The visit

     I can't beleive it is Saturday already. I guess I better do a little catching up today.  I left off with the reason why we were going to see Dr. Megson, so I guess it is time to let you know what she had to say. Bear in mind we were being given sooooo much information in an hour and a half that everything couldn't possibly be remembered, but I will be as detailed and scientific (haha) as I can.
     Our Monday morning began with a trip to IHOP (International House of Pancakes). Alex has seen the commercials on tv and for a year or so now and had been begging us to go there for breakfast. I am not quite sure why they show these commercials when the nearest IHOP is around 200 miles away, at least that I know of. Alex was ELATED to say the least. I laughed at the thought of someone asking him why he went to Virginia and his response being, "To go to IHOP." After an ok breakfast, I like my food a little warmer than cool, we were on our way. So we plugged the address into the GPS and of course it wasn't recognized. Did this surprise me? No, the whole trip had gone too smoothly, I knew there had to be a pothole in the road. So we just decided to find the street. Well this idea left us at the other side of Richmond. After my husband stopped and asked for directions (yes MY husband can do this, it makes me so proud) we found out we were in Forest Highlands not Forest Ave. So back across the city with only a half an hour at this point until our appointment. This time the GPS recognized the address. You know it wasn't the fault of the person typing the address in, she would never have noticed that there were two selections for Forest Heights and Forest Avenue. Anyways we made it with 10 minutes to spare. The funny part is that it was only five minutes from where we were staying. Proves to me that God was there since I prayed my heart out to get there on time after we had been lost.
     As we were entering the building I was holding back tears. These were tears of hope, anxiety,fear, and any other emotion that could possibly have wanted to come out. After we waited for about an hour we finally saw her, the lady we were going to put all of our trust into helping our son. She called us back into the examining room and did a thorough physical on Alex. She discovered an ear infection that we had no idea he may have even had. Just like when he was a baby, he never seemed to bother with his ears or have a fever with them. She checked things that most peds. had never done. His mouth for fillings, his running gait, his throwing ability, his reflexes in spots that I had never even known were there. So after the exam she takes us into her office and sends Alex into the waiting room to watch some tv or play. She sits us down and begins asking us our family health questions, backgrouds, all about Alex's issues current and past. She shakes her head and says,"I hear the same story everyday multiple times a day." So down to business. She shows us diagrams of studies  done and blurts out technical terms that we really had no idea what was what. Although I am the science person of this marraige (Enzo is the math) this was WAY beyond my studys. Then we get to the cell, ok I was on the same page now that she had come down a level here. Bear with me here, because this is where I understand, but am not sure on how to state it, or the complete medical terms. She claims that in ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) patients when the calcium is transfered between cells there is a blockage that causes the receiving cell not to be able to close. Just think of it as like transfering livestock to different pens. You open one pen to let them into another and when  they enter the new pen they are supposed to be going into, the gate doesn't close. Although some do stay in, others come right back out and the process is incomplete. Made sence to be. This seems to me why Alex either gets things all together, or not at all. Also, she said about the gut and why that is the first thing that needs to be healed. Tiny holes in the lining caused from toxins, over use of antibiotics (this is where I think Alex has fit in) and radical use of vaccines cause proteins from certain foods (I think milk products and gluten) to escape into the blood stream, travel to the brain and act as Opiates. I have read that theory before, so it wasn't that hard to understand. She also showed us how people with ASD view things and explained why they don't look at us when we call them, told us why they rock or fidget with there hands. It was just so much information that if I had to write it all down I wouldn't get anything done this weekend.
      We ended  the visit with our plan of action. For the next three to six months Alex was put on a GFCF (Gluten Free Casein Free) diet. We were also loaded up on Viamins and Mineral. My next blog will get into some detail about these. She also gave Alex a prescription for Straterra for his Attention issues, a lab slip for blood work and a bag that at this point we had no idea what was in it. We just figured it went to the lab with us. We decided to go to the lab just down the hall from her office. At least this way there was a better chance the results wouldn't get lost in transaction. We know how our luck runs. We got to the lab and were taken back in no time at all. The shocker was the fact that he was getting nine, yes 9 vials of blood drawn, and the bag full of what we knew now were more test kits. Only these were to be perfomed at home. Alex did well with the blood testsssss he sat there with tears in his eyes, but he held up like a champ. His reward, a trip to McDonald's which would be his last for a while. After lunch we started our way home.
     It was nice to be home, but I was eager to get started, but I knew that I needed to give it a day to sink in, plus I would need to go shopping for the foods Alex was to have for the next few months.
In my next Blog I will talk about the supplements and the diet. I will try to get that on by Sunday. So have a happy Saturday!!!

Where we are....

