Part Three - "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet"

I began seeing this healer when I was in my early twenties, and I’ve always felt that she has a gift.  I’ve never pretended to be able to explain her gift though, not even to myself.  All I know is that, over the years, she’s relieved my body of every kind of ailment – out of place neck, back, and hips, asthma, bronchitis, common colds, flu bugs (she can completely stop the puking that accompanies the stomach flu with one treatment), sinus infections, etc.

I once sought her assistance for a severe headache that I had right before an exam.  She was on her break in between clients and only had about five minutes to help me, but during that five minutes she got rid of my headache entirely.  Another time I saw her for a badly sprained ankle.  I walked in on crutches, and walked out without them.  And I didn’t need them again.

For the better part of a decade (before I started having babies anyway), I didn’t see any actual doctors.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  There was one time when I went to see my healer with a bad bacterial infection (it was strep throat if I remember right), and she actually told me to go to the doctor for antibiotics.  She knows her limits, I think.      

I went to see her while I having my miscarriage, years ago.  The doctor had told me that miscarriage was inevitable (there was no heartbeat anymore).  And since I had refused the vacuum extraction, they expected it to take between seven and ten (and possibly longer) excruciatingly painful days to complete the process.

I went to see my healer the following morning, in a great deal of pain.  And I asked her to save the baby (even though the heartbeat was gone – I’ve always had a real gift for denial).  She did a reflexology treatment, after which the physical pain was relieved a great deal.  Then, a little over an hour later, my uterus gently expelled the remainder of its contents all at once.  Sorry to be so graphic here.  The bleeding stopped immediately, and I had no more physical pain.

I went to the emergency room anyway and demanded that they do an ultrasound.  I was having a very hard time letting go of that baby, and I secretly hoped that everyone had made some sort of terrible mistake and that the baby was still there.  But my uterus was completely empty, and the doctor seemed a bit baffled.  I didn’t ask him, or care actually, why he seemed baffled though, no doubt because I was too caught up in my own sadness at the time.  And strangely, it took several years, and hearing about other miscarriages, for me to come to understand and appreciate what my healer had done for me.  

When my daughter Isabel was about four months old, I took her to the doctor for a chest cold.  They did a chest x-ray to see if there was an infection in her lungs, and found, instead, gas bubbles.  There were so many gas bubbles in her abdomen that they had actually expanded up into her chest cavity (yet she hadn’t cried or been upset or anything).  So I called my healer, who came over to my house and did a reflexology treatment on her.  She relieved so much gas from my daughter’s tiny body that the whole living room stunk!  The next day, the doctor took another x-ray, this time of Isabel’s abdomen, and found no gas.

My healer suggested to me, on the night that she relieved Isabel’s gas bubbles, that I stop eating wheat and dairy products while I was breastfeeding Isabel.  I thought this was ridiculous, and I didn’t listen.  Two weeks later, Isabel was hospitalized for constipation because she hadn’t pooped in two weeks.  They gave her an enema and ran a bunch of tests, but they finally released her without having figured out what was wrong.  After that, I stopped eating wheat and dairy for the remainder of the breastfeeding.  And later, when I switched Isabel to formula, my healer suggested that I only give her soy (not milk) based formulas.  She couldn’t tell me why though.  All she could tell me was that Isabel’s body didn’t like wheat or dairy. 

I continued the soy formula up until Isabel was eighteen months old (at twelve months old I made sure to switch to a soy based formula that was specially designed to meet the needs of older babies – twelve to twenty four month olds to be exact).  Up until that point, Isabel was a happy, chubby, and really easy baby.  The only problem was that she hadn’t started to walk yet. 

Naturally, the doctors became concerned that she was eighteen months old and not walking yet, so they sent her to a developmental pediatrician.  This developmental pediatrician (oh, how I’d dearly love to give you this idiot’s name, but it would go against every one of my self-imposed writing rules) told me that Isabel hadn’t started to walk yet because she hadn’t been drinking whole milk, but that other than that she was perfectly normal.  If this doctor had noticed the Autism, I could’ve gotten Isabel early intervention.  And I would’ve seen the Autism much earlier in Cale.  And I could’ve gotten him early intervention.  But I had no idea what I was looking at, thanks to this developmental pediatrician.   

