw up.” (I feel bad: I didn’t believe him, because he frequently says that when he just doesn’t want to eat, doesn’t want to go to school, &c.) Then he vomited, twice, all over the dinner table and floor. After I got him cleaned up in a bath, he seemed to be feeling much, much better. He asked if he could have dessert even though he didn’t finish dinner, and then he went to bed and slept more peacefully. No trouble after that.

I waited another week and then did the MMR. Martin did not get as crabby, but one night after I bathed him, I noticed a bright red, raised rash on one half of his backside. By morning the rash was gone. Also, one day later he was covering his ears and saying they hurt. I put some Hyland’s earache drops in them, which seemed to help.

Overall, Martin is doing very well right now, with a big increase in conversation skills and some in attention. Socialization remains tough.

I should add that the rash I saw on Martin while we were clearing MMR was a mild measles-like rash. I know, because I had measles when I was 12. (I lived in a semi-rural area where, as far as I know, vaccination rates were near 100%. I caught measles despite being initially vaccinated, and later hit with a booster shot. I’m resisting the urge to make this post about vaccines.) In regard to looking like measles, Martin’s rash was clear and distinct.

Let’s agree on this: I don’t have my doubts about Heilkunst anymore. These wafers are doing something.

Let’s follow up with this: I don’t know how Heilkunst is working, or exactly what these wafers are up to. I know that the principle is “energy medicine.” Each wafer delivers a minimized, harmless form of what insulted the immune system, to help the body recognize and expel the toxin. But how does the wafer acquire that energy? At AutismOne, out of lingering curiosity, I crashed the Homeopathy Center of Houston panel discussion and asked questions. We don’t use the Homeopathy Center of Houston, buy hey, same idea as Heilkunst, right? Or close? The lovely ladies of Houston explained about dilution and formulas and administration and many other procedures, and my little brain left the room as uncertain as ever. I may be violating my own policy of comprehending any treatment before we begin; in the case of homeopathy, I consulted as many parents as I could find and also searched online for reports of negative or adverse reactions to sequential homeopathy. Having found nothing substantial or substantiated, I proceeded.

My online searches did yield studies (and straight-up arguments) concluding that homeopathy in general is bunk, just so much ineffective snake oil peddled at high prices. I took those accusations under advisement.

And now I feel comfortable saying: They’re wrong.

ROOS

Posted on by findingmykid
7

ROOS! Doesn’t that sound like a European soccer star, or maybe an adorable cartoon character?

Yesterday sucked. Martin engaged in behaviors we haven’t seen in months, or even years. He was exhausted. He had been chatting incessantly in bed Tuesday night, and cracking himself up, and he didn’t get to sleep until after 10:00 pm, so yesterday morning I had to drag him from bed. (On a proper night, he’s asleep by 8:00 pm.) Getting breakfast into him was a struggle. When his head wasn’t half on his plate and half on his placemat, he still forewent eating in order to whine, “I have to throw up. I can’t go to school, because I’m so sick.” (He didn’t have to, and he wasn’t.)

After school, the situation only got worse. Every suggestion I made was met with, “No! No, no, no, no, no.” He had a meltdown when Neil Young came on the radio singing “Ohio.” I can’t really identify the genesis of the meltdown; it seemed to be some combination of the song being a live version, my insisting on listening to the whole thing, and Neil Young not being available for a concert this weekend in the New York City area. In any event, Martin subsequently said he didn’t want to hear “Jungle Boogie,” asked me to sample every station for a better choice, decided that actually “Jungle Boogie” was what he wanted to hear, and had a fresh meltdown because the song had ended while we were sampling the other stations.

His homework, which usually gets done in less than 10 minutes, took more than 45 minutes and still wasn’t complete when he went to bed. He cried. He said that he couldn’t do the addition problems and needed my help. (He could do them, and he didn’t need help.) He refused to eat dinner unless I spooned it into his mouth. And he talked. Holy cow, did he talk. He talked non-stop, perseverating on tableware and street signs. Once, I regret, I exclaimed, “Martin, please. Please just stop talking for a minute.” He shouted, “No talking? No talking! Mommy, no talking?” and started to cry again.

