IonCleanse by AMD, Month 6

I did not run a new ATEC this month, am holding off until next.

Here are the gains we've seen this month.  And we are now gearing up for a very exciting couple of months as we add in a series of new products to see how they go - now that we have the solid detox pathway open and consistently being used we are seeing really great stuff

Dominic has matured significantly in his interaction with our dogs.  He's now become the protector for Shanti, our 11 year old miniature poodle.

We've gone to the store together and It hasn't resulted in a meltdown on my part OR his.

We had an AWESOME family trip to the circus.

He ate.  Alot. And learned how to make his own sandwich.

We found and executed his constitutional homeopathic remedy.  And he's way way calmer now. 

We watched Harry Potter together as a family.  And he wasn't scared of it, and was totally willing to sit and attend to the whole movie.  He was very entralled.

He's been doing really well at camp.  These days when I go drop him off, kids come over for hugs and hellos.  He's very popular.  We have continued the Gemiini speech stuff and I believe his articulation is improving daily.

After my lightbulb moment this weekend, and a quick email back and forth with our naturopath, this is the planned course of action for the next month.  Big changes regime wise in the next week and then we ride it out and see what the rest of July looks like.

1. Restore - we started it Sunday.  I'm already seeing an increase in spontaneous multiword phrases.  Yesterday instead of just saying "hungry", he said to me "I Hungry".   So i have huge hope that we'll see a similar cognitive/verbal boost that other folks are seeing when they repair the gut junctions with Restore.

2.  Mito Synergy - I've ordered the specific sup's that D and I zyto scanned for over the weekend.  My ND doesn't love the product line because of the additives, so we may compromise on the number of products we end up using long term.  We will see.   I expect to start the biggies, the MitoSynergy original formula and the green tea this coming weekend.  This will address Dominic's adrenal fatigue by providing the proper copper for ATP.,  Then his body will run on ATP, not adrenaline. (I have been taking this product line for about a month and am almost entirely off caffiene now. I think I've had my morning cup of tea once in the laste week).  Charlie promised that a month of green tea would take care of the lingering viral issues and then we wouldn't need it anymore. 

That leaves these two products on deck without a start date assigned to them.  They are up for discussion.

3. PeaPure - this is an antiiflammatory, with 30 years of safety studies in europe behind it.  None in the us, of course. 

4.  EMPower - I'm on the fence about this to be honest - it was a gift, and may improve Dominic's symptoms, but i'm not happy with the fact that it has straight folic acid in it and the wrong form of copper.  We will see if we actually start it,.

We are everywhere

Yesterday, as Dominic and I were getting ready to leave Pathways, I was unsuprisingly yapping with my friend.  It was about 1.  And Dominic came up to me and emphatically said  "FOOD".  So we went directly to Chipotle (the nearest dietarily appropriate place) and I got him said food.

Normally, if he and I are out without Daddy, I either take him to the bathroom with me or just don't go, but yesterday I kind of had to go and he was NOT going to be taken away from that lovely bowl of chicken, rice, and guacamole.  So I turned to the table next to us, a pair of older teenage boys and I said - could you do me a favor - my son has autism and i HAVE to go to the bathroom, would you just make sure he stays at the table.  They said absolutely and i thanked them when I came out.  At which point one of the boys said to me, "my little brother has the same thing, I get it". 

we are everywhere.

At my business meeting in Dallas last week, I had lunch with a gentleman whose nephew is on the spectrum and violent.  I gave him a list of resources and my card.

we are everywhere.

On the flight home from Dallas, I sat next to a man whose eldest daughter has a seizure disorder.  He lives in Texas, but was at an event in Colorado.  We talked about CBD's and their legalities.  I gave him a reference to Texas MAMMA and my card.

we are everywhere.

And we talk.  We will not stop talking, we will not stop telling our stories.  Because it is in telling our stories that we ensure that we give other new parents a fighting chance to avoid this.  We educate.  We take back our own health.

The media wants us to believe we are alone, and we are fringe.  We are not.  And we are not going to shut up.

My friends had a baby on  Friday.  They are not vaccinating because they do not want a vaccine injury like Dominic.  This is how we win the war - one baby at a time., 

And as California moves towards medical tyranny with SB277, I expect that a couple of things will happen - we will see a huge surge in kindergarteners mysteriously regressing into autism after being caught up on shots and we will see a huge increase in older onset PANDAS and other vaccine injuries as 7th graders are caught up on shots.   We will also see a surge in homeschooling and people leaving California. 