Feeling like a terrible mother, I put Isabel on whole milk immediately (and since I was giving her milk, I figured I may as well give her wheat as well).  Then we moved to Arizona, and within two months Isabel did start to walk.  But she also started getting skinny.  AND she started slamming her head onto the floor.

By this time I had had Cale (my third baby), and I had fallen out of contact with my healer.  At first I thought Isabel was just jealous of the new baby, and she may have been but that still didn't explain the extent of it.  She started to scream and bang her head onto the floor over any tiny confrontation (if I told her “no” about something, or to be careful, etc.).  And she wouldn't do it on the carpet.  No.  She'd go over to the tile and bang her head on it.

She did it EVERY time I sat down and started nursing the baby.  As a result of the constant interruption, my milk dried up early and I had to put Cale on formula.  And before long, Isabel’s head banging became head slamming.  She started slamming her head onto the floor repeatedly with no confrontation of any kind.  And she'd start it so quickly and so unexpectedly, and slam it so hard so fast, that I'm simply amazed she never split her skull open before I could get over to her.  It was absolutely terrifying.

I told the pediatricians about this repeatedly, but since Isabel had already seen a developmental pediatrician (oh GOD I want to give the name!) they figured it was just the “terrible twos.”  Still, I prayed every day for God to protect her head long enough for me to get over to her.  We had a lot of very hard ceramic tile, so I stopped showering before Shane got home at night because I didn't know if Isabel would survive it.

Isabel did this whenever we had people over too, so we stopped having people over.  And she did it in public places too, so we ended up avoiding public places.  If I did have to take her to the grocery store, I would run to grab everything we needed because I knew that it was coming. Some well-meaning person would inevitably look at her and say, "Hi sweetie," and give her a little wave. In response, she would scream at the top of her lungs and start slamming her head into the bar on the front of the grocery cart.

Every day, when I would take Alden to pre-school, Isabel would scream and flail and slam her head into the back of the stroller the entire way through the school, into Alden’s classroom, and all the way back out to the car again.  And when we’d go to pick Alden up from pre-school, she’d repeat the process.  One time, I made the mistake of trusting her to get out of the stroller in Alden’s classroom.  Well, she got pissed about who knows what, and slammed her head on the floor so hard that she didn’t get up right away.  It gave Alden’s teacher and me a terrible fright.

This behavior went on for nearly three years straight (we had the terrible twos, and then the terrible threes, and then began the terrible fours – there seemed to be no end in sight).  The most terrifying times for me were when she’d throw herself onto the ground in the middle of streets and parking lots to slam her head onto the ground in front of moving vehicles.  I would have to drop my purse, grocery sacks, and anything else I happened to be carrying, and try to wrestle her, while holding the baby, into the car. 

At three and a half years old, Isabel still couldn’t point to body parts when asked to.  She was seriously behind in both her receptive and expressive language development – specifically, she could only imitate.  If you asked her a question, she could only recite short lines out of Dora The Explorer.  She also hadn’t gained any weight (not one pound) since the age of eighteen months.

At four years old, Isabel still couldn’t tell us what her birth date was.  And when asked questions, she still could only give short, pat, imitated answers.  She was finally evaluated by a pre-school team, who referred us to another developmental pediatrician.  This time, Isabel was diagnosed with Autism.  But the only treatment options the doctors had to offer were speech and occupational therapies (which our insurance company wouldn’t cover and we couldn’t afford to pay for out of pocket) and psychiatric medication.

This was big.  This was really, really big.  So naturally, I thought of my healer.

It had been years since I’d talked to my healer, and I called, from Arizona, fairly late at night.  Thankfully, she took my call.  She tested a bunch of foods (don’t ask me how, I’m already having trouble straddling my own credibility here:) for Isabel over the phone and finally said, “I’m so sorry, but there aren’t any foods at all that are good for Isabel right now.  I’m sensing that it’s her liver.  Does she have any anger?”