Adrian is traveling, so Martin and I were alone. Martin decided that he could not be more than a few feet from me, and that I had to respond to everything he said. Everything.

Sound like the kid I’ve been blogging about lately?

I didn’t think so.

ROOS is a term I’ve heard some parents toss around, since I started doing Heilkunst homeopathy with Martin. As I understand homeopathy (when it comes to Heilkunst, I’m still a newbie), we administer teeny-tiny doses of what injured the immune system, or even just teeny-tiny doses of the energy of what injured the immune system, in order to help the body rid itself of the insult. So if the particular insult to be addressed is a bout of coxsackie, we give the participant some of that energy, in the hopes that his immune system will say, “Hey, what is that? I want that out. I want all that out,” in a way that it couldn’t manage when overwhelmed by the original insult.

As part of this process, while the body is working to clear the original insult, some of the symptoms that accompanied that insult. Hence: ROOS, or Return Of Old Symptoms. For the past week or two, Martin has been working to clear the H1N1 vaccine. If the Heilkunst stuff is working—and I think it is—then that H1N1 injection Martin got in late 2009 had something to do with the development of perseveration and overall discomfort. Now let me add something amazing: This seems to be the most difficult clear we’ve had since starting Heilkunst, and the H1N1 vaccine is the only injection that I ever correlated directly with the development of Martin’s autism. Seriously. Almost immediately after he received the H1N1 shot, I noticed Martin, for the first time, start picking up little chairs and setting them in patterns. I didn’t know then that Martin had autism; six more months would pass before we began to realize, and so at the time I just thought, oh, that’s odd, and chalked it up to Martin having an engineer’s mind, an assumption bolstered when he soon developed a fascination with the upright vacuum cleaner. Fast-forward five-and-a-half years. Poor little guy is trying to purge that weird H1N1 injection, and whatever nastiness lurked within its ingredients.

I finally got Martin into bed around 7:40 last night. I tried to read him a book, about the importance of telling the truth (that’s been an issue lately), but it was slow-going. Every line I read sent Martin on a tangent. Bears in the story? “Mommy, are these my stuffed bears? Mommy, what are their names?” A soccer ball? “Mommy, do I play soccer? Mommy, at the JCC is there a sign that says, ‘Gymnasium’?” A store? “Mommy, at the store, do they have plates and forks and knives? Why?”

Fortunately, he fell asleep promptly. I decided to cut my losses on the day. I cancelled a 9:00 pm business call instead cleaned the kitchen—which I find relaxing; don’t judge!—while engaging in hockey-watching therapy. Tampa Bay and Detroit were playing Game 7 of their first-round series. I don’t care for either team, other than a preference for Detroit because it’s an Original Six team and located in a climate appropriate for playing ice hockey. On the other hand, Brian Boyle and Ryan Callahan, former Rangers whom I still love, both play for Tampa Bay now, and I was happy to see a victory for them.

I went to bed thinking about Rangers’ game coming up tonight, and imagining that ROOS indeed could be just an adorable cartoon character.

TWIFU

Posted on by findingmykid
10

TIFU. Know what it means? Click here (at your own peril) if you don’t.

Now take the T (“today”) and substitute TW (“this week”), because the events I’m about to describe happened on Monday.

In yesterday’s post I talked about starting Heilkunst. Martin’s first two clears arrived last week. I waited to start them, because I hadn’t had time to peruse the instructions for the clears, or to revise Martin’s daily supplementation sheets to include the clears and the accompanying drainage formula. Monday I had the time, got everything prepared, and decided to start Martin’s first clear.

By Monday we also had been waiting more than a week, since our visit to Dr. Zelinsky, for Martin’s new glasses to arrive. Martin, with characteristic precision and fierceness, had said he wanted his glasses to arrive “on Saturday, November 1 and no other day!” They didn’t. So when the glasses finally appeared on Monday, November 3, I was eager to present them to Martin and let him start wearing them.

