A little piece of heaven

Okay, before I say anything else – OK, Nathan is NOT autistic. After my last posts I had a few people slap me around, telling me – there’s no way Nathan’s autistic. Maybe he has a few issues with eye gaze and some behavioral issues – but ABA and autism are NOT the answer. I get it. So, moving on 🙂

We had quite the day yesterday. Nathan woke up still having difficulty breathing and just appearing very very sick. So back we went to his doctor who then confirmed the diagnosis of asthma and gave us even MORE meds than her associate had the previous day. But, honestly, something didn’t feel quite right to me about this whole asthma thing.

So we got all our steriods and breathing treatments and loaded the nebulizer into the car, planning on doing Nathan’s breathing treatment as we drove to our appointment with the Chinese Herbalist, when – KAPOW! The nebulizer burst into flames! (well, not quite, but you know I have a penchant for drama).

I guess the car charger and the nebulizer didn’t get along and they blew each other out. So the nebulizer doesn’t work any more. And me – I took that as a sign. Maybe some of you don’t believe in signs. But I most certainly do. I believe in signs and synchronicities. And that was one to me.

So when we got to the Chinese Herbalist and he said – asthma, bah, I can cure asthma, give him my teas, no asthma – I was thrilled. He took Nathan’s pulse and studied him a little and told us to come back for some specially prepared teas. Now, don’t freak out – of course I’ll keep the steroids and all the drugs on hand – if he’s really struggling to breathe I’ll use him. But hopefully we can CURE the underlying cause of the asthma so he won’t need the stuff at all!

Then we drove off to the see Dr. Kenny, who’s a chiropractor, nutritionist and biochemist. Her practice is similar to Dr. Dituro’s but slightly different.

She was AMAZING. What a wonderful lady.

She did some muscle testing on Nathan – it was all a whirlwind – and told me Nathan has a MAJOR B6 deficiency. She attributes the asthma and all the immune issues to this major B6 deficiency. She said that the lack of B6 was preventing Nathan from metabolizing and absorbing other nutrients and it is the main issue that is contributing to his immune, and even to his developmental, problems.

Here’s a little bit of information about the role of B6 in the body.

She also did a couple of other things – I don’t even really know what they were. She saw both me and Nathan in 45 min’s and it all happened so fast.

She was a very kind, loving, spiritual doctor and explained to me that because of the complexity of Nathan’s condition we probably will need several people following him – each adding his own area of expertise to the mix – everyone working towards the common goal of Nathan’s health and development. She will want to work in conjunction with Dr. Dituro and the other health practitioners following him.

So, I am hopeful – once again. Maybe this was the missing piece. Maybe this is what Nathan’s been needing all along. I have a good feeling about this.

PS – the pictures of him at Gymboree where the 1 day this week when he felt well.

Nathan gained two new labels this week. Autistic and asthmatic. They kinda rhyme don’t they.

You kinda have to wonder how you get to pulls such cards in life. You must be really really special or just have really really bad luck.

So during his last speech therapy Nicky his wonderful therapist started talking to me about ABA. I told her I was concerned because I have a hard time getting Nathan to look me in the eye. When I am asking him questions and giving him choices, he’ll just never look me in the eyes. She noticed the same and we started talking about it. The more I told her about his temper tantrums and other behaviors the more suspicious she looked. She seems to think many of those are Autistic behaviors. Now he’s very aware of people around him so he wouldn’t be in the severe end of the spectrum. But we both agree that he’s very likely to be on the spectrum. I coincidentally found this article today:

The gaze of normally developing toddlers tends to be on the eyes of other people. But two year olds with autism focus more on the mouths, according to researchers at Yale University’s School of Medicine. Scientists there used novel eye-tracking technology to follow the visual fixations of toddlers. They monitored the toddler’s eye movements as caregivers approached them and interacted by playing peekaboo, for example. The research team found that the less the youngsters focused on the eyes, the higher their level of disability. Toddlers with autism focused on eyes less than 10 percent of the time and close to 60 percent of the time on the mouth. Typically developing toddlers spent more than 60 percent of the time focused on the eyes and only about 20 percent on the mouth.

This kinda confirms my suspicions. I challenge anyone reading this who knows Nathan to get him to look at your eyes more than 10% of the time. I can bet it won’t happen. So to treat his autism I’m going to a conference on ABA so I can see if this would benefit Nathan and to learn more about the spectrum and see if it really applies to Nathan or not.

Now the other new label he acquired today: asthmatic.

Last night he hardly slept and he was coughing all night. This morning he was a mess and I took him in to see the doctor – again. This must be our 30th visit in 3 months, it’s insane. He checked him and found that he was wheezing. I don’t know anything about asthma so I didn’t even know what to look for. So he said that since this is his 3rd or 4th visit for a breathing treatment, that he’s having recurring “reactive airway” issues, which qualifies him to be labeled as asthmatic.

So now Nathan needs a nebulizer and regular breathing treatments.

This one has really surprised me because Nathan has been so healthy until 3 months ago. We hardly dealt with any medical issues so it’s tough to face a chronic medical issue that we will always have to deal with, like asthma. The doctor doesn’t know how serious it is yet or if it’s chronic or seasonal or just temporary. We’ll see with time. They gave him 3 medications – xopenex, a steroid, and claritin. The xopenex and steroid did nothing for him. Fortunately we had a little bit of stuff left that was given to him when he got sick in France, and it worked like MAGIC. In an instant he stopped coughing and started breathing normally, it was amazing.

On the plus side, we saw the new neurosurgeon on Monday, whom we REALLY liked. After the fiasco with the old neurosurgeon, it’s pretty wonderful to meet a smart, competent doctor. He tapped the shunt and I got a call today saying so far, nothing has grown.

So we can rule out shunt infection for the recurring illnesses and continue on our search for the actual cause of all these illnesses and infections and respiratory issues. I am determined to get to the bottom of this!

We are seeing 2 new doctors tommorrow – a chinese herbalist, and a naturopath that someone we trust recommended. We see one at 1pm and the other at 2:30. I’ll post tommorrow to let everyone know how it went.

So if I wanted to ping labels to Nathan:
Holoprosencephaly, Hydrocephalus, spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, agenesis of the corpus callosum, autistic, asthmatic, agenesis of the septum pellucidum, etc etc.

Now if you can’t tell, I treat the idea of labels as a joke. I love throwing out all these combinations on paper when I am writing reports for his doctor to sign, and when talking to other parents. I just think it’s kinda hilarious that you can take a sweet loving soul like Nathan and ping all these labels to him. Which is why I don’t. Because Nathan is NOT defined by these labels. Nathan is defined by his spirit.

But man. To get this combination of labels, you have to be very very special, or very very unlucky 🙂

On Saturday we went to our ABR satellite training. Unfortunately we failed all the exercises we got the first time around and have to redo them all. The primary reason is because Nathan’s been so sick we haven’t really done enough ABR. We got a refresher of the exercises with a few modifications to make them easier for us to implement. I was happy that we got the chance to go. We also chatted with Paxon’s family, who’s absolutely gorgeous.

Here are some pictures:

Coincidentially, today I went to a Reike training. I wasn’t too sure about what it was or why I was going but I felt that I should at last check it out. It’s all about how to use the hands and energy to heal. And bells just went off in my head. If I combine the Reiki with ABR – it should quadruple it’s power!

I also felt very guided about the weekend. Both of the trainings were about using energy for healing. ABR uses kinetic energy, Reiki uses spiritual energy.

I’ve been praying for guidance about the best ways to help Nathan. And both of these trainings appeared. So I feel I’m on the right path.

I’ll share more in the coming days and weeks about how both of these are going!