Envisioning fresh incidents of Isabel pulling her own hair out, vomiting on the dining table simply because she was pissed, and slamming her head onto the ground, I answered, “Why yes, she most certainly does.”

My healer suggested that I start giving Isabel 125mg per day of Magnesium (since Isabel had suffered severely from constipation ever since I’d put her on the whole milk because of Dr. wooops, that was a really close one) and 750mg per day of MSM (Methylsulfonylmethane).  I started giving Isabel these things right away, and I also remembered what my healer had suggested on the night that she relieved Isabel’s gas bubbles – to not give her any wheat or dairy.  So I stopped feeding her wheat and dairy as well.

Isabel stopped banging her head onto the floor (in fact, she stopped tantrums of any kind) immediately.  And, shortly afterward, we made a trip to Montana for a visit.  I took Isabel to see my healer, and she immediately tested a bunch of foods again (a bunch of which were good for Isabel by then, with the exception of wheat and dairy).  In fact, I had her double check wheat, barley, rye, and dairy, just to be sure.  They were all still bad for Isabel.

By this point, I had read a bunch of studies regarding the effects of gluten and casein on children with Autism.  So, while Isabel was having her reflexology treatment, I told my healer about these studies.  And I told her that she was right in telling me, when Isabel was just a baby, that Isabel’s body didn’t like gluten and casein.  It had been years since Isabel had been a baby, however, so my healer didn’t remember having told me that.  She reminded me that she sees a lot of clients and that she can’t possibly remember everything.  And then she asked me, “What in the world is gluten anyway?  And what’s casein?”

“Wheat and dairy,” I answered.

“Oh, Isabel can’t handle wheat or dairy right now,” she said.

“Yeah.  She’s never been able to.  And you, whether you remember it or not, have always known it,” I smiled.

She had absolutely no idea how big of a deal this was.

In addition to following this healer’s dietary suggestions, I also started doing a simple massage on the area of Isabel’s liver at bedtime every night (a massage this healer had shown me how to do).  And within just a few months, Isabel had done a complete about face.  Not only did her entire temperament change, but her language (both receptive and expressive) improved dramatically as well.  She went from simple imitations to full-fledged conversations.  And by the time she turned five, not only could she tell you what her birth date was, but she could tell you exactly which items she wanted for her birthday and what colors they should be.

Isabel never has gotten much therapy (other than the minimal amount of speech and occupational therapy that she’s received at school, and about two months of in home therapy right before we moved to Montana and lost the state insurance coverage) and she hasn’t yet had to take any psychiatric medication.  She started kindergarten in a self-contained classroom designed specifically for children with high-functioning Autism, and ended the year in a regular education classroom full time.  She’s in the first grade now, and the school is actually afraid to test her again for fear that she might lose her eligibility for special education services altogether.

The only thing she still struggles with is social communication.  She probably always will though.  After all, she does have Autism.  She’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but she is waaaayyy better than she used to be.  With the exception of some social deficits, and the fact that she has no stranger danger (she’s such a little love that she’d go home with some hairy guy from the gas station if you weren’t looking), you’d never know that she had Autism to the extent that she didn’t speak functionally until she was nearly four and a half years old.

It’s kind of funny actually, because we were in Arizona for the worst of Isabel’s early behaviors.  My family and friends here in Montana never really saw Isabel like that for any length of time.  In fact, it’s hard for them to even imagine it.  I’ve had many, many people say to me since we’ve been back in Montana, “Isabel has Autism?  Really, are you sure?”

I’ve told my healer this story.  In fact, I’ve given her a copy of this same basic blogpost.  She refuses to accept credit for Isabel’s healing, however, insisting instead that my daughter has unusual healing abilities of her own, and that she has actually healed herself.  But I have to wonder if my healer doesn’t simply sense that my expectations are awfully high, since I’m taking Cale to her now.  I’ve told her there’s no pressure in seeing Cale.  But let’s face it.  My heart is in very real danger here. Cale’s been off of gluten and casein for the past three years now.  And even though this diet has been nothing short of a miracle for Isabel, it hasn’t done shit for Cale.

