Play! Chatter!

Wow

HEre's the email that I got from Dominic today (cued by school folks)

Dear Mom,

I like Mexico.  Today I said "it's a talking" 4 times, and "it's a rhino" 20 times.  I also said "never talk fish".

Love, Dominic

Here's what I sent back

Thats awesome!! You still cannot have a hamster named Rhino.   Sorry.
love,
Mom

He was very chatty all afternoon.  We have some friends helping us redo the dining room and they (2 guys in their 20's) were over working and Dominic was PLAYING with them. I heard giggles from the dining room and thought, oh no we have yeast.  Nope.  One of our friends was pretending to sword fight and Dominic was jumping back and laughing, which made the friends laugh.  It was really funny.  It was interactive, spontaneous independent PLAY.

We're seeing a ton more independence too in all sorts of little things. Like getting his dinner plate and taking it to sit and eat as opposed to needing to be told 17 times to go sit down and eat with me handing him his plate.

This is so cool.

Day 10 - our Trip home

I was WAY too fried last night to get this posted,  but better late than never

Our day yesterday started with a freak out on my part.  If you all remember WAY back when Dominic regressed, his regression trigger was the influenza virus.  Over the years, sometimes viruses have made him regress further and we've done every antiviral protocol in the book.    One of the things Kerri had mentioned in passing is that one of the children she works with detoxed out H1N1 in bubbles on her skin - blisters, as die off.   I didn't think anything of it. Until I saw this on his chin.







I am so glad I got a picture of it becuase it was gone after i got out of the shower. He'd rubbed it off.  He's got a little flat rash now there, but no more blisters.  Viral Die Off after 9 rounds of HBOT!!!  AMAZING.  To say that i'm beside myself giddy would be an understatement.

After an early breakfast and HBOT at 8am (which he absolutely freaked out about because he wanted to go get on the airplane to come home to Daddy), we got a ride to the Airport from Kerri's husband, Memo, who was kind enough to hang out with us for a while:

Dominic was starving, so I got him a snack.  Only think i could think of that would be diet appropriate - a naked grilled chicken breast.  That and 2 bottles of water cost us $25 us.  I hate airport restaurants.

By this point, I was fried.

The airplane ride back was uneventful and we got picked up by Daddy at the Airport.  We stopped at an Outback in Castle Rock on the way home for dinner.  Dominic ate a 5 chicken wings (specially prepared without any breading to be gluten free), a chicken breast,. a pile of broccoli, half of my sauteed mushrooms and 2/3 of Daddy's Ribeye and a good 5 bites of mine (we had no red meat while we were in PV.  Apparently he missed it)

I have de-carbed my pantry and fridge this morning and will be setting about making a menu plan for the next week - I am blown away at how calm Dominic is and i've dropped a good amount of weight based upon how my clothes are fitting, so we are staying on the Rosedale diet, and dragging the rest of the household along with us. (Short version - its high fat - coconut oil specifically, moderate protein - 50g a day - and fibrous veggies.  No grains/starches / fruits.)

PV Day 9,part 2

Quiet afternoon here - we didn't spend much time at the beach because it was cloudy, the water was really violent and cold.  But we did go for about half an hour.  Sunset was not nearly as spectacular tonight so i'm so happy we got the great pictures last night.  Its now raining and the surf is really loud - i'm typing in a dark room trying to get Dominic to go to sleep without me in the bed because i still need to pack.

Tomorrow we have an early chamber session and then are going to the airport to come home. I'm not sure if I'll be able to log in at all before we get home... just fyi...

PV, Day 9. part 1

This is Otis.  With his jowls resting on my knee hoping madly that i'll give him some eggs. I didn't succumb to the puppy dog eyes.

This is our HBOT dude. I would butcher his name if I tried to spell it, But Dominic likes him and gives him hugs and kisses at the end of each session.

This is a little store on our walk home where we've gone every day after HBOT and Dominic has picked out a little critter on a key chain.  We have lobster, crab, sea horse, frog, and octopus. I think he will probably get the turtle tomorrow on our last visit, but who knows.

Probably the only time in his life he'll see a real, working, public phone box...

Shades of independence - he put his zinc sunblock on by himself (ish) this morning.

This is Umbrella Dude. I have no idea what his name is, but he gave me a deal on renting shade for the week, which made it actually possible for us to go to the beach 2x a day.  The hat wasn't cutting it.

PV, Day 8 part 2 - Jaw Dropping sunset

Huge Milestone tonight ... Every night we've called Daddy before bed to say goodnight, and thusfar its gone fairly echlalically, with Dominic repeating a word here or there.

Tonight - he had a complete, more than echoic, back and forth conversation with Daddy of at least 10 back and forths.  (what I mean by more than echoic was that what Rod said "Did you have fun today", Dominic said "Fun, yes")

I got back on the phone and Rod said "That was awesome".  I'm gobsmacked.  Its the first CONVERSATION Dominic has ever had with one of us.

Big huge wow.

PV, Day 8, part 1 - Big Waves

The waves today are the biggest that they have been since we got here. Even the Umbrella Man was impressed - he says he doesn't know why they are so big and they don't do this very often. At least i think thats what he said.

So as a result, our first trip to the beach today was only 30 minutes - Dominic came up and told me he was done.  So we are now camped out watching the Penguins of MAdagascar in Spanish on Mexican Nickolodean. Who knew...

