Here we go!

Well where do I begin? Let us start by thanking each every one of you for taking the time to visit Wilder's site! Without the prayers and support of our family and friends this would be an extremely lonely journey for us. Additionally, our gratitude to my friend for caring enough to create this blog is immeasurable. To say the very least, we are so excited to have some HOPE for Wilder's future, and this is the perfect way to keep everyone informed of his progress...

One of our most important goals for this blogsite is to increase the awareness of the fact that there are treatment options for autism. Upon Wilder's official diagnosis of autism the first questions I had for the specialist were "what can we do to improve his symptoms? how does he recover from this?" The answer was heartbreaking...the doctor informed me that there was nothing to be done. It is a permanent disability, she said. He would always be "quirky" and never "normal". She followed up quickly with a smile and a pat on the back as she thoughtlessly commented "what's normal anyway? Nobody wants to be normal!" She even gave a little chuckle. I would never wish that experience on my worst enemy.

Since then we have been up to our ears in the world of autism. We have heard tell of, and then tried a lot of different things to help break through into Wilder's world with varied success. The most notable of these was changing his diet in January 07 to exclude gluten, casein, and artificial colors/flavors. The previously nonverbal child began speaking within 4 days. He started to actually look at us! in November when i first heard of a DAN doctor I did a little reading up on what exactly it was and felt a rare sense of peace wash over me. We immediately made plans to take Wilder. When I made the appointment i asked the receptionist if they truly did believe in curing these kids she quickly and with much conviction said "Oh yes! We have seen this treatment has cure THOUSANDS of kids since 1992". I cried for a very long time that day.

The doctor and staff are so unbelievably caring and understanding. The initial visit was a 2 day process. The first day Wilder was not required to go; the doc took a thorough history of myself and Josh, the pregnancy, and all of the developmental stages of Wilder's life. The next morning we took him in for a thorough physical exam, blood to be drawn, hair samples to be taken, and a stool sample kit that we administered when we got home. (The results of these tests as well as our exact course of action will be given to us at our 2nd appointment held tomorrow- Friday December 7th at 3:00). The doctor also took a drop of his blood and viewed it under a microscope which was connected to a television so that we could see it as well. For the first time we were able to catch a glimpse into the mystery of Wilder's illness and actually get some ANSWERS!

The doctor was able to tell us many things from studying the single drop of blood that day- among which were: his liver and kidneys are functioning incorrectly, he has many allergies, he has many vitamin deficiencies, and he has leaky gut syndrome. The blood was overrun with fungus when there should never be any fungus present. The doc explained that if there was that much fungus in a drop of blood we could only imagine how much was polluting his brain and the rest of his organs. I was floored. My kid is moldy! All of these things were there the whole time, but no other doctor had taken the time to look for them. No other doctor even so much as took a urine sample. For the first time things began to make some sense! Of COURSE his body and brain cannot function correctly; His little body is suffering from so many dysfunctions at once that it simply can't.

Another discovery made that day that was quite heartbreaking was the discovery of evidence (both in his history and his blood) that the brain injury he sustained -which caused the onset of his autism- was most likely from an immunization. I don't really know how to comment on that...at least not right here and now since there is no concise way to embody all i want to say on the issue of immunizations. i'll save that for another day.

We left that day with 8 supplements and vitamins that he takes 3 times per day. We have 3 prescriptions for antifungals and methyl-B-12 which we give to him every 3rd day by way of injection. They were called in to a special compounding lab that makes them free of allergens and shipped overnight on ice to us. He gets regular epsom salt baths to help his body detox, and we arranged to get cranioSachral therapy (I will write more about that later). He gets occupational therapy as well as speech therapy a total of 6 times every week. His strict diet needed to be tweaked - in addition to the things i already mentioned before, we had to also purge peanuts, cashews, oats, barley, and rye. We only use first press olive oil and grapeseed oil to cook with. He eats nothing from a can or a microwave. There can be no sugar, preservatives, nitrates, pesticides or hormones in his food. Basically, if you can't tell what it used to be, then he probably can't eat it.

We are very excited to go to our appointment tomorrow. He gets his first LDA (Low Dose Allergen) shot and we should see marked improvement with the first two that he gets. The long term benefit will be even more pronounced - he will receive these for the next 3 years. Almost equally exciting are the test results from all of the blood work, stool samples, and hair samples taken last month. The hair test will let us know which metals his brain has been storing up; after we know we are then able to begin chelation in January. He was tested for airborne allergens as well as food allergies. I can hardly wait to see the results.

As for the changes we have already made...it has been less than 20 days since we began and we have had a LOT of ups and downs in that time. I think it is a little premature to draw any conclusions from such a short amount of time! i will report as i see the already evident glimmers of change become more consistent in him.