When this healer first tested foods for Cale, the results made no sense to me at all.  She tested all of the gluten/casein free breads (white rice bread, brown rice bread, tapioca bread, amaranth bread, kamut bread, corn bread – homemade without the wheat in it, etc.) that we could possibly think of.  And finally she tested “any kind of bread” as its own category.  He can have no bread at all.  No grains.  And no fruits or vegetables either.  And remember, she doesn’t know why.  We were both baffled.  And then she said to me, "Sugar is bad too.  In fact, sugar is pure poison for Cale."

"What the hell am I going to feed him?" I asked.  And she sent me home with two books, both about some old psychic named Edgar Cayce.

“I don’t know why,” she told me, “but there’s something in these that you need to know.”

Since she’s a friend of mine, I tried hard not to roll my eyes at her.  And since she’s a friend of mine, I decided to try and stomach a few pages of one of these books.  This man healed literally thousands of people, people with very complex diseases and disabilities, during the course of his lifetime.  But that wasn’t what did it for me, I’m afraid.  Do you know what did it for me?  In this book, there’s a remedy for how to enlarge your breasts.  Yes.  That was definitely something that I needed to know!  I’ll let you know if it works.

After this, I devoured both of the books.  This psychic was the first to place the root cause of digestion problems in the bones of the spine, specifically in the neck (dorsal 7, or something, is the one that’s out in Cale’s neck, but my healer says there’s one out in his lower back as well).  This led me to another book, which led me to another book, which led me to the book “One Cause, Many Ailments, The Leaky Gut Syndrome” by John O.A. Pagano, DC.

The piece of the puzzle that I was missing was yeast.  It’s the only thing that explains no breads and no fruits or vegetables (sugar of any kind feeds yeast).  There are better ways of healing the gut besides cancelling out vegetables though.

So here’s the whole puzzle that I know of so far (and I could be so totally wrong about all of this – just keep that in mind).  The bones in the spine are out, which pinches off or in some other way restricts the nerves that feed signals to the digestive system.  The digestive system doesn’t develop and/or function properly as a result and the results of that can vary, but may include an unusual build-up of yeast in the intestines. 

The yeast is the reason that nutrients (of all kinds) don't get absorbed properly, which I would assume could affect development (among other things) all by itself.  But it's also the reason that gluten and/or casein in particular don't get broken down properly in the first place AND the reason they “leak” into the bloodstream.  The yeast has roots, which poke through the walls of the intestines as the yeast takes root.  The partially digested gluten and/or casein proteins (along with other toxins that would, in a healthy system, be eliminated) leak straight through the yeast and its roots, directly into the bloodstream.  These partially digested gluten and/or casein proteins are then carried, by the bloodstream, into the brain.  They then mix with the dopamine in the brain, and this creates the opiate that affects development and causes an intensification of Autistic (neurological) symptoms, and causes my kids to crave gluten and casein.  But, come to think of it, they’ve always craved sugar as well.

 “It’s yeast!” I said to my healer during our next appointment.

“Oh,” she said, “Of course!”

“I think my kids have Leaky Gut Syndrome!” I continued.

“That’s exactly what they have,” she said, “but they're also geniuses.”

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," I thought, “Leaky Gut Syndrome.  Now we’re finally getting somewhere.”

“Listen,” she said, “I meditated on this last night, and I’ve decided to stop charging you (she charges $50. per hour).”

Silence… as I thought, “Oh shit!  She’s going to try to get out of working with my kids!”

“Why?” I asked.

“Well,” she answered, “for two reasons.  You are very, very lucky to have these two (Isabel and Cale) in your life.”

She must've seen the look on my face, because she said, “I know it doesn’t feel like it sometimes, but you are.  You’re very lucky to get to be with them, and I’m very lucky to get to help them.  The other reason I don’t want to charge you anymore is because you and Shane are already burdened enough.  I cannot imagine how hard it is to be raising these beautiful children, and I don’t ever want money to stop you from bringing them to me.”

I cried.  How could I not?  But I’m paying her anyway, just in case.