Here’s what happened after the school bus dropped Martin off Monday afternoon:

3:50 pm. Martin put on glasses for the first time, agreed to wear them generally.

3:50-4:20 pm. Martin played, read, and drew pictures, wearing glasses. He took his afternoon supplements.

4:20-6:20 pm. We went to social-skills group. Martin wore glasses. On the way, he drank his camel milk. The group leader reported that Martin had a great session and participated well.

6:30 pm. Driving home from social-skills group, we pulled into Stop & Shop for Martin to pick out his own Lärabar®. Even though we have Lärabars at home, Martin takes great pleasure in going to the store and choosing one. (No doubt he also likes that Stop & Shop stocks “cherry pie” and “pecan pie” flavors, which I don’t keep at home.) Martin, glasses on, seemed energized, if not decisive. He ran back and forth between the standard Lärabar display and a temporary rack of “seasonal” flavors like “pumpkin pie” and “gingerbread.”

7:00-7:30 pm. Martin sat at the dinner table. His dinner was bone broth and pasta with squash and cauliflower. While Martin sipped his broth, I assembled and administered his evening supplements, including for the first time the Heilkunst drainage drop and a Heilkunst clear. He took them without issue.

7:30-7:45 pm. Although Martin loves pasta, after just a bite or two he pushed the pasta bowl aside and said he wanted to finish only his soup, which he did. He also requested dessert and ate a small piece of chocolate. Then he said he didn’t want to wear his glasses anymore, didn’t want to take a bath, and was going to get ready for bed.

8:00 pm. In his room, teeth brushed, pajama-clad, without glasses, Martin scrunched himself into froggy position on the floor and said his belly hurt. Did he need to return to the potty? I asked. Could I get him a drink of water? Would he like more soup? No, no, no, Martin answered. He climbed into bed and asked me to read him a story.

8:20 pm. Martin was in bed, lights out. From the kitchen, I heard him calling me. I walked down the hall to his doorway. “Mommy, my tummy hurts,” he said and smacked his lips. I realized what probably was coming and started toward his bed. Too late. Within seconds, Martin, his pillow, his sheets and blanket, several stuffed animals, and a small part of the mattress were splashed with vomit. In the mess I saw several undigested supplements, along with the few bits of pasta he’d eaten.

Martin almost never pukes. I think it’s happened maybe two or three times in his life.

And I didn’t know what caused it Monday. That was the TWIFU. I know that I should separate new supplements, treatments, therapies, and even vitamins by at least two-to-three days, in order to pinpoint the cause of any reactions. I know that. What did I do Monday? Without a second thought, I let Martin wear new glasses for several hours and started the Heilkunst. When he reacted, when he puked all over poor Curious George, I couldn’t isolate the cause. Was wearing glasses too much stimulation for Martin’s brain stem? Did he get dizzy? Or did the first Heilkunst clear cause his body to reject something? How could I tell?

I’ve been working at Martin’s recovery for four years. You’d think by now I’d have a clue.

P.S. Because of my carelessness, I had to undertake some additional investigation. By the time I finished cleaning Martin, washing linens, and doing my best with the mattress and pillow, it was late evening. (Admittedly, I would have been awake anyway. The Rangers went to a shoot-out.) I didn’t want to bother Dr. Zelinsky or Rudi Verspoor at that hour. Instead, I texted with another Dr. Z mom I know and posted an inquiry in a Heilkunst group on-line, which generated immediate responses. By the time I went to bed, I was 90% confident that the vomiting was unrelated to the new glasses and instead was a proper reaction to the first clear, which was a clear for the coxsackie virus Martin had two years ago. I was even more confident when Martin woke the next morning with a slight rash on his hands, a much lighter version of how he’d looked during the virus. Still, I can’t be 99.99% confident, and that bothers me.

