Much better now

For those of you who read my previous post, I did feel a little better the next morning. Not a lot, but just enough to get me through the day.

Another possible reason for my depression was that my hearing and balance had been distorted for several days. I finally went to the doctor on Tuesday morning. Turns out both of my ears had fluid in them. I took one Claritin D and within 12 hours, my hearing was back to normal. All of the fluid that had been clogging my ears drained out. Then I felt feverish for a day or two. Now I feel much better, physically and emotionally.

My theory is my ears got clogged because I spent one or two nights sleeping without a pillow. My allergies (which I can normally ignore) provided the fluid and gravity did the rest.

JF has been home sick all this week, with a runny/stuffy nose, a cough, and a fever. His IEP is on Monday at 2:00, and his surgery follow-up is the same day at 4:00, so I hope he's better by then.

So far though, it has been one of his standard illnesses, rather than the circus act we had the last time with HSP. I have a theory about that, too: JF had been starting to get sick (runny/stuffy nose) when we spent a weekend at the Jessup house. I got tired of the dirty floors, so I found a broom and started sweeping it up. JF wanted to help, so I allowed him to push the broom a few times. My brother-in-law and his wife had many pets in this house, including cats. JF is allergic to cats. My theory is that the sweeping kicked up a lot of cat allergens (and who knows what else) into the air. JF's body responded to it by pulling out all the stops. We really must have that place professionally cleaned of allergens before we move in!

I think I should take back one thing from my previous post. I complained that I had not had one of my typical weekend breaks (reading fiction) since before Thanksgiving of last year. While this is true, it's not the whole truth. After Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day was over, I probably had a few opportunities to read fiction. But by then, I was hooked on blogging. I squandered my free time writing blog posts!

I don't mean to disparage blogging. I just mean that my complaint wasn't as valid as I had thought. I will still try to make time for reading, soon. But it doesn't feel as urgent any more.

Another possible reason for my depression was frustration about going to church. I was raised Roman Catholic, and we went to church every Sunday. We had to be in dire straits to skip it. This annoyed me when I was little, but as I got older, I found it to be time well spent. It provides a welcome break from the rest of our lives, and makes us think about how we are living our lives.

Shortly before AF and I got married, I switched to Unitarian Universalism, because of my skepticism about many things in the Roman Catholic creed. We married in a UU church, and we started attending that church nearly every Sunday. I even joined the choir.

Then JF was born. I quit singing in the choir. We dropped the habit of going to church. I have taken JF to church maybe twice in the past (almost) four years. At first, it was because I felt too overwhelmed to squeeze in a trip to church between breast feedings. Then JF became old enough to attend the UU Religious Education classes. When children reach this age, they attend the first part of the service with their parents, then they go to the RE classes so that the parents can enjoy the rest of the service in peace. Sounds great, until you ask about enrolling your child in RE. You have to volunteer for the church, spend a certain amount of time on RE work or other church work. You can't just pay a fee.

Maybe this is okay for most of the parents in the congregation, but it doesn't work for me. I have a hard enough time juggling work and housework and bills and so on, I don't need to add more responsibilities to that. I know when to say no!

So I gave up the idea of going to church. Until recently. When JF and I spent a weekend at the Jessup house, I tried to visit various places in the community, like the library, playgrounds (of course!), and the UU church in Columbia. We were late for the service, but I peeked in. I saw no children. My heart sank. I didn't realize until then, that I had been hoping that this UU church would be different. I talked to people in the hallway, and was introduced to the RE manager. She said that they just recently changed their policy, so that you can't just pay a fee to enroll your child in RE, because there's just so much work to be done. They need the volunteers. (Is it really volunteering, then?)

She did, however, mention that volunteers are needed to buy supplies for the RE classes. Each volunteer chooses a class and goes shopping once a month for the supplies needed in that class. I'm hoping that this volunteer position is still open after we move.