Part Two - "You Ain't Seen Nothin Yet"

“Our mystical power lies in knowing that any situation can be seen through different eyes, and that our choice to see a situation differently is an invitation for miracles to enter.”

Marianne Williamson

It’s seven o’clock in the morning.  Shane’s out of town, it’s the weekend, and my kids wanted to stay up late last night watching movies.  So we did.  After they all went to sleep, I watched a couple of my own movies.  And I think I finally fell asleep sometime around 2:30am.  I have a hard time going to sleep at night.  I’ve always been a bit of a night owl, and I personally think that early mornings were invented by the devil.

I woke up to Cale’s screaming and ran into his bedroom.  He was lying on his bed, screaming that blood curdling, ear drum shattering scream, the one that radiates through his windows so clearly that it actually causes the neighbors’ dogs to start barking.  As usual, he sounded like he was dying.  But, since he screams like this ALL the time (and never does actually die), I simply went over and tried to pick him up to give him a hug.

As I leaned over his bed, he threw his legs into the air and kicked me in the chest, with both feet, three times.  I’m afraid I’m not as quick to defend myself at 7am as I usually am.  You really should see the bruises on me these days.  I had no idea that bruises consisted of so many different shades of color.  Anyway, it just sort of slipped out of my mouth.  I shouted, “Oh, screw this Cale!”

The ONLY good thing about having a non-verbal child is that when you do actually cuss, they can’t repeat what you say.  There was a time when I would’ve beaten myself up all day long for saying something like this to one of my children.  But now, I’m almost completely immune to guilt.  It’s quite incredible actually.  I’ve recently had people tell me that my children are probably Autistic because I had them via elected c-section, and I’ve actually managed to respond with, “Oh.  Okay, that’s cool.”

I think that, as a parent, it’s wise to prepare myself for these kinds of theories, because these kinds of theories (the ones that seem to make Autism the fault of the parents) are everywhere.  Not everyone has children, however, and not everyone knows what this kind of “information” can do to a parent when it’s delivered insensitively.  So I think it’s wise to be prepared, because I also don’t want to let my own sensitivity snap my mind shut to information that people might have to offer.

Let me talk about this c-section theory for a moment here, just so I don’t leave it hanging out all raw and out of context like this.  It has more to do with certain bones in the spine being out of alignment (which may or may not have been pulled out of alignment by the way in which doctors pull babies out of their mama’s tummies during c-sections).  These bones are quite tiny and, once out of alignment, are very difficult to get back into place again (requiring many spinal adjustments to get them back in).  The problem, however, is that people don’t even know that this is what’s going on.  And the doctors won’t tell you to take your kids to a pediatric chiropractor (mine never have anyway). 

These bones that are out of alignment in the spine, sit behind nerves that affect vital organ systems such as the liver and intestines, causing malfunction in these systems.  One of the possible malfunctions is a rather complex theory called “Leaky Gut Syndrome.”   

I thought I already knew all about Leaky Gut Syndrome, but I didn’t.  I knew about the gut not being able to properly break down gluten and casein (gluten and casein are the proteins found in wheat, barley, rye, and dairy products), and that these partially digested proteins “leak” through the lining of the gut wall directly into the bloodstream.  Once in bloodstream, these partially digested proteins are carried into the brain.  They then mix with the dopamine in brain, and the resulting chemical is an opiate.  It’s not unlike giving a child drugs, drugs that not only turn them into little addicts, but that also affect development and intensify Autistic (neurological) symptoms, the severity of which depending upon how badly the gut is affected (how much undigested gluten and casein actually “leaks” into the bloodstream).  

I knew all of this was happening in my daughter several years ago, because I watched her literally crave toast and chocolate milk like a little drug addict.  In fact, for several years she ate nothing what-so-ever besides toast, wheat cereals, crackers, cookies, and chocolate milk, all while getting skinnier and skinnier and crazier and crazier.  She was tested for Celiac multiple times (they even did an endoscopy of the upper intestinal tract), but because there was no immune system response or damage to the upper intestinal tract, they concluded that not only did she not have Celiac, but that nothing else was wrong either other than a little acid reflux, which they immediately put her on medication for.  When I suggested that they check her lower intestines, the G.I. told me that, in his high and mighty opinion, there wasn’t any reason to. 