Pulling together pieces. and Lightbulb moments

Back Story 1

One of the most profound parts of Autism one this year for me was meeting Charlie Barker, the CEO of MitoSynergy and having him do a live blood cell analysis on me which showed that I, in fact, have lyme disease because I saw the spirochetes emerge from my blood cells with my own eyes.  It was a tremendous wake up moment and I came away from A1 knowing I needed to take much better care of myself.  I've been taking the whole spectrum of his products since then.

The Thinking Moms Revolution sponsored a webinar this past week in which Charlie talked about the proper forms of copper, and why that is so important for all of us.  If you have an hour at your disposal, I would encourage you to go watch it.  And pay close attention to his discussion of cellular energy, specifically ATP


Back Story 2

Dominic has, for a number of years, had a weird thing where at the end of the day, right after his bath as we were tucking him into bed, his eyes would dilate ridiculously.  For a long time, we suspected that this was parasites, but eventually realized it was not.  It was adrenal fatigue - that hot bath was the last piece that fatigued him.

There's a whole section of autistic children (arguably, all of them, but we all know that NOTHING applies to all autistic children) who are in a constant state of fight or flight, and that is driven out of the adrenals.  There's even a protocol that uses blood pressure meds to manage the adrenals and get kids out of flight or fight (the book for that is called Hope for the Violently Aggressive Child, in case that applies to you)

Today

Dominic and I drove up to Pathways Natural Wellness Center today to do a remote zyto scan with Charlie to both fine tune my particular needs (so I don't have to buy the whole regime every month because its expensive) and see what Dominic tested for.

We have been working with Pathways for about 7 months now, and my friend, the owner, brought her ASD son over this time to hang out with Dominic (and they did the zyto scan with Charlie as well) and the boys had a fantastic time.  Her son is a few years younger, but the two interacted really well.  Also, adorableness!! (pics shared with permission, of course)
.  

Anyway.

Something giant clicked into place for me.

Charlie was reading the results of one of the boys scans and he made a statement to the effect of "Wow, his adrenals are seriously overworked.  When I see this it means that instead of ATP, the cells are using adrenaline for energy"

Holy light bulb moment, batman!!!!!!!

I've been wondering why we couldn't get Dominic (and by extension all the other kids struggling with it) out of adrenal fatigue mode and the answer is that he's not getting the right form of copper for a plethora of reasons.

He also tested super high for the green tea mixture that MitoSynergy offers, which is extremely antiviral and Charlie's comment about a latent virus was dead on with what we know about how Dominic regressed, etc.

The other quote of the day was "wow you moms take way better care of your kids than yourselves" to which my friend and I about fell off the chairs laughing because its hugely true.

Happily, I only tested for a few of the supplements, not the whole regime, as did Dominic, and I'll be reaching out to our naturopath to talk about how to incorporate those things into Dominic's regime (and honestly, they may have to go in line, we have more stuff that we are lining up to start)

Fathers Day Shenanigans...

We went out to lunch and then we watched a movie together as a family while eating ice cream.

let me say that again..

we went out to lunch. not unusual for us.  It was a very nice lunch, and we got a cute family selfie:

Then we watched a movie as a family in our basement.  This is a first!  We all snuggled in (i did too after taking the below picture), and everyone stayed in one place while we watched Harry Potter.   No one (meaning Dominic) got up to look for toys, wander off, or randomly fast forward and rewind.  we. watched. a movie.  TOGETHER.

The normalcy astonishes me. 

Last night we had our annual welcome to summer BBQ, and Dominic must have eaten 10 (or more) chicken legs all by himself.  He guzzled lemonade (something i don't' give him, oh, ever), and stayed up way past bedtime.  He was awake at 7:30 this morning.   he was so tired after lunch he laid down in the backseat of the car on our way home.  I really think constitutional remedy that Dr Kara gave us has shifted the hyper.  We have changed nothing else regime wise.

Homeopathy update

So, Dr Kara warned me that we might not hit the right constitutional remedy the first time out of the gate with homeopathy, but I think we did.  With homeopathy, you are looking for gradual shifts.

We did our 3 days last week.  We expect the results to sink in over another few weeks.

Immediately, we noticed that Dominic was really tired - leaving camp exhausted, kind of zombie ish during OT and ST on Wed and Thurs, and going to bed with no arguing (and no melatonin!) by 7 or earlier (tonight he went down at 6:40!).  And having a super hard time getting up in the morning.  This started right away with the remedy and has continued.