PV Day 7

Cute moment tonight - he was playing in the beach and I was sitting under my shade umbrella, and an older woman - out walking her dogs - came up to me and in very broken English told me what a beautiful boy he is and what a good job he was doing playing safely in the ocean. (eg, staying near the edge, playing with he waves, but never going too deep)

PV Day 6

After chamber trip to the beach:

Before lunch snack with the cat.  Yes, this is the living room.

When we got to the beach this evening, there was a giant hole.  Dominic had  a BLAST jumping in the hole, running around the hole, jumping over the hole, etc.

here is the hole when we arrived:

And here it is when we left...

PV Day 5

Today started with Dominic impressing Kerri by helping her scramble eggs for breakfast.  She broke the eggs into a bowl and he took each egg shell to the trash.    She was really impressed.

 

Then after HBOT, we did round 1 at the beach - I procured a shady umbrella from the nice guy renting space (and bargained for 2 days for the the price of 1... go me), and Dominic amused himself by chasing sea gulls for awhile. 

He and this little boy played nicely together for about 20 minutes.  I was very pleased.

 Then after some lunch and general silliness while we passed the heat of the day in our room...

 we went back for another hour on the beach at sunset:

apparently, Sundays are the day to go to the beach in Puerto Vallerta.  There were more people down there tonight than any other time since we've been there.

I have now had people attempt to sell me the following on the beach every day that we've been there...  brilliant business move, how come we don't do it in the US?
Shade (which yes, i have bought every day and will continue to. for 50-100 pesos, depnding on which vendor i used, i got an umbrella for the time we were there.  i love the beach under an umbrella)
Food (shrimp on a stick, fruit, jicama/cucumber, chips)
Clothing (i admit i bought a cute purple sundress)
Jewelry (and a beautifully set piece of amber)
Curios
Ceramic skulls
Tattoos (!)
Braids for my hair
scarves (yes, got one of these too)
Whale watching boat ride
paragliding

There was  afull mariachi band playing at the hotel next door today.  All afternoon. I thought my AC unit was making REALLY weird noises, and went downstairs to ask about it... to be told "eh, its Mexico, they play all the time". 




On  a slightly different note, I've had a lot of people ask why we are doing HBOT here and not at home... and the answer is that the only hard chambers in Colorado Springs are at the hospitals and are only available for a certain list of diagnoses, and considered experimental for others - so insurance won't pay for it and the hospital doesn't even want to talk to us.  The closest HBOT to our home that we could actually use is ~2 hour drive each way.  I would be insane if i drove 4 hours a day for 10 days through Denver traffic each way, so we knew we'd have to travel.  In January, I wanted to come to Mexico instead of, say, Detroit.  There is nothing magic about the particular HBOT machine we are using - any hard chamber (1.75 ata's) with the protocol detailed in Healing the Symptoms known as Autism should work fine. 


We are amping the HBOT up by being on a Ketogenic diet while here (so high fat, moderate protein, tons of veggies - no starch, no grain, no dairy, no fruit), which i believe we will keep Dominic on when we get home (i'm dong great on it too which is trippy).  We also have had our chiropractor, who does long distance work (energetic cranial adjustments) working on Dominic every day at the time he is in the chamber.  Well, almost every day - today she pulled a fast one and didn't work on him - waited for me to tell her how the day was before she told me she didn't... and he wasn't nearly as calm as the last couple of days. So that remote work is helping as well.

PV Day 4, part 2

...and again i have a sleeping child at 730pm.  Last night he slept for 12 hours which is unheard of.  He was astonishingly calm today - so calm that if we were at home, i would've assumed he was coming down with some sort of crud.  (until the part where he ran and played in the waves).  This afternoon, after lunch, he hung out with me in our room (I was killing time until the sun was down-ish before going back to the beach so i didn't krispify), petted and snuggled Kerri's cat - her name is Bootsie, but he calls her Ooopsy (its adorable), and snuggled up in bed with me.  For easily 20 minutes.  I am ASTONISHED at how still he was.   I cannot wait to see how long this lasts, and we only did our 4th dive of 10 today.

And yes, i know this is the 4th day in a row I've posted sunset on the beach photo's, but they are simply stunning.  I've never seen the sky turn this particular shade of pink, and i've decided that given how much he LOVES the beach, we need to try to get him to a beach at least 1x a year.

PV Day 4, part 1

 Apparently men randomly come by and maintian the coconut trees so no one get killed by a falling coconut - and then you pay them.
Dominic was entralled watching the dude walk up the tree.

And a whole flock of pelicans frolicked near Dominic for a few minutes. Ecstatic child.

PV Day 3, part 2, so calm

So the biggest immediate effect we are seeing of Dominic doing HBOT and eating the Keto diet that this household eats is that he's really calmed down - very noticably.   We will not know the full effects of the HBOT for 8 weeks after the last dive. 

Here are some more pictures of our day.  Its a shame that Daddy is allergic to cats because Dominic has fallen in love with Bootsie.

Day 3, PV (part 1)

So yesterday after our HBOT session as we were walking back to our hosts home, we stopped to buy Dominic some flip flops (sneakers on a beach don't work so well).  The first little store we stopped in was just curios and clothes. So we went to a second store.   Got the flip flops (he can walk in them, too - they actually slow him down).

This morning after our HBOT session, he said to me "I want Dolphin", led me into that first store we stopped at yesterday and picked out a little dolphin thingie.

The HBOT we are here to do in case anyone was wondering what it was like...

The other cool anecdote from today is that after HBOT, we went ot the ocean like we have the last couple of days.  About an hour into playing in the waves, Dominic came up to me and said "i want house" and was  ready to come back to the house.  The last 2 days, i've had to drag him away (almost literally).