As I far as I know, conventional doctors won’t tell you about, or even discuss, the Leaky Gut Syndrome theory, because if they did the pharmaceutical companies might cease to make their billions of dollars every year.  I was never much of a conspiracy theorist before I had my kids.  And it’s not that I think they’re organized enough to have created an actual conspiracy to suppress these kinds of theories, I just think there’s a lot of greed involved in the medical community.  “Just follow the money trail” is what my husband always says.  It absolutely affects medical development.  I find it quite fascinating that pharmaceutical drugs, not actual cures, have been our doctors’ only answers.

It wasn’t until I removed gluten and casein from Isabel’s diet that she quit tantruming, began talking, began gaining weight, and began to develop normally.  To this very day, however, if I’m not watching, she’ll sneak a bag of Oreos into the bathroom and eat the entire thing.  My oldest son, Alden, can eat about three Oreos before he gets slightly nauseous and doesn’t want anymore.  Isabel, however, will eat the entire bag and then BEG for more.

As it turns out, removing gluten/casein is only one piece of the puzzle.  For the past three years now, Cale has been on a gluten/casein free diet, and it hasn’t done a damn thing for him.  You cannot imagine what it’s done to me to do the exact same things with both of my Autistic kids, and watch one improve so dramatically as result, while the other stays exactly the same.  Like I said, however, I’ve only had one piece of the puzzle.     

Where was I anyway?  Oh yeah, I’ve locked Cale in his bedroom so that he can’t start destroying the house, and I’ve tried to go back to sleep.  But since then, I’ve heard every single item in his bedroom hit the walls and the floor with a crash.  Don’t worry, Shane (God bless him) has screwed all of the big furniture to the walls so that Cale can’t pull them over onto himself.

I can’t go back to sleep with all this noise, so here I am writing about Leaky Gut Syndrome.  But where was I to begin with?  Oh yeah – the faith led journey of love and miraculous natural healing.  Shit.

I prayed for an Autism cure (please read part one of this series before you read on, otherwise you’re going to think I’m a total nut job – but I guess that doesn’t matter – do whatever you’d like).  The next day I bought a book on natural healing, bought vitamin B6 pills (which Cale threw up), and then read the story “A Bad Case of Stripes” to my daughter.

The day after that, I was driving down Broadwater Avenue and I saw the bill board sign of a healer that I used to see when we lived in Montana before.  I hadn’t seen her in years, and I had no idea she’d moved to that location.  It was a complete coincidence, so I started taking Cale to this healer immediately.

During Cale’s first appointment, she told me exactly which bones are out of place in Cale’s spine.  She also informed me that she probably won’t be able to get these bones back into place through his feet (she does reflexology and, in doing this on me, she’s always been able to get my spine to go into back into place, but I guess that the bones that are out in Cale’s spine are too difficult to move via the feet). We discussed the possibility of a chiropractor, but she doesn’t think Cale can sit still long enough or relax enough for a chiropractic treatment to be effective at this time.  The other thing that happened during that first appointment was that this healer became very concerned about how toxic my son’s little body is.

I think that an important thing to understand about intuitive healers is that they can often tell you things that are wrong, but they cannot often tell you WHY.  This is because they don’t know why.  They only know that it is.  This goes against everything in me, I’m afraid.  I really like for things to make sense.  However, I had prayed for God’s will and this was what was in front of me, so I went with it.  She couldn’t tell me why Cale’s body is toxic (whether it’s due to the improper breakdown of nutrition, or due to all the psychiatric medication he’s been on for the past year and a half).  All she could tell me was that it is.

“Do you know that he has headaches?  Do you know that his head hurts all the time?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered. 