Those are all fairly significant changes.  Every other summer, camp has been unable to wear him out. 

Its almost like the constitutional remedy has toned his hyper WAY down.  Its fascinating to me. :)

~~~~

In other news look at the AWESOME fathers day card he made at OT today.  :)  He did all the cutting, lacing and writing himself, as well as sticking the stickers on.

Daddy is Beside Himself Thrilled. 

And he randomly spelled Dinosaur this morning.  I  will try to catch it on video tomorrow.  :)

eating butter sammich

Dominic announced that he wanted an eating butter sammich today for lunch.  That translates to Peanut Butter.

I decided it was a good opportunity to teach the life skill of making said sandwich.

And video'd it. :)

He then proceeded to eat both sandwiches, chips, an apple, a bowl of popcorn and is finishing off a small carton of coconut milk ice cream.

What a week, and its only Wednesday

I spent yesterday afternoon sitting in the waiting room while Dominic got OT and ST, watching live the California senate hearings on SB277.  Watching both sides, hearing the lies come out of Senator Pan's mouth, watching my fellow TMR's online have minor meltdowns.  Hearing the rational, factual rebuttal from the opposition.  Then, once we got home, i watched the public comment for hours - and there were 52 in favor and over 2000 in opposition.  People I know personally drove to the capital, many with their clearly vaccine injured children to make their objections known.   Not going to lie - i was crying my eyes out while cooking - the bravery of speaking out, the tidal wave of support for freedom to take care of our childrens medical decisions, touched me deeply.  

So - California legislators once again ignored the plethora of protestors for SB277, which will strip the parental right to decide what goes into their childs body, and require children to be fully up to schedule on all vaccines for entry into school at Kindegarten and 7th grade.

In doing so, they've managed to unite the strangest of bedfellows, who are now standing with the parents of vaccine injured children. ...
Republicans
Anonymous Hacker Group
Hollywood
The Nation of Islam
RFK Jr.
Libertarians

We no longer are screaming into the tornado ourselves.  We have backup!  California has woken a sleeping dragon.  Watch this, which I did earlier and was covered in goosebumps:
https://vimeo.com/130254288 

While I fully expect that the remaining steps to pass this bill will be just as clearly purchased by Merck, the prospect of being able to actually litigate in a court of law with DISCOVERY has many in our community absolutely giddy.  You see, we can't do that right now - thanks to the 1986 law that gave pharmaceutical companies no liability to any side effects of vaccines.  BUT - if CA is going to mandate it, then CA itself as a state can be sued for vaccine injury - Californians can skip the tedious federal process and just sue their state.  

I am convinced this will end up a supreme court decision.

And for the record, Dominic has a medical exemption even though Colorado allows religious and philosophical.  And should CO change their laws, and we lose our medical exemption (because also in CA yesterday they quietly passed through a law giving financial incentives to doctors who maintain high vaccination rates)... we would homeschool.  Dominic is never having another shot.  

~~~

I got a letter today forwared from TRE, that said this:

"If you’d like to share your thoughts on the biggest issues in child and adolescent health or the questions you have, The Colorado Children’s Outcomes Network would like to invite you to take part in an interview.

Who they are:

Colorado Children’s Outcomes Network is a collaboration of pediatric practices from across the state of Colorado.  These practices work together to answer important questions about child health and healthcare through research.  They are committed to including parents, patients, doctors, and other community in our research to make sure it is relevant to you and your healthcare.

Why they want to talk to you:

They think that most parents probably have questions about health that you or your child’s doctor may not have the answers to. Or maybe you see a child and adolescent health issue in your community that you think we could help solve.

They would like to talk to you about these topics and the questions you have.

By talking to parents of children and teens all over the state, they hope to understand what are the biggest questions that need to be answered, and then try to answer them."

You know I have called and volunteered to be interviewed.  We'll see when it gets scheduled for.  You also know that my biggest question will be this: Why can I, as a parent, spend $99 and get the full DNA mapping for my child that shows he has a compound heterozygous MTHFR genetic mutation and should never have been vaccinated at all because he has no genetic ability to detoxify the vaccines out, but DNA testing prior to vaccines is not done at birth.

