That Was Almost Too Easy...

I had scheduled a case conference meeting for Son 1 today, forgetting of course to consult my crystal ball first.  If I had, I would have realized that I would be stuck at home due to having to take care of sick Son 2 and Doting Husband being out of town.   So I decided to go ahead and participate in the meeting via phone instead of re-scheduling.  I would never have done this if I anticipated any kind of problem AT ALL.  Having read the drafts ahead of time, it seemed that everyone was on the same page.  And once we got "together", that is exactly how it seemed!!  No debating, no defensiveness, and it only took 30 minutes, which is a new record for me on the short side.  My record the other direction is 6 hours and 11 minutes, but I digress.  Toward the end of the meeting, I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck starting to stand up and I had a brief feeling that I had been duped somehow.  The lack of discord made me a little defensive....once bitten, twice shy.  Then I had an epiphany:  This is how these meetings SHOULD go.  Why they don't ALL go this well is beyond me, but then I guess I wouldn't appreciate the ones that do.  :)

Perfectionism

After dropping Son 1 off at school this morning, Son 2 and I went through McD's for a caffeine and sugar fix.  Well, after I ordered, Son 2 got upset and told me "You did it WRONG!!"  I said "What?"  He replied "You got the wrong one!"  I then realized that I had ordered Son 1's flavor instead of Son 2's.  As I said, I had not yet been adequately caffeinated, LOL!  So I pulled to the pay window and asked if they could change it, which they were sweet enough to do.  I told him it was just a mistake and that it was OK now.  He remained unconvinced until he had the right flavor in hand.  I said, "See?  I just made a mistake, it's OK."  His response made laugh!  "No mistake, Mom...not YOU!"  As Son 2's personality has continued to emerge, coupled with the volume of reading I've done, I've come to realize that this quest for perfection, while present in all of us to a degree, is hugely important to people on the spectrum.  I used to think it was just a personality quirk in Son 1, but no.  Why is this?  Well, while I don't claim to know first-hand, I can certainly make an informed speculation.  People with autism need routine in order to feel safe.  Knowing what to expect makes them feel secure, and like the rest of us, when they feel insecure, they are more apt to act in ways that may seem odd.  So mistakes really throw a monkey wrench in thier lives, the bigger the screw-up, the bigger the monkey wrench, and most likely the bigger the reaction.  Remember the theory of relativity?  For every action, there is a equal and opposite reaction.  So while it seems that many of our friends on the spectrum are rigid, demanding sameness, or expecting perfection, they are really just trying to deal with living in a world that can be very scary and unpredictable.  I tell this to people (particularly at school) a lot:  Inconsistency will make him lose trust in you.  Period.  You will find that I sometimes come off as a perfectionistic control freak, which is really not my nature.  BUT!  Please understand that I am trying to help create an environment in which he feels safe.  So really, maybe Son 2 was paying me a great compliment in that he saw me incapable of making a mistake.  :)

Vitamin D Deficiency and Autism

I recently downloaded all the podcasts from the Autism One conference in Chicago in June and listened to them in the car.  One had me on the edge of my seat, so much so that I listened to it again once I got home and took notes.  It featured Dr. Cannell from the Vitamin D institute (and another Dr whose name I can't remember, he didn't talk all that much), and he was talking about how crucial Vitamin D is to our bodies for so many reasons and Vit D deficiency can contribute to autism.

Some of you who know us know that a little over two years ago, I was really ill and saw specialist after specialist that could not figure out what was going on.  It started one Friday afternoon in May.  It was a snow make-up day that wasn't used.  I had been coughing alot that week, but it was spring and I figured it was just asthma.  Two days prior, I had coughed up a little blood, and DH made me call my Dr.  She said it was probably just irritation, and I agreed.  Well, on this day, the kids and I decided to start planting some tomato plants.  As soon as I turned the first spadefull of dirt, I started coughing up blood and lots of it.  It wouldn't stop.  I again called my Dr. who essentially said, "Duh!  Go to the ER!"  Well, after finding someone to watch my kids and driving myself to the ER (where I presented them with a plastic cup of blood), they ran a bunch of tests and found NOTHING.  It had stopped by then, and they sent me home.  I would soon learn that "perfectly normal" can be the two most frustrating words in the English language.  Within a couple of days, I started having what I thought were asthma symptoms, but the inhaler wasn't helping.  My Dr told me to buy a pulse oximeter (the thing that goes on your finger and measures your blood oxygen as well as your heartrate) and start keeping a record.  I noticed that my heart rate would accelerate while my oxygen level fell. Over the next two months, while I saw specialist after specialist and had every heart and lung test on the planet (all of which were normal), my heart rate swung wildly, going from 298 to 28 and back while my oxygen level swung right along with it.  I became so weak that I slept about 18 hours a day, and when I was up, I was using a cane because I was so unsteady.  I was 33 at the time.  Finally the second cardiologist I saw took one look at my meds and said "Oh, it's inhaler X".   I won't say which inhaler it was because I don't want to get sued, but it is the one I see most frequently advertised.  He seemed to be right, because once I switched to inhaler Y my symptoms subsided.  This was late summer, and time would tell that it was sheer coincidence that I improved once off inhaler X.  Fall and winter went along just fine, and then early spring came, and BAM!  My symptoms were back, though not as extreme.  By this time, I had been deemed a head case by more than one specialist whose only course of action was to shove a prescription for anti-depressants at me.  So I went back to my family doc, who I trusted completely and still do.  I could tell she was really racking her brain.   She finally said that the timing couldn't be a coincidence, and decided to run some more specific blood tests.  To this day, I believe that by doing so, she saved my life.  I was B-12 deficient and severely Vit D deficient.  I would later learn that a healthy Vit  level is 35-100, mine was 7.  I would also learn that Vitamin D is responsible for regulating a number of things in the body, one of which is heart rate.  DING, DING, DING!!  She told me that I didn't get that kind of deficiency overnight and that I had likely been deficient for a number of years.  I got to thinking back over the past decade or so.  I had been a vegetarian for a couple of years before trying to get pregnant because it was the trendy thing to do.  Add to that that I had two babies in 19 months and had lost 92 pounds in seven months a little over a year before this all started, and was eating NO red meat at the time, and it really made sense.  I began HEAVY Vit D supplementation, and was given back my health, praise God!

