Finding the Path

While we have been on this road of Autism, we have taken many different paths.  We have tried conventional, and what some call "out of the box" methods.  Nothing we have tried has been the "miracle cure" we had hoped it would be, but little by little, he has progressed.  We have tried the gluten free, casein free diet a couple of a times.  With all the hype there about it, we thought there must me something there!  I believe for many people, this must work, but that is the crazy thing about the disease.  What works for one kid, may not work for the next 30 kids.

We started taking him to a DAN doctor at the end of 2008.  We began this EXTREMELY strict regimen with diet and vitamins.  I just kept trying to picture my son as "healed."  After all, I had prayed, and prayed and this is the path that opened up.  After many dead ends with medication and doctors, this is what came up.  

After more than 6 months and no progress, we did start what is called Methyl B12 shots.  We just had to give him vitamin shots every few days.  We were nervous about having to stick a needle into our son, but he did really well!   What began to happen was we let go of the diet, but did the shots and he calmed down a bit, his aggression went WAY down, and he began to mimic.  Having him repeat words back to us was wonderful!  We could get him to say almost anything!  The shots ran out, and all those things started to slowly slip away.  We no longer went to that doctor and didn't know what to do.

We finally just decided to ask our regular pediatrician.  He let us know, he was skeptical, but because he felt it wouldn't harm him, he would do what he could to help us.  We had seemed to hit another dead end because the doctor wasn't able to find the right dosage and shots.  A few months later, the doctor called and he had a solution!  Another mom came in who was doing the shots, and he got the info.  So now we have the prescription, and we are just waiting for the shots to come.  I am going to do a video journal to chart his progress to see if we yield the same results.  If so, we know we have found something that works.  And if we went through that crummy diet just to find this, it would be worth it!

All we can do is keep having hope and faith, and as long as we have that, it will be ok.

I have gone through many phases of what I think "ok" should be, it depends on the day.  My greatest hope is to help my son become the best that he can be, and have the best life possible.