As far as addressing JF's autism, I've been making some progress:

• I've learned that JF has had two doses of Thimerosol from flu shots: One flu shot given to me when I was 15 weeks pregnant and one flu shot given to him at 17 months.
• I asked my sister-in-law, a nurse, to take a look at generationrescue.org. I haven't heard from her since then. I hope she is as impressed as I am. My husband is still skeptical about all of it.
• I started conversing via e-mail with a Rescue Angel from the above web site. She has given me so much valuable advice, it will take me time to digest it all.
• I shopped at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's for GFCF foods. Each has a selection of gluten-free products, and I can figure out which of those are also casein-free. Whole Foods had only two that I could find (molasses ginger cookies and morning glory muffins). Trader Joe's had much much more.
• I ordered four books from Amazon.com: Special Diets for Special Kids, Unraveling the Mystery of Autism, The Out-of-Sync Child, and The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun. So far, only Special Diets has arrived, so I've started reading it.
• JF has voluntarily switched from cow's milk to almond milk. We give him a choice, and he always chooses almond milk. He still eats cheese and other dairy products, but this bodes well for when we do change his diet. He has also tried bites of rice cake and other GFCF foods that I've been eating.
• I think I've seen some improvements in JF's communication, but I'm not sure. Maybe I need to do another snapshot soon.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I need to get off my butt and get ready for work. It's going to be a long day.

Another long one

Has it really been almost two weeks since my last post?! I guess time flies when you're overwhelmed. I will be making up for lost time with this blog post:

• JF's surgery
• HSP
• Waking up dry
• Starting Lamictal
• Progress on the house
• Scratching at daycare
• Starving Brains

JF's surgery

We rescheduled JF's hydrocele/hernia surgery because of his recent illness. It's now scheduled for Monday, April 2.

HSP

As I mentioned in my previous post, JF was diagnosed with Henoch Schonlein purpura (HSP). I'm still not sure what this really means, but he seems to be back to his normal self now. (I can't say he's all better. He hasn't been "all better" since his allergies first became apparent over a year ago.)

JF seems to get sick less often now that he's on Pulmicort, but this was a doozy. I think he broke a record for the number of symptoms/diagnoses he went through in less than a week: runny/stuffy nose, sneezing, coughing, rash on his legs/feet, fever, microscopic amounts of blood in his urine, HSP, refusing to eat, throwing up, stomach virus, double ear infection, slight iron deficiency, and (drumroll please) pinkeye! This required one trip to the ER on Sunday and two trips to the pediatrician during the week. The double ear infection earned him ten days of Augmentin, which he has almost finished and which seemed to clear up everything.

Is there some kind of trade-off going on here? He's sick less often on Pulmicort, but ridiculously worse than usual when he does get sick. If there is a trade-off, maybe we should reconsider whether the Pulmicort is a good idea.

Waking up dry

JF has been waking up dry every morning for about a week. After the first few days of this, we stopped putting him in a diaper for night-night. I still can't believe it. It makes me wonder if we parents really are involved in the potty training process at all!

Now he just needs to figure out pooping in the potty!

Starting Lamictal

JF started taking Lamictal for his mini-seizures on Tuesday. For the first two weeks, we're giving him one chewable tablet in the morning and a half tablet in the evening. Over the next 15 weeks, he'll work his way up to five tablets twice a day. And we have to watch for any rash.

I had to make a chart of his daily medications to help us remember what to give him and when:

Morning:

• 2 Gummy Vites or 1 ML PolyViSol (alternating until we run out of PolyViSol)
• 0.6 ML FerInSol (iron supplement because of the deficiency mentioned above)
• 1 tsp Augmentin
• Lamictal (as directed by the neurologist)
• Pulmicort

Evening:

• 1 tsp Augmentin
• Lamictal (as directed by the neurologist)
• Pulmicort
• 1.5 tsp Zyrtec

Isn't this ridiculous?

We still need to schedule the MRI and the follow up with the neurologist.

JF's PEP teacher came over last night for a home visit, and we showed her the neurologist's MRI order (from 3/2/07). She pointed out that it says, "R/O dysplasia, mass" and translated that to mean, "Rule out dysplasia or mass." Great. One more thing to worry about!

Progress on the house

This morning, AF was trying to figure out how much painting he has left to do on the house before we can put it on the market. He was estimating that he was two-thirds done because he just has to do the entire upstairs and a few touch-ups downstairs. I pointed out that he still needs to do the kitchen. He said, "Okay, so I'm only half-done."

I think he's been working on the house for a month, with one week off because of JF's illness. So maybe we'll be able to put the house on the market in another month?