So Here’s Something Else New We’re Doing

Posted on by findingmykid
19

We have started Heilkunst, a form of sequential homeopathy. We’re working with Rudi Verspoor of Ottawa’s Hahnemann Center.

Four years ago, when we started the process of recovering Martin from autism (as opposed to helping him live with autism, through traditional therapies), Adrian and I resolved not to go too far “out there.” The first MAPS doctor we brought Martin to is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale School of Medicine, and completed her residency at Massachusetts General. These credentials were important to us, because we didn’t want to be dealing with, as I put it, “a graduate of the Pacific School of Holistic Touchy-Feely Medicine.” (Let me also add that Martin’s first MAPS doctor is empathetic, intuitive, and utterly knowledgeable, and that we switched doctors only because that one moved to California.)

We’ve been through a lot in the years since Adrian and I resolved not to go too far “out there.” We’ve used two homotoxicologists, one in New York City who did not work out well—part of the problem could have been me not understanding homotoxicology at the time, and her not explaining the process in a way I could grasp—and for the last two years Lauren Lee Stone in Connecticut, with more success. Martin has participated in craniosacral massage, muscle testing, naturopathic assessment of food allergies. He’s drinking camel milk daily. He’s slept on a grounding sheet, inside an RF-blocking tent.

I suppose I’ve strayed pretty far “out there” with Martin, and Adrian hasn’t stopped us. When your son stops running in circles, and starts talking, and stops thrashing around in his bed, and starts realizing when you’re in the room with him, then you pretty much go where the journey takes you, and go gratefully. I still care, a lot, about credentials and science, but you could say my horizons have expanded.

On an “out there” scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being ABA and MiraLAX® for autism, and 10 being having Reiki vibes telepathically sent from Mongolia, I would put Heilkunst at about an 7.73. In their book Autism: The Journey Back, Rudi Verspoor and Patty Smith describe Heilkunst as a “comprehensive, integrated system of Western medicine based on the principles of natural law regarding the removal of disease (cure) and the restoration of balance in our functioning (healing).” As I understand the process, Martin will progress through a series of homeopathic “clears,” one every two or three weeks, to alleviate the insults to his immune system, from pre-natal development through today. The insults to Martin’s immune system have been many, from his traumatic birth to vaccinations to living in a home under renovation. I had to list all this out in order to begin Heilkunst. It was not a fun process.

Now, let me add this: Scoring Heilkunst an 7.73 on the “out there” scale does not mean I don’t have faith in the process. To the contrary, Heilkunst is energetic healing, and I am administering it to Martin, and I think my faith therefore is necessary to its success, and I would not have proceeded if I didn’t expect results. I’ve talked to many families whose children have progressed with sequential homeopathy. I’ve witnessed their progress. Plus, sequential homeopathy makes sense to me. I know many of the factors that affected Martin’s immune functioning; I’m eager to help him work back through what happened.

I’m also glad we did not start Heilkunst sooner. We needed first to get the biggest stuff under control: his digestion, his ability to rest, his communication skills to participate in the process.

And we had some mental blocks to remove. Mine.

photo-10

Judgments

Posted on by findingmykid
4

Our family is working to alleviate Martin’s autism by healing his immune system, instead of using medication to disguise the health problems. One day, that approach could change, as I mentioned in the post titled “New Sleep, No Crutch”:

Of course I’m familiar with methylphenidate, amphetamine salts, guanfacine, and so forth—drugs that might improve Martin’s still-abysmal attention span. Maybe one day we’ll turn to such resources (in the end, I remain a pragmatist). But for now, while we have the time and opportunity, I choose to work toward eliminating the cause of his short attention span, instead of using drugs to mask the symptoms.

In response, I received this comment from a reader:

As a pharmacist and a mom with a child diagnosed with Asperger’s I think your approach is great. I hesitated giving my own child medication until absolutely necessary. After years of hesitation, finally treating my son’s attention deficit with medication allowed his grades to improve significantly. If you aren’t at the point where that is necessary, by all means use as little drug intervention as possible.

