Back on Track with Autism Recovery

The cranial sacral treatments we did from December through February helped tremendously, as you noticed in my posts in February. We started the anti-fungals the end of February and everything fell apart. He regressed terribly. His speech didn’t disappear, but he stopped advancing and regressed some and his behavior went downhill – lots of tantrums again, head banging, wanting to be held and carried a lot.

Now we’ve made it to April and he has been off the anti-fungals for 3-4 weeks. He is pretty much back to where he was the middle of February. We’ve been continuing the cranial sacral appointments all this time. He’s doing great again. He is gaining speech again and his behavior is improving. Mondays cranial sacral appointment (Dr. R.) made a tremendous difference. The appointment Monday was one like I had never seen before. Jordan went through 3 stages in the appointment. He was quiet, sullen, and shy at the beginning (fairly normal for recent weeks). He got a little fussy and cranky when Dr. R tried to evaluate him and wouldn’t cooperate. Dr. R then held him by his ankles upside down, which Jordan thoroughly enjoyed. Dr. R would relax his hold on one leg and then switch, basically his legs looked like he was walking  but upside down. The more he did this you could actually see Jordan’s range of motion increase  and stiffness in his body decrease. His back and neck arched and extended more each time – a very good thing. Jordan was okay while upside down  and Dr. R did this for a few minutes. After he put Jordan down, upright, within a few seconds Jordan was very aggitated, fussying, staying close to the ground instead of standing and walking, and banged his head on the lightly carpeted floor twice, hard, a couple minutes apart. After the second head banging, Dr. R sat Jordan on his lap and worked on Jordan’s skull for quite a while. When Dr. R was done, Jordan was happy, jovial, and bounced off to play with the toys in the room. The change in him was amazing!  This week, he has not banged his head once, not even during his tantrums. In fact, I even saw him start the motion once and stop himself before his head hit the floor. This is a very encouraging and pleasant change. It was horrible watching and listening to his head bounce off the floor like a bowling ball. However, I had long since given up on stopping him. No matter how many times I’d stop him and pull him away, try to hold him and restrain him, he’d fight me until he got away and head straight for the tile floor. Hopefully our days of head banging are going to be few and far between, if not gone forever!

Although I say he’s pretty much back to where he was the middle of February, there are some differences. With his speech, in February he was saying entire statements when he combined words like, “Read a book” or “There you go” (as he handed me his empty plate) now he is missing connection words, but gets more main words such as, ”Mommy, come help down chair” (when he needs me to help him down out of his chair). He is using more variety in his language and can communicate just about anything he wants to now! He’s even started with the, “Watch, Mommy” for all his new (or not so new) feats. You may not realize why this phrase is exciting. Not only is it great he has the language, it’s really great because it means that he’s far enough away from me that I can “watch him” since I’m not holding him, or more acurately, he’s not clinging to me screaming like banchee every time I attempt to put him down. He’s actually off on his own playing! Very exciting stuff! You just need to know a few quirks like “strawberry” can mean “strawberry”,  ”blueberry”, “blackberry” or “raspberry”; “juice” could mean “juice” or “water”. With his behavior, tantrums, fear, etc he is not quite back to where he was in February, he’s still more moody and sullen, but in the last week has made great strides in the direction of happiness and independence – thanks to his cranial sacral treatment on Monday! It’s incredible to hear his great belly laugh quite regularly!

I had been going to give the prescription anti-fungals one more try so that he could get the LDA shot, but he has been doing so great off of them and they affected him so severely we have decided to abandon that line of treatment completely and go for a more natural route. We will keep it in the back of our minds as a last resort should we need to come back to it. Currently, we are giving him a rest this month, keeping up his diet and cranial sacral appointments, and doing his brain therapy exercises while we wait for the consult with the Pittsburgh doctor the end of April. Oh, we did just start (this week) a new natural detox supplement. So far we have seen good results (a substantial increase of horribly stinkin’ poop which is great – that means his body is getting rid of bad stuff) and no negative reactions!

So that’s the latest, thanks for keeping up and praying for Jordan and us!