AF has developed a good work strategy: During the day, while JF is at daycare and I'm at work, he paints and loads up the minivan with furniture and boxes of stuff. (It's amazing how much stuff we can live without for a few months.) Then, when I come home and take over with the boy, AF hauls the minivan to Jessup. It's a lot of work, but it's an efficient use of time.

Scratching at daycare

The director of JF's daycare called me today to say that his scratching/pinching is getting out of control. She said that she had seen three of his classmates with scratches on their faces. JF's teacher had been notifying us now & then that JF was still doing this, but she always reassured us that it's a phase he'll grow out of. Now the director has asked me or AF to spend two days at the daycare with JF.

AF is willing to take time off from painting to sit with JF at the daycare on Monday and Tuesday, but we're frustrated that it has come to this. JF hasn't displayed any of these aggressive behaviors at home in weeks, and I don't know if he ever displayed them in the PEP class. His PEP teacher knows how to nip it in the bud.

I sent an e-mail message to JF's PEP teacher about this right away. Her response was quite long. Her theory is that "he doesn't know how to say 'come play with me' or 'let's play' so he is grabbing his classmates in an attempt to engage them." She agreed with the idea of AF attending daycare with JF for two days. She also volunteered to visit the daycare on Wednesday herself. The rest of her message was about what the daycare should do about it:

• Move him from the twos class to the threes class. (This is long overdue: He will be four in May.) These kids "will be better able to tell him to cut it out when he looks to squeeze their faces to get attention."
• "Structure his play somewhat - i.e. set up kids for him to play with - even when they have free time and make sure he is within their sight to monitor how he is playing."
• "When he behaves inappropriately he needs to hear a stern harsh voice....He should almost begin to cry when reprimanded because that will mean that he gets it."
• "He should also have to sit in a 'time out' or 'get ready' area for at least 4 minutes, apologize for his actions, and then be allowed to return to an activity."

I wish we could take this PEP teacher with us when we move. The daycare did move him to the threes class, and he is apparently happy about it. I hope all of this works, because I'm afraid they might kick him out of daycare otherwise.

Starving Brains

I have finally finished reading Children with Starving Brains by Jaquelyn McCandless, MD. At first I was very skeptical, but by the time I had read about 2/3 of the book, I became convinced that:

• Mercury, in the form of thimerosol in vaccines, can trigger autism.
• Multiple vaccines, such as MMR, can trigger autism.
• Kids with autism tend to have a decreased ability to detoxify themselves. Mercury decreases one's ability to detoxify oneself. (Which came first, the decreased ability or the toxin?)
• Autism is more than just a genetic disorder, and it impacts more than just behavior and language.
• Treating autism requires healing the gut, improving nutrition, and removing toxins (such as mercury).
• Many kids with autism can't fully digest proteins, such as gluten or casein.
• Many kids with autism have leaky guts, which allows large food protein molecules to reach the bloodstream and the brain.
• The body's immune system responds to these large molecules and the child becomes oversensitive to these foods. The child has diarrhea, constipation, or both. (JF alternates between both.)
• Some of the large food proteins act like morphine in the brain.
• Kids with autism tend to crave the very foods that they should be avoiding. (JF loves anything made from dairy or grains, but is very picky about anything else. Clue!)
• Kids with autism tend to have other auto-immune diseases such as allergies and asthma, and tend to get sick more often. (Sounds like JF!)

I wanted to try everything that this book recommended, but I know that we should try only one thing at a time. But still, I figured we could get the ball rolling on some of the things that would take a long time, and try one thing on JF while we waited for those other things to pan out.

The book recommends starting with the GFCF diet, and it even says it's one of the few things that parents can do without a doctor's supervision. I was afraid that my husband would be reluctant to change JF's diet, so I decided to compromise and just try him on a casein-free diet. We bought a carton of almond milk and dove in head-first.

We were dealing with the change well enough, until we went to my nephew's birthday party. JF could not have any pizza, dip, salad (because it had a creamy dressing on it), or birthday cake. JF didn't seem to miss any of it. He filled up on peanuts, corn chips, and chicken. But AF was very upset.