I do know that.  I can’t tell you how, but I do.  She told me how to start detoxing his body (castor oil packs over his liver and lower abdomen every night for three nights on, three nights off, etc.).  Do you think I’m crazy yet?  What I actually am is desperate.  I do the castor oil packs while he’s asleep at night, and the next day he is a good mood for the entire day.  It’s amazing.  However, if you overdo them (do them every night for too many nights in a row) you detox the body too fast and this produces bad skin rashes.  We found this out the hard way.

During our second appointment, this healer said to me, “I’ve discovered what Cale’s problem is!  I know exactly what his problem is!”

A flash of fresh hot hope rose to the surface of my skin, almost as if my blood had caught fire, and I tried, somewhat successfully, to suppress all the excitement and desperation in my voice, “Oh yeah?!  What?!!”

“He’s a genius!” she exclaimed.

The hope drained instantly, leaving nothing but a small smoldering pool in the bottom of my stomach to make me nauseous.  The doctors say he has the brains of an infant (an eighteen month old to be exact).  But the healer says he has the brains of a genius.  I thought back to the children’s story I’d read to Isabel, and reminded myself of the possibility that someone is whatever someone else sees him/her as.  And I decided, for just a moment, not to snap my mind shut.

“Wow,” I replied, rather unenthusiastically, “a genius huh?”

“Yes,” she said, “The problem is that all of the information, every detail of everything that goes on around him, enters his brain at the exact same time.  It’s very overwhelming.”

Now, I hadn’t told this healer anything at all about the sensory issues, or anything else, that comes along with Autism.  And she had made it perfectly clear when she agreed to see Cale that she didn’t have any experience with or knowledge about Autism.

“Sensory information does, in fact, enter his brain at an overwhelming rate,” I said.

“Everything else does too,” she replied.3.3..3.5.5….5.52.52

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Sorry about that.  The little genius is up now, trying to participate in the production of my blogpost.  He likes to giggle while watching me type, but then he wants to type too.  Where was I?  Oh yeah.  Everything enters his brain at the same time.

“I think that if his body can get healed up, he could be the next Beethoven or Mozart.  In fact, I think he might have the ability to blow both of them straight out of the water.  Does he like music?”

“Uh-huh,” I answered, still unenthusiastically.

“And I think he might be telepathic,” she said.

Now, this stretched my already struggling open-mindedness a little too far.  I was seriously trying not to vomit by that point.  But then, when I put Cale to bed later that night, I looked him in the eyes and thought (I didn’t say it, I only thought it), “If you can read mommy’s mind Cale, point to your nose.”

He didn’t point to his nose.  But he did reach up and put his finger on my nose.  And then he said, “No… no… noo.” 

“Oh, ALRIGHT,” I said to God, and I decided to keep taking him to the crazy healer for a while longer.  If nothing else, it’s a good exercise for finding out just how open minded I can get.  But I’ll have to tell you more about later I’m afraid, because the telepathic genius will be destroying my house soon if I don’t attend to him.

Part One - "You Ain't Seen Nothin Yet"

We’re living in a house where there’s no heat in the littlest bedroom.  And since Cale has to have his own bedroom, while the rest of us have to share bedrooms, he’s the one who gets the littlest bedroom.  So every night, just before I go to bed, I unlock and open Cale’s bedroom door.  I peek in, making sure that he’s sound asleep.  Then I leave the door open so as to let some heat into his room. 

He hasn’t tried to escape from the house during the middle of the night yet, but he has escaped a few times during the day.  It’s incredible how good at it he is.  Once he puts his mind to it, it takes him roughly seven seconds (about half the amount of time it takes for me to pee) to find a way out of the house and get himself into the street.  And we live on a corner now, where people seem to drive by really fast.

We let most of the neighbors know about Cale’s Autism last summer (when we were here for six weeks) after the first time he got out (the time when one of the neighbors almost hit him with her car).  We let them know that he has the gross motor skills of any five year old, yet seems to still have the brains of an infant.  After that we put a lock up high on the front door, but he’s still managed to escape a few times after one of my other kids had forgotten to lock the high lock. 

Cale’s been studying the high lock on the front door lately.  It hasn’t occurred to him yet that all he has to do is push a chair over, but it will soon.  And he knows full well how to unlock the back door, it just hadn’t occurred to him to do so until about three days ago.  Now I find him in the back yard all the time, which is fenced now thanks to my husband.  But we’re still planning to put a high lock on the back door.