I can't wait!  I'm actually rubbing my hands together and cackling I'm so excited about this!

~~~~

Today is day 2 of 3 of our constitutional homeopathic remedy.    Last night I texted our ND to tell her that we'd given the remedy and Dominic was stimming like crazy - growling, doing the fast hand movements, etc.  She said that was not unexpected and in fact a good sign - that often they saw retracing behaviors before kids got better.  That it was a way to know we probably hit on the right remedy.  Today has been a really good day for Dominic.  Very compliant, had a good time on the field trip to the recycling center, etc.  (i know, i thought it was a weird field trip too)

Bulgogi, anyone?

We are fully aware that we have an incredibly laid back child when it comes to food.  He will eat nearly anything put in front of him.  He does not, however, love trying new things. 

Today, Daddy marinated up a pork roast in Bulgogi (Korean) spices and I just cooked it off.  He liked it so much he was eating it AS it came out of the skillet.  While listening to Gemiini...

Circus 2015

Yesterday was our third annual visit to the Ringling Brothers circus.  We had told Dominic around Wednesday that it was circus week and he'd been talking about it non stop since.  He was SO excited.

First up, a walk through the animal area.  If you have never seen elephants lined up getting a bath, you haven't lived.   First they have the elephants lay down and they use a leaf blower to get all the straw off of their backs.  Then they line them up in a line and fire hose them down.  The elephants LOVE this and open their mouths to catch the water, lift their legs up to get their armpits (leg pits?  whatever) washed out, and generally wiggle with excitement.

Then onto the Camels.  I know I thought it was odd too, but this year the circus has camels. 

Notice the sleeping tigers behind Dominic.  They were BEAUTIFUL and definitely on the dozey side. 

Then we went indoors and found our seats.  One of the cool things about this circus is that they have a preshow where you can wander around and take pictures with the actors, watch some stuff in advance, etc.   This lovely lady ended up being my favorite clown.  Dominic was amused too.

And this clown managed, much to his consternation, to get him to put on a red nose. 

Now we are getting used to it....

This might be my favorite family picture ever.  Dominic installed the nose on Daddy.

Slightly before the first intermission, Dominic declared he had to go to the bathroom.  So we climbed over half a row of people, took him to the bathroom and then he looked at me and with the sweetest voice ever said "i want popcorn".  And i decided that if ever there was a reason I carry activated charcoal in my purse this was it.  He was ecstatic over his $5 bag of popcorn.

Overall, Dominic did ridiculously well.   It was very loud and there lots of strobe lights and fireworks to add to the excitement of being the most extreme show on earth.  At one point I realized he was plugging his ears so we put Daddy's earbuds in to minimize the sensory overload and that worked just fine.

After we left the circus, we went to dinner, at which Dominic attempted to get Daddy to wear the nose.  That didn't work so well. We tried a new restaurant, Flatirons grill, and were delighted to find an extensive gluten free menu.  We will be going back there.

Mid week camp and Gemiini update

Now that we appear to have smoothed the communication between us and camp counsellors out, we are rocking our routine!

This has been a stellar week at camp - their theme was dinosaurs, which Dominic loves.  He did the craft all by himself on Monday - which involved  cutting, coloring, and stapling as well as writing his name.  Given that he didn't bring home a single craft project last year, it was so nice to see him holding it when I picked him up.  

We have done our Gemiini videos 6 times a day, every day.  Wednesday was his first speech and occupational therapy appointment since we started in earnest and his speech therapist noticed a huge improvement in his articulation, specifically the end consonants.   For a week in we are very pleased.  

Today when I picked him up to take him

From day camp to speech and occupation therapies, his lead counselor remakes that he had been "super verbal"

All day.  I like to hear that.  He watched  his Gemiini videos all the way to therapy, then I let him switch the iPad to angry birds for a few minutes before his appointment.   When his ot arrived for him - and I told him it was time to be done with angry birds, he turned it off and went back with no complaining.  A minor miracle!

After his appointment - which he is at right now - we will do Gemiini for the 30 minute drive to my appointment, then the 30 minute drive home.   When we get home he will have a 45 minute ioncleanse by amd footbath, dinner, bath and go to bed.  

He is incredibly excited for our annual circus trip in Saturday. 

shenanigans!!

I took Dominic with me to pick some things up from the sporting goods store on the way home from camp yesterday.  he had a blast....

In other news... Gemiini is going much better this week.  I told him he had to do it and he said No, but then when i brought dinner over to the footbath station, he turned his ipad to the app, then i locked it down and we started it.