We talked it over. I realized that I had left my husband behind in my enthusiasm. I need his full support, if not his full partnership, on this endeavor. I need to take the time to discuss it with him, have a meeting of minds about it. (Where's a Vulcan mind-meld when you need one?) I need to stop being a bull-dozer.

AF made a good point that we should enlist the help of a doctor in this dietary change (in spite of what the book says), to make sure that we don't do JF any harm. I believe that we need only to give JF calcium supplements, but maybe there is more to consider.

So I called JF's pediatrician and told him about everything that I've been reading in the Starving Brains book. His response was essentially, "I'm not an autism expert, but I can recommend one." He seemed unwilling to participate in a biomedical approach to autism, claiming that he didn't have the expertise. The doctor that he recommended is on the DAN web site's list of doctors, but she doesn't participate in any health care plan. And my health care plan doesn't cover out-of-network doctors, at all.

So I decided to call the original DAN doctor that I had found over a month ago. (This one is in-network.) But the one time I had spoken to him on the phone, he had said that I should (1) find out whether any of JF's vaccines had mercury, and (2) make an appointment for a consultation. I was afraid to try the second without having done the first. I started making phone calls:

• The hospital where JF was born promised to fax the records to a doctor for me.
• The second pediatrician said, "Only the flu shot." I asked, "So the flu shot had thimerosol?" They back-tracked and said maybe. (I need to call them back and ask them to call the manufacturer.)
• I had to call the first pediatrician twice to find out that they are contacting the manufacturer of a flu shot and they will call me back.
• The third (and current) pediatrician said the only vaccine JF has had in his office was a thimerosol-free flu shot.
• Something reminded me that I'd had a flu shot when I was pregnant, before JF was born. I called the OB-GYN who had given me that flu shot. They contacted the manufacturer and are waiting for an answer from them.

Then I called the DAN doctor, intending to make an appointment for a consultation. The earliest appointment I could get was in June! I was appalled. I understand supply and demand, but this is ridiculous! I eventually did make an appointment with him for June 8th, but I didn't want to have to wait until June before starting JF on the GFCF diet.

So I called the developmental pediatrician that JF's PEP teacher had recommended, Dr. Chernoff. I had already made one appointment with this doctor for JF, but I'd had to cancel it because of his illness. I rescheduled for April 27th. I also asked for their fax number to receive the hospital records (for the mercury search).

So then I was bummed, because I still have to wait over a month before we can start JF on this GFCF diet. (I'm also bummed because he's taking antibiotics, which may be upsetting his internal flora. And we're remodelling, which may be exposing him to toxins.) Meanwhile, he is getting older. The older he gets, the less effective any treatments will be. Time is running out! There has to be something I can do!

Then I had an idea. Why not try the GFCF diet myself? Half of the problem of starting JF on this diet is the daunting aspect of figuring out where to get GFCF products and figuring out how to work it into our lifestyles. (We do most of our cooking in the microwave.) By starting myself on the diet, we split the problem in two. Divide and conquer!

So I ordered a shopping guide from gfcf.com. (How can they claim to be "The largest FREE resource of it's kind on the Internet" when all of their resources cost money?) As soon as I get that guide in the mail, I'm starting the diet. For now, I'm savoring each and every thing I eat, because it may be the last time I get to eat it in a long time.

Rash

JF has a stuffy nose, a fever, and a rash on his legs & feet. AF is at the ER with him now.

I also have a stuffy nose. Maybe a fever. (I rarely bother to take my own temp.) But no rash.

The house is still not on the market, but a neighbor's friend came over yesterday morning, with his whole family, to look it over. It would be great if we can sell the house without ever putting it on the market, but I'm not holding my breath.

JF's blood has been drawn, in preparation for starting Lamictal for epilepsy, but we haven't heard results yet.

I recently met a nice lady who said she was "made on a Friday." She said she had so many things medically wrong with her, it must have been late on a Friday, almost quitting time, when God made her. I believe that God is all-powerful, and does not make mistakes, but I like that analogy. It works for me, and my son, too!

Parenthood is an adventure.

Thank you to everyone who has commented on my blog recently. Sorry I haven't had time to comment on anyone else's blog. I've been lurking, mentally sympathizing and celebrating with everyone.

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Update: The ER has diagnosed JF's rash as Henoch Scholein Purpura. And the adventure continues!