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Originally Posted by Queen of the Ryche
Did you hear anything from Dr. Jepson?
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Things are progressing through emails with the staff, but they are currently scheduling initial phone consults (which do last an hour, so I can at least expect a fair amount of conversation to be had) 4 weeks out. What happens after that depends on how the consult goes.
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And how have days 5 and 6 been?
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I wish I could find a way to be more ecstatic without sounding ridiculous. The last two days have been
awesome. His behavior has been unbelievable--not even a whine about a single thing, all day today. The last three naps/bedtimes he has just followed me upstairs without a peep when I announced it was time to get ready for bed. And his language usage is through the roof, so much so that the ECI woman who came today told me we'll need to completely rewrite his official program goals the next time she comes, because he's suddenly doing everything we'd been working on. For example, we'd been doing picture therapy to try to get him to consistently identify things by their names instead of sometimes resorting to using the item's color instead, but that's completely irrelevant when he now says to me, "Go downstairs, eat yellow waffle ah jelly. Open the gate, please." At the same time, he is more hyperactive than he has been recently, mostly in the form of running in circles around the house for fun and doing headstands, but he's doing it quietly, and he can be diverted to another task when necessary without freaking out, so he's welcome to run to his heart's content as far as I'm concerned. He's also been lining things up more than he had been, but he doesn't get mad if they get knocked out of place.
We had the Cheerios battle yesterday, and he gave up relatively easily. Still won't eat any of the three cereal options he can have, but he hasn't bothered to ask for Cheerios again, at least. We've also started him on some general vitamin supplements that are supposed to promote intestinal healing. I don't know if they'll do any good, but I've made sure they are harmless in any reasonable dosage, so I don't mind just giving them to him blindly until he can actually get some lab work done, either at the specialty clinic or through his regular pediatrician.
Speaking of his pediatrician, I'm gearing up for a little headbutting with her in a couple weeks. Minifobette is due for her one-year checkup, which is about the time they recommend the MMR vaccine. Most people don't realize that Dr. Wakefield's original study connecting autism and the MMR vaccine was never intended to demonize vaccines, and certainly never intended to become the political touchstone it has. It barely mentioned thimerosol in passing; the main point was that this group of autistic kids had a high incidence of chronic, live measles in their digestive systems, and that measles is known to cause intestinal damage, which is of course the major theory behind all the diet modifications, that these kids have "leaky guts." Getting measles for real would be even more devastating for these kids who are for some reason more susceptible to intestinal damage, so the vaccinations are still in theory a good idea, it's just a question of timing it when their immune systems are strongest, and perhaps not giving them all three diseases (measles, mumps, and rubella) all at once. So anyway, I've special-ordered the three vaccines separately from a pharmacy in Massachussetts, and I'm going to have them give Minifobette just the measles shot at this next checkup, while she's still breastfeeding so my added antibodies will give her the best chance to completely fight it off. They can do the other two at her 15-month checkup; those diseases never affect the gut so they pose no particular risk to her. The office staff were audibly annoyed at having to deal with my questions and my special order, but they complied without a fight, so I imagine the pediatrician isn't going to do much more than maybe roll her eyes when I inform her of my plan.
Please forgive the massive amount of detail, but I have a few family and friends following this thread now so I don't have to keep updating everyone individually.