and then this happened.

On a more serious note...

I know it seems like this is all little stuff - playing appropriately at the store, sitting to do his work.  In my world - we have just scaled a huge mountain!.  For many years, in fact even until just the last 6 months, I specifically scheduled all errands, anything that might require going to a store, or standing ina  line, etc, for when Daddy was home so I didn't have to keep an eye on my little runner / grabber / melt down tantrummer, etc.  Or ordered online.  (developed QUITE the amazon addiction, let me tell you...). 

For me yesterday to CHOOSE to pick Dominic up from camp before going to the store, when I really could've done it the other way with no time issues - that's unheard of.    And he did so well.  He did really want the helium balloon on the display, but he stayed near me, commented on things (like saying "Snow" to the display of skiing), and just about jumped in that boat he was so excited to see it.

This is what the IonCleanse by AMD + working with the Naturopath at Pathways Natural Wellness in Denver has done for us in 2015.   my gratitude to both companies, and the amazing folks working at them is boundless.

Dominic the Protector

The most interesting phenomenon has occured.

The reason we got Kama was that Shanti was getting older and more fragile, and Dominic was getting bigger and wanted to play rougher.  Shanti has had a hard time getting accustomed to the rough puppy play that Kama does and Dominic has taken on a protector role.

Its ADORABLE.

Witness the cuteness

He's also been MUCH gentler with Shanti overall, and does his rough play with Kama who loves it.

Kama always goes to bed with Dominic, Dominic will not get in bed unless KAma is in his crate which lives in Dominic's room. Kama will actually whine to get in the room if we accidently leave him out.

So i'm thinking we have a good dog balance going on and as soon as Kama outgrows the desire to chew on Shanti's tail (and my feet, and steal toilet paper, etc etc. The puppy thing) life will be grand.

Taking care of Mom

Yes, I realize this blog is about Dominic's journey, but at some point it has to also be about mine. I cannot take care of him if I don't take care of myself.  Thats been my personal theme of 2015 - starting with the footbaths - and was greatly reinforced at AutismOne this year.

This was my third year attending A1, and honestly I got more out of this year than the other two put together. A good part of that is because I went in not locked to a specific protocol this year, but wanting to hear about other things.   Another part of that is the amazing group of healers from all over who volunteered their time in the TMR lounge, from whom I got multiple sessions.  (from different people and different modalities).   The amazing Tami Duncan, who is unfortunately not taking clients at the moment and I really connected.  I also had that kind of connection with 2 other healers, whose websites I don't have.  All three of them, I'm sure I will be doing something with in the future.

Almost by accident, I ended up signing up for a live blood cell analysis done by the CEO of MitoSynergy, Charlie Barker.  It was late Friday night and I was passing through the bar with my friends and they had seen his presentation and introduced me to him.  They wanted the blood analysis and he only took pairs of people to his room, not singles, so i signed up.  And i forgot my appointment and he had to call me to remind me.  It was FASCINATING.  I watched, as he distressed my blood under a microscope attached to the TV, bacteria (probably Lyme, but they didn't wear a name tag) crawled out of my dying blood cells.    It actually shocked me.  And he told me my mitochondria were "starving".  His particular theory is that if you feed the mitochondria the appropriate forms of nutrition (specifically the correct copper), you amp up the immune system and the body itself fights off bacteria etc.  Anyway, he gave me some samples of his product line, which I started taking on May 26.

The first day, I followed his directions, which proved to be too much because by an hour after the product MitoEnergy, my eyeballs were vibrating.  Luckily I had young living's lavender essential oil on my person and was able to stop the amped up reaction.  I've been taking half that since.

In general, I have more energy than I've had in years.  In fact I had so much energy yesterday that I completely overdid it working in my garden and crashed at 7:30pm.  I haven't had my morning cup of strong hot tea in 3 days, which is astonishing as usually i drink it from about 7am until lunch, easily half a dozen cups a day.

I've also been getting up at 4:45 every weekday morning and doing 45 minutes on the treadmill to start my day again. With my ridiculous travel schedule in April and May I had let walking fall by the wayside in favor of more sleep.

Time will tell if this is a healing response or a bandaid.  In the mean time, I feel like myself for the first time in over a decade.

The other product I've brought home to use on myself I have not opened yet. One thing at a time. Its called Restore, and it apparently works by healing up the gut and blocking further glyphosate (monsanto's roundup) damage.    Once I get this Mito stuff worked in to my satisfaction, I will add the restore and let you all know how it does.