Let’s talk about a topic underlying that comment: judgments.

I went to last year’s Autism One conference with my friend Stacey, who is also working to recover her son. Stacey attended Kerri Rivera’s presentation on her chlorine dioxide (ClO2, or “CD”) parasite protocol. (I was at another, concurrent lecture. Don’t remember which.) After Stacey told me about CD, I looked up some information and talked to many parents who use the protocol. Basically, Rivera uses low-dose oxidation, in the form of chlorine dioxide, to destroy pathogens/parasites and heavy metals.

I told Stacey that CD is not a protocol I would try with Martin, because (1) I have concerns about its long-term health effects, and (2) it requires giving enemas, which I think would violate Martin’s body integrity. (We treat pathogens and parasites through other methods. For example, Martin consumes diatomaceous earth daily, and around each full moon he takes pyrantel and, topically, warmed castor oil. In the past, Martin also has swallowed mebendazole to fight parasites.)

Some weeks later Stacey and I, back in New York, met for lunch. Stacey told me that she had done more research, read Rivera’s book, been in contact with Rivera via email, and ultimately decided to follow the CD protocol with her own son. As Stacey told me this last part—that she had decided to go ahead with CD—she looked away and ducked her head as if she were about to get slugged. Then she added, “I know you’re not keen on CD. I just feel like it will help. Don’t judge me.”

Much later, I had lunch with a friend whose elementary-school daughter has been diagnosed with ADD or similar disorder. My friend wanted to talk about what we do for Martin and whether any of our protocol might help her daughter. I explained what I think are some underlying similarities between ASD and ADD, and what diet and supplements might be able to achieve. She mulled the information, asked a lot of questions.

Fast-forward two months. I was lunching again with the same friend. She said that she and her husband are medicating their daughter to help the ADD. I sensed that she was watching for my reaction. Then she added, “We did try fish oil. It didn’t seem to work.” I realized my friend was afraid that, because we do diet and biomed/homeopathy for Martin, and not medication, I was going to deride her family’s decision to medicate.

My response was the same, to both Stacey and this friend. I said: “Don’t worry. After three years of biomed, I am way, way beyond judging anyone else’s path.”

I, personally, believe that Christianity, and specifically Protestantism, and more specifically the Protestantism most closely associated with the Magisterial Reformation, though tinted with elements of the later Radical Reformation, is the truest faith. That’s why I practice Mostly Magisterial Quasi-Radical Protestant Christianity. It does not mean that I think my friends who are Roman Catholic or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu or nothing at all are “damned” or destined to unfulfilling lives. I think I’m right. They think they’re right. Maybe we’re all right, to whatever degree.

In the world of children with challenges, regardless of what path a family takes, I respect anyone who is (1) trying, and (2) not acting callously. Stacey has looked into the CD protocol and believes it will help her son. My friend reports that a drug targeting ADD has ended the homework battles that were ruining her evenings. The pharmacist who was kind enough to comment on my earlier post hesitated to medicate her son but now finds that doing so has improved his focus and grades.

Plenty of people—I’m pretty sure that, somehow, I run into all such people, all of them in the entire world—are ready to condemn my and my husband’s choices for Martin, from diet to homeopathy to school. I hate that. I hate to be judged.

And so that’s it. I’m way, way beyond throwing stones at how anyone else treats autism.

Martin, out and about. No judgments here.

Martin, out and about. No judgments here.

Notes on a Wednesday

Posted on by findingmykid
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Wednesdays, of late, are exhausting days for me and Martin. He plays hooky from school. We start the morning by driving more than 50 miles to Wilton, Connecticut to visit Martin’s new homeopath and, if it’s an appointment week, his biomedical doctor.

(Note to careful readers: We switched biomedical doctors five months ago, because Martin’s former practitioner moved to the West Coast.)

