2016 - Out with a bang - of hope

If I've learned anything over the last 8 years working to recovery Dominic, its that I should never get too excited, too invested because MOST things aren't going to help, and the ones that do, mostly aren't amazing.

The Ioncleanse by AMD is an exception.

And apparently magic Chiropractic resets are also an exception.  That said - Dominic's had chiropractic care from 3 very good doctors in the last 6 years, regularly, and I cannot explain what was different about this last adjustment. We'll be seeing him again on Tuesday and I'm going to see if there's something he thinks that might have been different.  So stars aligned, energy was right, the universe said its time. I have no idea.

Two amazing shifts to share with you...

First - Child of mine with such bad fine motor skills that school wanted to stop even trying to work on handwriting a few years ago... eating with chopsticks tonight.  Spontaneously (I had gotten a fork for him.. he did this)

And second... bedtime.  for 11 years 10 months and 3 weeks, we have tucked Dominic in.  A few nights ago, he started doing it himself. With no fanfare.   Check it out:

An other thing that this journey has taught me is to celebrate the inchstones, because we don't get milestones.  So tonight, we celebrate and we are hopeful.   We went for a sushi dinner (hence the chopsticks) and as we walked in, the server greeted us with "Hey Guys", to which Dominic responded in kind "HEY GUYS" very loudly.  First time I've heard him use that phrase and it was so cute to hear it so loud.   We are grateful and we have hope.   Here's to more healing and learning, and growing and gains in 2017

And, for balance and levity, here's Dominic hiding the dogs toy under our bed. They are not amused.

 

Mind. Blown.

So we've had a very low key school break thusfar.  Dominic has basically been independently amusing himself, whether via electronics, or playing with his legos or outside.  I have not done any of our OT exercises this week (i know, i know, but bear with me, at this rate we're going to need a whole new set soon) and have put minimal demands on him for working on his stuff.

If you haven't read the post I put out last week about the major shift we had post chiropractic adjustment, you need to before you read this.

Miss Ashley, Dominic's OT who moved away in May sent Dominic a very sweet present for Christmas - a lego set.  I've asked Dominic a solid 5 times if he wants to set it up, and every time he Said NO, took it out of my hands and put it on the shelf.

Jonny came for OT tonight.  Dominic got the lego's out and started working on them when Jonny arrived. (WHAT???)
Dominic got the scissors from on top of the fridge and PROPERLY and SAFELY cut open the plastic bags of parts and then proceeded ot DO THE WHOLE THING INDEPENDENTLY.  In fact, Jonny and I messed him up when we tried to help.  (this is a first. He's never done a whole lego independently. He also read us each step he was on).

Look at this focus.  This child sat for 45 minutes and focused like this.

Here's the tail end, when he finished.  So amazed.

Then, because its clear the atlas adjustment last week really was a HUGE reset button (though I know for a fact it certainly wasn't the first time he had an atlas adjustment, so I don't know  what was different), Jonny retested the last primitive reflex we're working on. Its not integrated, but its ENTIRELY different from the last time he checked (within 2 weeks) in how it presented.

right now I'm leaning towards not mentioning this whole huge shift to school... and seeing what they say.  He doesn't start back until January 5 so I have some time to decide.

Funny story from last week

I am so behind that I'm posting things on facebook to remind myself I need to blog about them... this is from December 20, so about December 19, which is BEFORE the chiro appointment I told you about yesterday...

Funny story I need to blog, but instead am jotting here to blog later...
Regular routine is that Mommy or Daddy make Dominic's lunch and put in the fridge the night before. In the morning, Dominic gets out his lunch bag, puts the tupperwares in it and selects a few snacks, which Mom/Dad then appropriately prep (peel the carrot, slice the apple, etc). He also gets the dog bowls, cans of dog food, has me open them (doesn't have the fine motor strength to pop the cans just yet), and he puts them in the dog bowls, and bowls on the floor.
Last night, due to normal chaos, neither Rodney nor I managed to get Dominic's school lunch for today prepared. Not a big deal, doesn't take long, we figured we'd do it this morning. I was upstairs first, and immediately started on Dominic's breakfast (always "3 eggs, mush, raisins" which means 3 hard fried eggs, and a bowl of oatmeal with raisins in it).
Dominic came up, started to get his lunchbag out to put things in and I told him to hold on, that Daddy or I would make it in a moment. he looked at me, went to the cubbard, got out a tupperware, and said Mommy, Rice. I was paying attention to the eggs, so just kind of said Sure, whatever. next thing I know he's putting rice, thai peanut chicken into one tupperware, applesauce into another and getting out a carrot, saying "cut it". I had him get the knife, and the cutting board and we did hand over hand to cut the carrot, but he was apprehensive on cutting the apple so i did that one (finally something dangerous he's actually appropriately apprehensive about. he still wants to play with fire). then he packed it all up and got started on the dog's breakfast

ooooh, this may be HUGE...

Those of you on my facebook already have seen a version this, but I need to document here and tell you the followons....

Chiropractic care has, for years, been hugely important for Dominics recovery. Due to circumstances beyond my control we had to find a new chiropractor this summer, with a very different style than anyone we have ever seen. He is very good with Dominic. So we all three got adjusted on Tuesday and then went out to Dinner.   While we were at dinner - so within an hour, Dominic had developed a distinct full body tic.  Wednesday I took this video, and you can see the tic was happening multiple times per minute.

