Updates :)

It's been a busy couple of weeks for us lately. Mike is very busy with work and working a lot of OT to make some extra money for Christmas that is fastly approaching, and Gabe and I have been busy with school. Gabe is doing really, really well at school and seems to LOVE going everyday. His Special Ed teacher has started him on a reading program in her class, and he is going to the regular kindergarten class every afternoon for a few hours. She says that he does really well in the regular room and doesn't seem over-whelmed at all by all the kids or activities they do. He does have an aide who attends with him, so that probably helps a lot. He has trouble stay on task and needs someone there to guide him if he gets distracted. We are very happy with where he is at school right now and are so very proud of him! I can't wait to see where he is in a few months!

We are going Wednesday to see the DAN! doctor for our 3 month visit to see where we are going from here. I am almost certain that we will end up deciding on the SCD diet, as Gabe seems to have very severe yeast (candida) over-growth issues in his gut. 
Why you ask? 
Well, in August, we cut back drastically on his carb and sugar intake. He was probably getting less than 5g of sugar/carbs per day. The result was a HUGE outburst of speech and language development. He was coming up to us spontaneously saying, "I want to swing" or " I want a drink", whatever it was he wanted he could find the words and ask without ANY cue or prompt from us. It was nothing short of shocking and amazing to us.
What changed? 
He started school and we slacked off on monitoring his sugar intake. We weren't really certain that the sugar-free diet was what caused the increase in speech until he regressed back to where he was before now. It's really dissapointing and stressful. I hate regression, just the thought of it makes me get chills. It's like the worst nightmare you could ever have and a constant fear of a parent with a child with autism. Candida also sucks....it is such a viscious cycle. You kill/starve it off and think you're out of the clear, and then it comes back to bite you in the ass again. I am %100 for sure that if we completely got rid of the Candida, that Gabe would be well on the road to recovery after. I just cannot figure out how to get rid of it forever. I feel so terrible depriving Gabe of snacks and drinks that every other kid runs around eating and drinking in front of him all day every day. I know, I know, I shouldn't feel bad because it's what is best for him. Yeah, I get that, but it still SUCKS! I know that it is what is best for him and that I need to be strong for him and do the SCD diet, but there is a part of me that mourns that loss of normalicy for him. I want for him to be like every other kid who can get ice cream from the ice cream man when he comes through the neighborhood (even though they are probably serial killers or pedophiles- kidding, kind of). I would love for him to be able to eat the greasy, deep fried fair food when we go every year like I did when I was little (even though it is TERRIBLE for you). I want all of that for him, but I also know that if I don't help him get better, then he will never have a shot at living a "normal" life as a functioning member of society. I want to see him get married, go to college, have kids (but NOT vaccinate them!), and be happy.

Does anyone else have these thoughts? It's so hard, but yet so rewarding being a parent of a child with autism. I would never trade one moment with Gabe for anything else in the world. 
He is my world.

 

Mona Vie?

So, my friend called me over a few weeks ago and showed me this "wine bottle", or so what I thought was a wine bottle anyways. Wine gives me a headache just looking at it, so I was immediately turned off.     :)

She then said that it is MonaVie, a powerful, antioxidant-rich superfood berry blend that is helping thousands of people with all sorts of different ailments around the world. It has the Acai Berry in it and about 17 other fruits in it. It also has preservatives though, which I found a bit odd. She then said that it was preserved because they have to ship it from whatever jungle they pick the berries from in Asia. The berries go through a "flash freeze" and then are brought back to be bottled from what I understand, so I'm not sure why they would add preservatives if it is frozen. Anyways, apparently it has been "known" to help people with autism, adhd, depression, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, etc. etc. etc. I googled it (isn't google wonderful?) and found about 7 google pages FULL of nothing but negative things to say about MonaVie. Saying that it is a pyramid scheme/scam and the juice is no better for you than drinking a glass of Welch's Grape Juice a day. Men's Journal even did an article saying that the amount of antioxidants in MonaVie are less than that of Welch's Grape Juice. I also have found some Acai Berry juice blends from various stores around here that are certified organic and have a TON of great superfoods in them, probably somewhat comparable to MonaVie's ingredients and WITH NO PRESERVATIVES at all. May I add that a liter of this juice from Wal-Mart is $6.99 vs the MonaVie price of $40 a bottle ( One bottle lasts 1 person 7 days), so that adds up to about $170 per month for one person drinking it. Very expensive stuff. My friend is now a "distributor" for MonaVie and they are telling her that she will become a millionaire in no time because this MonaVie is the next biggest thing and will pretty much cure anything you have wrong with you, more or less.