     My name is Lisa and I am keeping this blog for two reasons. The first is to help me keep track of the progress of my nine year old son with Autism. I am looking at this is a journey and will eventually tell the whole story from the birth of my first son until present time. The second reason is if this new "journey" we (my family) are on helps other children in any way, it will be worth the effort put into it.
I am not a doctor and by no means should anyone use this as a diagnosis or treatment for their child. This is just a guide to help anyone willing to try this method.
    Our journey begins May 1, 1998 with our first son, but I am going to skip 11 and a half years for now, and will fill in this gap at a later date. On Monday November 9, 2009 we (Enzo, my husband, Alex, my middle son, and myself) went to visit Dr. Mary Megson (http://www.megson.com/) in Richmond, VA. After our son's peiatrician had retired we were left with the other doctors in the group not feeling comfortable dealing with his medications. Although they tried to help us find someone experienced and knowledable of Autism the waiting lists to get in were 9 months to 2 years long. Alex was already snowballing out of control. Since April of last year he has had a decrease in attention and his average A B report cards were slowly turning to B and Cs. I know msot would say, "Well that's not too bad." But, we know our son's potentioal, and we actually chalked it up to the end of the school year fever.
The start of this year was rough. Although he loves and has always loved his teacher (personal friend and neighbor) we wanted to give him time to settle back into school. Other things that were going on could have been a factor too. Example, Alex's aide whom has been with him since Kindergarten, we refer to as our Earth Angel, was going on maternity leave, Alex had walking pneumonia and missed a week of school for that, and all the other trips to the doctors trying to get his agression and attention isssues under control making it difficult to get into a routine. But, eventually even after getting back into a routine we saw our son struggeling. His attention span was 2-3 seconds not even long enough to transfer an answer to his paper. Homework that should have taken 30 minutes max was taking two hours and still wasn't complete. He was losing knowledge that he had gained and some mastered in earlier grades. We were at a loss. No one knew what to do and without any help we decided to get him off of his meds (Risperdal a.k.a. Risperdone and Chlonodine) because neither had been working. He was already on a high dose of the Risperdal (3 mg) and all they wanted to do is bump it up again. The side affects were too risky as it was ( I will get into the meds later) and there was no change when we had raised it in the spring time. So, we looked into viamins and herbs, bare in mind we were going into this with no knowledge of these things other than taking two little gummy vitamins. We were clueless. We stopped at a little herb shop (Litterocks Herb store) and just started asking questions. We were directed towards some EFAs ( Essential Fatty Acids) and some vitamins for active kids. We paid for our things and we were given a slip of paper with Dr. Megson's name, website, address, and phone number and told that this lady claims to be able to cure Autism. I rolled my eyes as any other skeptic would have done. The lady told me it was expensive, but she was willing to hold a funddrive for us. Wait a  minute this lady just met us, and she is willing to help us raise money??? Maybe there are still caring people left on this Earth. So, I shoved the piece of paper into my purse, right next to the diaper coupon that I am sure was expired. You know I couldn't just throw it away, I don't like to hurt people's feelings.
     Well the next week was a rough one with daily calls from the school. Alex was rolling around the floor, climbing under desks and just acting like he was hallucinating. I broke down. I was at my wits end and felt like this could possibly be what the rest of our life was going to be like. A battle every night to get his homework done, daily calls from his teacher, and the most heart wrenching was the crying child begging for someone to help fix him. Fix him? But to us he wasn't broken, just different. Yet aren't we all? Being the highly intelligent child he is, he knows something is different about him, something that holds him back from being who he is. This is the point where I decided I would call and see what Dr. Megson was all about. When I spoke to a staff member I let her know of the things that have been happening and those things such as rolling around and acting like he was hallucinating that had recently popped up. She questioned if Alex had been on antibiotics in the past 6-8 weeks. I told her yes he was for the walking pneumonia. She then asked if he had been craving sugars and carbs. Well in fact he was. She claimed that what this could be was a yeast overgrowth. Well that made sense. They recommend eating yogurt when we are on antibiotics and since Alex hasn't been into a yougurt phase, he didn't have any during his course of antibiotics. So right away I told her that I would go and buy him yogurt, but she stopped me midsentence and told me not to. The sugar in the yougurt only feeds the yeast. Rather than yogurt she suggested Acidophilus (probiotics) easliy accessable at the pharmacy for around six dollars. She also spoke to me about Dr. Megson's approach for Autism. The biomedical treatment. She also shocked me with the price of the first visit and the fact that supplements would also be needed. So I said," Thank you," and told them when we came up with the money needed we would call them back with an appointment. And I meant it. I figured we were running out of time and this is the only avenue we have not tried, so how could I not try it? The good news is that she could get us in sometime in November, the bad news was in this time of economic struggle we couldn't afford it. After crying over the fact that Alex had such a bad day, Enzo and I sat down and decided we needed to do something to come up with this money and fast. I threw around ideas of making pumpkin rolls, jelly, and other goodies to sell to get this thing started. Well by then end of the week Enzo had talked to his dad about what was going on, I know it makes him feel better to console with his dad. There aren't too many men as wise as my father-in-law. My relationship with my in-laws is nothing but positive so much so that the inlaw word rarely comes up. I am their daughter, and they are my other parents.  By the weekend I was stressing about the amount of time we needed to get funds needed. That night Enzo's dad called him, nothing out of the ordinary. They talked for a while and then dad told him that he wanted to help us with Alex's doctor visit. What? Not that I was surprised, but shocked, overjoyed, relieved, and grateful. I cried when I heard what he was going to do. He was going to help my son, his grandson, try to get better. Of course it being the weekend, Saturday I think, I couldn't wait until Monday to call for an appointment. The weekend seemed to drag all due to the need of making a single phone call.
      Monday came and atnine o'clock on the dot I called, excited to set up an appointment. The kind of excitement an eight year old gets when they know they are getting something REALLY good for their birthday. And in this age of technology you come to accept the friendly recorded message that tells you to push a number for one thing or another. Well I selected appointments with anticipation of hearing a live voice answer the line, but what I got was a message telling me to leave a message and they would call me back. Had I not done enough waiting? So I did, what was I supposed to do, keep calling? Well I did that too, just in case they had missed my callsssssss. What seemed like another week was only mear hours when they got back to me the same day. We lucked into an appointment a week later (Nov. 9, 2009). I was ELATED!!! Now don't get me wrong I was and still am skeptical or better yet cautious. I more than anything want this to work, but I fear the fact that it may not also.
I am going to end here as I am sure this is a bit long already. My next blog I will tell of our trip to Richmond VA to visit Dr. Megson.