 I pinged my chiropractor on Wednesday with the video and confirmed that the adjustment had realigned  a badly out of alignment atlas.  (The Atlas is actually part of the brain stem.  Very powerful adjustment)

Wednesday night, our OT Jonny was over to work with Dominic and was quite intrigued by the tic.  He did some experimenting with vestibular input and  the tic increased in frequency.  This led him to theorize that the tic was actually a resetting of his vestibular system because when given vestibular input the frequency increased greatly. So we guessed that the atlas adjustment put things in alignment and the neurological  pathways started firing again. I talked to our Chiropractor and a Chiropractor / MAPS candidate that I really like for her perspective on that and both felt like that was plausible and told me to watch and wait.  The tic frequency diminished over the last few days and today neither daddy  nor I have seen a single tic. 

So... some things have shifted and I want to document them.

1.  Daddy took this video this afternoon and sent it to me.  I was like "what am i watching"... to which he said - "he is behaving like a totally normal 11 year old, engrossed in his movie."

2.  Dominic has been VERY sensory avoiding for many months.  Light touches on his skin / back, etc had him loudly saying OW.   Tonight Rod was able to lightly touch his back on 3 separate occasions with zero reaction.  WHAT?

3.   It was unseasonably warm today and Dominic spent a solid 4 hours outside playing independently. He was squirting a water gun (something i've never seen him do with prompting much less spontaneously), helping with a construction project Daddy was doing outside (he carried the wood in when asked), and generally having a wonderful time.

We have had NO protocol changes since we added Get Smart right before Thanksgiving.... This is all from the atlas adjustment on Tuesday. Chiropractic is so powerful.

An Autism Mom's Christmas Wish list

When you have a child who is, at age 11, essentially non-conversational (see what I did, a few years ago that would have said non verbal. We're slowly... oh so slowly... making some major progress here), your priorities shift.

So these are the things I want for Christmas...


~ i want to know Dominic's favorites... I want to know what color is his favorite, what movie, what animal, what subject... I crave those things and because he doesn't have the ability to tell me I have no idea.  Frankly I'm not convinced he understands the concept of favorite.

~  i want to have a conversation with my child.  He's 11, I should be able to TALK to him and get a back and forth conversation going.  We have SOME back and forths, precious few.  To this day, the only thing he has EVER been able to say to me when asked "how was your day" is "school, fun". Were it not for his teachers, I wouldn't know a thing about his day.

~ i want him to have an age similar friend, that he can hang out with.

~ I want to be able to try all the amazing interventions that we just plain can't afford.   HBOT, Stem Cells, yadda yadda yadda (and I know we manage to make the things we REALLY need happen, but that won't stop me from wondering if those things could help him more now).

~ I want the security of knowing that he'll be able to take care of himself when we are gone.  I don't have any idea what will happen to/for him when we die.  No clue.

~ I want to be able to stop being terrified of the numbers.  he's got a 25% chance of developing grand mal seizures when puberty hits, and its knocking.   He's got a chance of wandering off and drowning; he's statistically likely to be abused by a teacher / bus monitor / etc... when the statistics are there and you can't deny them its like you're drowning in a sea of fear.

~ I want to stop seeing autism everywhere I go.  That child with rosy red cheeks, the other one with a facial droop, the toe walker, the kid screaming and flailing in the exhausted mom's arms.  They don't know yet.  They will.

I want the autism community to learn to have grace for each other.  To stop and and remember that article that acknowledged we have a similar level of PTSD to combat veterans and to treat each other gently.

staying on our toes...

First - apologies that its been a month since I last updated, a fact my mother pointed out over the weekend.  Ooops.  We've been a bit busy.

We were planning on doing the second round of hermetic homeopathy, but things got weird the beginning of November and with the help of our local chiropractor, we realized that Dominic was dealing with a low to mid grade intestinal bacterial infection.  We managed that (oh the air is SO MUCH CLEARER) with homeopathy and as a result didn't start HH.  Also, I realized that for some reason I wasn't eager to start.  My gut was saying "no, not right now".   After discussion and brainstorming with a few moms who are incredibly intuitive and very good at muscle testing the consensus was its just not the right time to do another round of HH.  Instead we've started back up a regime of 2 supplements specifically geared at increasing left-right brain processing, oxygenating the brain, and supporting mood.  They are young living's MindWise and a nifty supplement called Get Smart that we've used before.  We are a month into MindWise and 2 weeks into Get Smart and I am THRILLED to report that we're seeing nice cognitive gains, and not so thrilled to report - glimmers of teenagerhood.

We also Thanksgiving week switched his drinking water from filtered tap to Fiji because of the  electrolyte and silica concentration.  I'm getting it delivered in bulk from Amazon. Its an experiment in the sense that lots of kids on the spectrum respond well to it.  Silica is a chelator. 

The mischief has ratcheted up - and I don't know why he's doing this, it could be a visual stim or it could just be being a turkey.   A few days after we started with Fiji water,  I was getting ready to retire for the night and couldn't figure out why my counter was soaking wet, and realized that 5 of the 6 bottles in the small 6pack sitting on my counter had been punctured and were randomly leaking. I lose my mind and dump all the water, convinced we've been poisoned. I leave a nasty review on amazon, get it all cleaned up, make sure no more bottles leak and go to bed. This morning after I've been puttering around in the kitchen, i see Dominic with a thumb tack out of the corner of my eye.  We have had to hide all the fiji water bottles AND all the thumb tacks. 

On the other hand, he accidentally broke my favorite giant coffee cup with owls on it tonight and not only apologzied profusely, was really genuinely upset and appropriately behaving about it.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we had probably the mellowest, calmest one ever, and thats likely because we had no guests.  It was only those of us living here and thats an absolute first - we tend to invite everyone so to do it low key was incredibly nice.

School reports that Dominic's made a fast friend and I've given permission to be put in touch with said friends parents so perhaps we can encourage the friendship.

Its been a busy month, and its not going to get any less busy, but I will try to update a bit more frequently.