So you can understand why this conversation about Vit D held my interest so intently.  So what the heck does Vit D have to do with autism??  I learned that the majority of Americans are Vit D deficient due to our diets and largely indoor lifestyles (and when we do go outside, we've been programmed to lather on the sunscreen).  He explained the predominant theory that there is a genetic predisposition to whether a child will develop autism.  Since both of my children are on the spectrum, and I have a first cousin that is also, I agree with this 100%, but it's not purely genetic.  He kept talking about the functions of Vit D in the body, one of which is glutathione production.  Very basically, glutathione is your body's way of  collecting the trash.  Through a process called methylation, your body uses gluathione and vitamin C to get rid of all the nasties, lots of which are environmental.   I knew that kids with autism were usually glutathione deficient, but I didn't understand why.  It was also stated that the majority of these kids were severely Vit D deficient.  After I learned why I had been so sick, the boys' DAN (Defeat Autism Now) Dr thought it would be wise to check thier levels as well, and what do you know, while thier deficiencies were not as stark as mine, they were present, and Son 2 was significantly more deficient that Son1.  Son 2 is also more severely affected.  I also learned that breastfed babies have a higher risk of being diagnosed with autism than formula fed babies....WTH??  He went on to explain that since the majority of women are Vit D deficient, that means the baby is not getting the Vit D in her breastmilk either.  They even tested large samples of breastmilk and the majority of them contained only trace amounts none at all.  I breastfed both of my kids, almost exclusively.  Son 1 was weaned to formula at 10 months.  Son 2 never had it.  Again, Son 2 is far more affected.  He stated that based on this combined with other research (and I agree), it is reasonable to conclude that Moms being Vit D deficient puts thier babies at higher risk for developing autism.  Can you say "light bulb moment"?

Cleaning Out and Looking Back

Much to my dismay, it's once again time to rid ourselves of some clutter by holding a garage sale.  You might think that I'm dreading all the prep work involved or haggling with people over a lousy quarter.  Nope.  What is saddening me is that the boys have pretty much outgrown all their toys.  I used to think, "Man, I can't wait to clear all this stuff out."  Now that they've moved on, all I see in the stuff that's going away are the memories and WHY it all came into the house in the first place:  to help rescue our sweet boys.  Every toy, game, video, EVERYTHING that came into this house for a 4 year time frame was lovingly selected to fulfill a very specific developmental need.  To me, it's not an Ants in the Pants game, it's how he learned to take turns.  It's not just a ball pit, it's the only place I could get him to interact with me for a very long time.  It's not just a toy barn, it's where we closed countless communication circles.  It's not just a beat up toy drum set, it's the sheer joy on his face when he opened it at a time when joy was hard to come by.  And it goes on and on...  I was unprepared and unwilling to go back to that time yet again.  You see, in the early days, I developed a couple of coping mechanisms that I still rely heavily upon. 

1.  Keep unbelievably busy.  This never seems to be  problem.
2.  Keep pushing forward, whether you want to or not.  We were racing time here, literally.  Push, push, push, go, go, go....those developmental windows were closing, the first at age three, then at age six, and once they close you have to work twice as hard to get half the result.  This one has served us well, to the point that I really don't want to remember the bittersweetness of that time that was far more bitter than sweet, I just want to focus on where they are right now and think about not only how far they've come, but just how far they have to go and how to fulfill God's plans for them.

New Blog

Hi all!  Apparently SOME sites want me to ramble on at length before allowing me to publish a post.  I always thought getting your point across without a lot of verbage was a sign of intelligence.  Perhaps I'm mistaken.  ;)  Anyway, I thought it was time to join the other blogging autism moms, as a means to help support all families affected by autism.  I will not identify any of our family members by name.  Any comments using names or other identifying information will be removed with due haste.  Thanks for your understanding.  My other blog is still active, I just found the need to privatize it, as it had evidently acquired a following that I hadn't anticipated, LOL!  LMK if you would like an invitation.  :)  I intend to post 5ish times a week, as the kids usually provide plenty of subject matter.  :D