From Wilton, when our appointments are through, we get back in the car and drive more than 60 miles, back into New York State, across Westchester County and across the Tappen Zee Bridge and Rockland County, at last dropping into New Jersey at Ringwood, where Martin participates in hippotherapy. We eat lunch in the car: a sandwich for me, and Dr. Cow tree nut cheese with rice crackers for Martin. Then, while Martin spends an hour riding horses, I hike to a tiny farm and buy eggs.

Around 3:15 pm Martin and I get back into the car to drive 45 miles home. (Are you keeping track of all these miles?) Although it is the shortest leg of our journey, this takes the longest, anywhere from 90 to 150 minutes, depending on traffic getting back into and through the City.

Last Wednesday, on the morning drive to Wilton, I spent 20 minutes on the phone—hands-free Bluetooth, of course! I respect all traffic laws—trying to negotiate a good deal on the purchase of an infrared sauna. (More on that in a future post.) Martin was supposed to be practicing “being quiet while Mommy’s on the phone.” Instead, he grew increasingly agitated until he was sobbing while repeating, “You’re going to get off the phone! No more phone! You’re done with the phone.” I apologized to the sauna representative and finally, when I could barely hear him over Martin’s shrieking, aborted the call. Meltdown.

So that sucked. But three very cool things that did not suck at all also happened last Wednesday:

The update for Daddy: At the office of the homeopath—“Miss Lauren,” as Martin calls her—is a pile of toys. I was talking with Lauren when Martin appeared with a toy mobile phone in this hand and said, “Mommy, I’ve got a phone.” I replied, “Oh? Would you please call Daddy and let him know we got here okay?” Without further prompting, Martin nodded, hit a few buttons on the toy phone, held it to his ear and said, “Hello, Adrian? But because we’re at Miss Lauren’s. Okay. ’Bye.” (Martin is in a phase wherein he calls Adrian by his first name instead of Daddy or Papá. “But because” is a verbal tic that Martin has.) Comprehending my request? Pretending? Following a direction? Yes, yes, and yes, thank you.

The hippotherapy superstar: Martin does hippotherapy with a speech-language pathologist. Hippotherapy requires body awareness, multisensory activity, and concentration. Martin’s performance varies widely from week to week. (Martin’s performance on just about anything can vary widely from week to week, day to day, or even hour to hour. That’s the nature of the biomedical beast.) Last Wednesday, when I came to claim Martin after his riding lesson, his speech pathologist said, “He was awesome today. Awesome. Can you bring this version of the kid every week?”

The gesture of support: Do you remember my post from last Tuesday, about the best ways to be supportive of a family wading through autism recovery? It ended with these lines:

That’s all we really want, any of us, right?

A little faith, and a cookie.

When Martin and I arrived home from our three-state extravaganza last Wednesday—one day after I posted about how to be supportive—I found a package waiting for me. Inside was a card quoting those two lines. Under them, handwritten by the friend who sent this card, were the words: “Some of us need a whole box of cookies. Prayers to you and your family. Always.” Enclosed with the card? Yep. A box of cookies.

I’ve been reading the Thinking Moms’ Revolution new book of essays. In one piece, the mother of a boy on the spectrum is asking, “Why did this happen to my baby? What did I do wrong? Is God mad at me?” Her mother, the boy’s grandmother, intervenes and points out that, if things had been different, she would not be asking, “Why did God give me a healthy child?”, so she doesn’t get to ask “Why?” now.

Sage advice, right? What happened to my son—the Pitocin, the C-section, the antibiotics, the vaccines, whatever combination caused this autism—happened. But it doesn’t mean my life doesn’t rock steady.

It doesn’t mean I don’t live in a world of blessings.

The Wanaque Resevoir in Ringwood, New Jersey, where I hike while Martin rides horses. I took this picture with my iPhone a couple weeks ago. Life is good.

The Monksville Resevoir in Ringwood, New Jersey, where I hike while Martin rides horses. I took this picture with my iPhone a couple weeks ago. Life is good.