Now, I'm very open-minded when it comes to trying or learning about new things, especially when it comes to treatments for Gabe and I am not against this MonaVie juice...... If I knew that it worked like people who sell it are saying it does. I'm just wanting to find out more about it. Everyone who sells this juice seems to know nothing about what they are selling. I asked a guy who claims to be earning over $60,000 a year selling MonaVie if the preservative in it is aluminum-based or not and why they even put them in the juice if it is supposedly so "natural". He couldn't tell me and had no idea there were preservatives in it until I asked him about it. Strange....if I were making a living off of selling a product I would want to know any and everything about it to be sure I didn't get up in front of people and end up looking like a dummy, right? Clearly he is in it for the money and not the "health benefits" they claim.

One interesting fact is that Jenny McCarthy does reference it in her Mother Warriors book saying that has been known to help children with autism. I also found some testimonies online from autism moms saying that it has really, really helped their kids with speech, socializing, concentration, etc. I LOVE Jenny and usually take her word on most things, but I am a bit hesitant to believe that this really helps that much and if it is just as beneficial to drink the "so called off brand" that I found at Wally World the other day?

Any thoughts? Anyone else heard about or looked in to MonaVie?

:)

Kindergarten

No, this was not a typo. Yes, Gabe is now in Kindergarten. It seems so weird to say that, and even more strange to think about how old I'm getting. :) It seems like just yesterday when I was sitting in the hospital waiting for him to finally decide to come out. In his defense, there really wasn't much room for him to work with on the coming out part. Before I had him I never really knew what true love was. He amazes me more everyday and I love him more and more everyday.
Anyways, enough of the mushy stuff, I'll get to my point of this blog. We met with Gabe's new teachers, he will have one for his Life Skills (special ed) class and one for the reg. kindergarten class. He is splitting his time between the two at first with the end goal of being in kindergarten at least most of the day, if not all day. I would love to see him grow and improve so much that he no longer needs Life Skills class, but right now that is definitely the best place for him to be to get everything he needs. He has now been in school for almost 3 weeks and he is doing really, really well so far. His new teacher seems too good to be true. She teaches almost exactly how we parent Gabe. She doesn't baby him or treat him like he is different just because he has autism. She pushes him just as much as she would any other child, which I think is what a lot of these kids need. Usually, when Gabe has goals and is pushes to achieve them, he always exceeds them. He is so smart and loves school! He continues to use his words a lot at school, but a little less at home. I think that by the time he gets home at night he is just so exhausted that he tries to get lazy on us. ;) Once he gets use to his schedule I think he will jump back in to the swing of things. We have also slacked a bit on watching his sugar intake. We were doing really well there for a while and then school started and it made it very difficult to send snacks that didn't contain sugar or carbs. We are currently trying to find some snacks that he will enjoy, but that are also low in sugar. That could prove to be a challenge.

We are still doing the MB12 injections and they are going really well. I think for a few weeks I was injecting them too deep and they weren't as effective. It's almost like when they seem to burn and itch more, they are more effective. I wonder why that is...because the times that he doesn't cry after are when I don't notice as much effect from the shot.


Our DAN! Dr recently put Gabe on Naltrexone cream to see if it would help with Gabe's tippy-toe walking. Anyone else heard of this before? It doesn't seem to be doing anything thus far.....

Betty Crocker GF/CF cookies

Cookie Monster GABE .






The box. :)






Again...Cookie Monster!






The cookies when they came out of the oven. :)






We decided to try the new Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookies and here are some pics of how they turned out. Next we are going to try the brownies! :)

P.S~ I added an extra egg because the batter was WAY too dry without it. I think either they are just naturally more crumbly or the extra egg made it more crumbly. BUT, they taste great according to Gabe. :)

Exciting news!

Great news here. Gabe has been using spontaneous speech and in sentences!!!! He has always said one or two words together when prompted, or even tried to repeat a sentence like "I want....". We were at the pool on Tuesday and I always pack a little snack bag for him with a water and some fritos or something in it. He came over and grabbed my hand, I asked him "What?" and he said "I want drink". Wow, ok so I opened the snack bag and as I gave him the drink he noticed the bag of fritos in there and said "I want fritos". lol This is nuts, he has always needed prompted to even say "I want"...let alone say it without even a hesitation!
We think the MB12 injections are really starting to work! Along with, of course, all of the other 15 supplements and vitamins we are giving him per day. lol
Speech is our biggest hurdle for him right now, because I know that once he can at least have functional speech, we will be on our way to recovery for him! I have to give Mike huge kudos for being so great and helping me so much with all of this. While I'm at school every evening (almost) he is the one making sure Gabe eats his safe foods and gets all of his supplements he is supposed to get per day. Without him, I couldn't do it all alone, so I probably need to tell him that more often! He is great! :)

I suck at blogging....

