My nose...

Just a quick blog about my nose...because I'm feeling sorry for myself.

Pity Party!

This is the third time that David has slammed his head into mine (unknowingly) and crushed my poor nose. It brings tears to my eyes every time.

Luckily, it's not broken- just very sore. This kid has some power behind him!

What hurts more is that David laughs because he doesn't empathize very well- he doesn't understand his actions caused me pain.

I can stop him and say, "David  can you say that you are sorry to Mommy, you hurt her nose"  (as he is rubbing his head from the accident).

Then I ask him to kiss it. He lays his lips on my nose...no smack or pucker...just contact.

I love my boy.

Constantly changing...

Just wrapped up another visit follow-up for David with his new Dr. She asks tons of questions about how he's doing and adjusts supplements accordingly. We talked about all the "white & brown" food he eats- the pancakes, waffles and french toast. It's a concern. We need to work on adding more items to his diet...I've been trying! Argh.

I will start taking David to additional OT starting February 24th and will also talk with a nutritionist to see what tricks and tactics we can use. It's hard to introduce something and have him waste it...constantly.

David loves veggies and fruits- but we've been doing canned with no salt. We need to switch to frozen as cans can have BPA in them and possibly aluminum too.

Aluminum- another concern. From our whole blood mercury/lead test, we found David has a very HIGH amount of aluminum in his system. We know that this is in some/most immunizations...so it could be from that, it also ones from cookware and stuff too. I have no idea what my huge Costco cookie sheets are made of...so we'll need to buy new ones, since I bake so often on them.

David also has a good amount of arsenic in his system too. There are two forms of arsenic: organic an inorganic, the latter being the dangerous stuff. So we are doing a fractionated arsenic test (pee in a cup) to determine what type it is.

Did you know that arsenic can be found in chicken and apples! Learn something new everyday!

We are going after that aluminum right away: Aluminum is a neurotoxin and can affect his development. We will start giving David glutathione precursors: Glycine, NAC and Glutamine to help his body hopefully rid itself of the aluminum. Oh, did I mention we will also have to do nightly glutathione suppositories- joy.

I don't mind, if it will help David in the long run and get his body that much closer to healing itself on it's own. We follow-up in 8 weeks with another blood draw that I'm not looking forward to, as we are not drawing at the normal lab and with the normal person we are used to. While we do the blood draw at the Dr's office,  they will do an IV push of glutathione as well to boost that attempt to rid the body of the aluminum.

Momma's going to need valium for that blood draw day...and I get to load David up on GABA and bring the iPad in hopes of that much more distraction during the draw. This is really the hardest part thus far for me.

We will follow-up one week later for the blood test results to determine the next course of action. If the aluminum in the blood goes down, we will continue with the precursors and possible IV pushes of glutathione... if they count does not change we will have to look at possible IV chelation, which at this point feels impossible since blood draws are so difficult.

We may also increase his Methyl folate and B12 to every other night instead of every three days.

Stay tuned, draw in on 3/29... results on 4/4!

A little weight...

this is just a few months ago in October

Just today- we started Enhansa about 3-4 weeks ago.

For those of you that have autistic children, you know how eating and food are constantly on your mind. You may have a super picky eater and it isn't always the best food that our children enjoy. For David, it's breakfast: pancake, french toast or waffle...as long as it has syrup, he's happy...this is for EVERY meal. He's been like this for years and he eats his fruits and veggies fairly well too and LOVES chips and pretzels...so he's a kid after carbs. We put him on the GFCF diet and he won't eat meat (unless it's bacon) and even now he's not that in to bacon.

I'm actually going to look into nutrition therapy, and ways or tricks to introduce new foods to him. It's so hard and frustrating when you spend the money on a new GFCF item and they take one sniff and won't touch it. I do all of my own baking for David but full meals are harder. He was doing Ian's chicken nuggets for awhile, then just stopped. He won't eat grilled "cheese" sandwiches any more and won't let me make him any kind of sandwich...all he wanted for lunch was his crispy bar- now he won't even eat that!

Well, he's always been thin, and very tall. We started a new supplement a few weeks back and we have seen immediate results. It's called Enhansa, check out the link if you want- no we are not being paid to mention it. It's a pure curcumin supplement to enhance absorption... all we know is that since we've been on it...David has gained weight! We noticed he has a "little gut" which you would get from eating carbs... it's actually encouraging. It's prescribed by our new Dr, but they offer a chart on-line for directions to self administer as well. I'm very impressed so far. I will watch him though, as that seemed like a lot of weight in such a short time- Dr isn't concerned at this time. His body is starting to retain/absorb calories, vitamins and minerals too- this is a good sign.

Just thought I'd share... see the before and after pics (sorry about the blurry after picture, David was upset by the flash and would cry)