I need to apologize for how bad I suck at this "blogging thing". I'm terrible and I never remember to update on here. It's so hard to find the time and when I do have it I'm stuck on Facebook or Twitter reading other people's problems! I am really going to make a valid effort to be better at this once Gabe starts back to school full-time next week. I say this now, but then I will be out enjoying "me" time during the day and still won't have time for this!

Anyways, now that I am done giving half-ass'd excuses for why I don't blog. I will talk about something with relevance.
I realized Monday that I had probably, most-likely been giving Gabe his MB12 injections too deep. He was experiencing SOOOO much hyperactivity that I thought Mike might go nuts. He doesn't have quite the patience that I do with Gabe. I think it's a man thing, no offense guys! Women are just naturally born to be more patient and understanding, especially with our kiddos. He has been almost constantly on his toes walking. He has always done a little bit of toe-walking, but never this often. I can barely get him to walk on his heels at all anymore. I'm not sure if it's the MB12 shots making him detox a bit or what. We have adjusted to 1 injection every four days now instead of every 3 days. Hopefully this will help with the hyperactivity he was experiencing. I also think that I was doing the injections too deep in his butt. They say that if you inject it into the muscle, then it tends to disperse all at once in to the body, where as if you inject in to the fatty tissue it sits there a lot longer. AKA less hyperactivity all at once. One way to tell it's too deep is if you can't see the purple/red liquid sitting under the skin. It almost looks like a bruise, but goes away in 5 or 10 minutes. I wasn't seeing that until the last two injections so I think they must have been way too deep. The shot we gave him Monday (the correct depth) didn't really make him hyper at all and he has been very loving and not as off the wall crazy. Thank you, Jesus! :)

We spoke with his DAN dr today by phone and he suggested using an opiate blocker to see if it helps with inflamation of the brain. This is sometimes a link to tippy-toe walking if it's not from yeast overgrowth or constipation, which Gabes isn't. I forget what the medicine was called now, isn't that awful? Something like Naprexin or something? It's compounded in to a topical cream that you rub on the inside of the thigh every night before bed. He is thinking that if it helps with the stimming issues, then maybe we will need to do an IgG test to see if he is still eating something in his diet that he's sensitive to. We have been holding off on the IgG test since it's not covered by insurance, but I'm thinking that we are going to just have to bite it and bend over.

We got the results back for his IgE allergy testing and he is allergic to NOTHING. No peanuts, wheat, dairy, soy, eggs, etc. While that is good news, it tells us nothing really.....waste of blood cells. I was pretty sure he was allergic to peanuts from all the nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting he had going on a few weeks back. Dr. Justus seems to think that he may still be IgG allergic to peanuts, so I guess we will have to wait for that test to be sure. He said we could give him peanut butter and see if he gets sick, but I would feel like a huge A-hole doing that to him. Plus, I don't think his comforter can handle many more washes from that 3 week stent we had.

MB12 injections

We started MB12 injections last Wednesday for Gabe. As of today, we have done three injections. At first, Gabe didn't seem to mind them and kind of laughed them off...but now he is not a big fan. I think he thought that it was a one time thing, but now that we are coming after him every three days with them he is over it. lol Poor baby! The things he has to go through. We are definitely noticing some small, but good changes so far. He is having a little more clear speech and it seems that it's forming easier for him in his head. I also noticed that he is starting to drink water out of water bottles and he is tipping the bottle back himself without assistance! That is huge because he use to try and would end up making more of a mess than it was worth. He has ALWAYS hated the taste (or lack there of I guess) of water and never wanted to drink it. He would just go without a drink all day if he had to, but then he would drink his bath water or pool water. I never understood that one, still don't actually. Kids are weird. Anyways, yesterday at the pool he drank like half my bottle of water and then drank half of Mike's bottle of water coming home from the gym. He said he gave it to him on a whim thinking he would reject it probably. When he asked him for it, it was all gone. hehe So, tonight for dinner he gave Gabe his own bottle and he drank it, plus Mike re-filled it twice in like a two-hour period~! How cool is that? Not so cool when it came to potty training though actually.....he had a big accident from all that water. I will take that over not drinking it though. Gotta take the good with the bad I guess! I will have to go and buy those little snack size water bottles for him to drink out of so he doesn't over drink. He has a tendancy to do that, I actually think it's part of his stemming issues or something. Once he takes one drink he likes to finish the whole thing.

Anyways, the bigger news is that he has split a banana with me the last two days! WITHOUT any gagging or bad faces after tasting it. Before the MB-12 shots, he would have at least made a sad face while chewing it and taken like 20 minutes to chew up one small piece. Today he ate about 6 bites of my Dole organic banana (which may I add are THE BEST organic bananas) ! What a big boy....I am soooooo proud of him! He really has come soooo far with eating. Sometimes I don't think even a typical child could go through what I've put him through when it comes to taking away and changing foods on him as much as I have this past year. It's amazing to me and he amazes me more everyday. God has truly blessed me to have such a wonderful little boy!

PS~ Anyone know where in the midwest you can buy the new Betty Crocker GF cake mixes? I've looked at Meijer, Wal-Mart, and Kroger with no luck! I really want to try them...but I'm not sure if they are casein-free too. Anyone know?

Family summer pics!

Gabe's first trail ride! :)






My perfect, handsome little boy!
My WHOLE WORLD!





At the 4th of JuLy Festival :)






Watchin' Fireworks with Mamma :)






He was so excited, & I was SO nervous he was gonna get burnt!

Going out to eat

So, I go back and forth everyday about going out to eat. Before we started Gabe on the diet, we would go out to dinner at least once or twice a week. It was fun for us to let Gabe try new foods and places since he went for years without trying ANYTHING new. So once we fixed his terrible food issues, we were so pumped to go out to new, exciting restaurants. Now, all I can think about is what the cook is or isn't doing back there with Gabe's food, plate, utensils, etc. It's crazy...or I'm crazy maybe? lol I get myself so worked up about it that I can't eat sometimes. There are times though that you just HAVE to go out to eat and I'm not one of those moms that can stand to seclude Gabe from eating out with us. After having a few bad experiences, I decided that there HAD to be someone at every restaurant who had vested interest in their company, aka a head manager. So, for the last few weeks when we've gone out, I've politely explained to the server that Gabe has some very serious allergies to foods and to no disrespect, I would prefer to speak to the head manager to assure no contamination occurs. Each time the server has been more than understanding and gotten the manager. I explain that Gabe has many allergies and that even the slightest amount can really harm him and the managers have always seemed very caring and patient. One manager at a local restaurant called Champps even brought me the oil they use to fry chicken in to be sure that I felt comfortable with using it. :) I am no longer nearly as worried or anxious about eating out, especially at the places we have been recently.
I just wanted to share this info in case any other parents out there felt the same as I do about eating out. It is so scary to put your child's health (and behaviors for the next week) in to someone else's hands. Try this the next time you go out to eat and see if it helps! I hope so! :)

Allergicare clinics ~ BAX3000

I'm not sure if anyone has Facebook or not, but if you do then you know how people request to be your friend all the time that you don't know/remember. I have had that happen a lot and ended up deleting the people later on. Well, I don't know this man well, but he is a really nice chiropractor located out of New Jersey who is, from what I have gathered, in to alternative/holistic medicines and was asking me if I had ever heard of an Allergicare Clinic. I've been talking back and forth with him for a while now getting info here and there about it. Apparently, it has been doing amazing things for kids with autism and allergies/sensitivities. That being said, was enough to catch my interest and attention!

He emailed me an actual hand-written letter from a mom who's son was treated by this BAX3000 machine. He has ASD and was on the GFCF diet. From what the letter said, she has been able to completely remove him from the GFCF diet now after treatment and he is making huge gains in speech and receptive language skills. I think the boy was around 2 1/2 when he started the treatment. The website for the Allergicare info is www.allergicareclinic.com . It definitely seems a little "out there", but what treatments that we do aren't? lol
From what I read, the way it works is that you are hooked up to a machine through clips on your fingertips. The clips send lazor impulses through your body that trigger your immune system to respond. Eventually, with the gradual exposure over and over, your body should start giving off a positive response to the alergy instead of a negative one. The treatment at the chiro office here by me is $1000 total for everything from start to finish. That isn't bad really I guess if it works. It all sounds a little too good to be true to me, but I am researching it actively. I will do ANYTHING I can to improve Gabe's quality of life! Now, that doesn't mean that I jump on anything anyone tells me to try. Mike and I sit down and do our homework usually for months before we decide to do something. We have to be %100 comfortable with it and it has to be completely safe. This seems very safe, but Mike is very skeptical about it. He just doesn't see how a lazer could travel through you and cure your allergy. I don't claim to understand it at all, but I do think it is very interesting and I always enjoy learning about anything that could possibly help our kids! Plus, I don't really see why this Dr. would have any reason to lie to me about it working and he seems like a very nice guy. I wouldn't be going to him and paying him to treat Gabe or anything since he lives in another state. That makes me feel like he is really trying to help, not scam anyone. It's sad that we have to be so careful not to get burned or scammed by people these days, especially with the autism community. So many bad people out there these days!
If anyone wants to read the hand-written letter he sent me please let me know and I can email it to you or something. :)