In a nut shell, I just don’t sleep very well knowing that Cale’s bedroom door is unlocked at night.  Instead, I wait.  And every night, sometime around 2am, I hear him.  It sets off my mommy emergency alarm every time.  I shoot into a sitting position.  It never ceases to amaze me how I can be floating peacefully around Flathead Lake one second, yet be in my bedroom, upright and listening with my entire body, the very next. 

He usually wanders around for a minute or two, checking each room in house for fairies (I wish!  Actually he just follows some kind of Cale created pattern).  Then he patters his sweet little feet into my bedroom and gets into bed with me to warm up.  

I quite love this actually, because the only time he ever holds still is when he’s asleep.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  He’ll sit in one particular chair in our living room and rock back and forth listening to music for hours, but I don’t get to snuggle him during that time (not without a lot of screaming anyway).  The only time I ever get in the really good snuggles is when he’s chilly and sleeping.

One night, he was wearing the fuzzy, pale blue pajamas that my aunt had gotten him for Christmas.  He’d had a bath earlier and still faintly smelled of lotion and toothpaste, so he was particularly snuggle-able.  Within just a few seconds he had completely taken over my pillow, but I didn’t mind because he was so damn cute I could hardly stand it.  Then he fell asleep. 

I was right in the middle of savoring a long, warm, snuggly snuggle, when it suddenly, and quite dramatically, occurred to me that I had never prayed for Cale.  That’s not entirely true actually, because I thank God for Cale all the time.  But I had never tried to illicit any kind of cure for his Autism before, and I got thinking hard about why that might be.

I’ll tell you why I think it is.  I’ve been taught that Autism isn’t a disease in the traditional sense - that it’s a disorder of sorts instead.  And a disorder, by definition, has no cure.  I’ve been told to accept that my son’s Autism may simply be “who he is.”  Therefore, praying for a cure seemed rather dangerous.  What if the only “cure” for “who he is” would be for him to get hit by a fast moving truck?  That’s why I hadn’t prayed for a cure.

I must admit that I’ve gone back and forth with the disease thing though, because I also cannot imagine that God would create a little person who seems miserable more often than not, and then simply call it “who the little person is.”  It must be a disease, even if only in the spiritual sense of the word (defined as “dis – ease”).  I also know that a person can have Autism and not be miserable all the time.  I’ve seen it in my daughter.  Sure she experiences problems, but she experiences a lot of joy as well.  My son, however, just seems so miserable so much of the time.

I decided to pray.            

My prayer went something like this:  “God - I pray for your will for Cale.  But I’d really like to see you cure anything that’s wrong with him that can be cured, if it be your will.  And I promise that I’ll always love him no matter what.”

The next day, I had a lovely day with my husband.  It was a fluke of splendid nature that my kids had to go back to school the Monday after Christmas break, even though it was a national holiday and my husband had the day off.  A day with my husband WITHOUT my kids!  I love Montana.  Nothing like that glorious day EVER happened in Arizona, EVER.

We spent the morning wandering around downtown.  We ate breakfast in a quiet restaurant, got a screaming deal on used refrigerator, and then went to Lowes to buy supplies for our big “finishing the basement” project (which will include running a heating duct up into Cale’s bedroom).  After we got our errands done, we went to Barnes and Noble to look at home magazines and drink coffee during our last hour of freedom.    

I really didn’t mean to walk by the Autism section because, like I said, it was my last hour of freedom. My intention was to use the bathroom as quickly as possible and then spend the rest of the hour sifting carelessly through home design magazines.  However, a book caught my eye.  It was The Natural Medicine Guide to Autism.  

I opened it up and read, “This book is here to tell parents of Autistic children that you don’t have to accept that there is nothing you can do for your children beyond remedial intervention to help them live more easily with their limitations.  You also don’t have to accept that pharmaceutical drugs are your only “treatment” options.”

That old knot sprung right up out of my stomach.  I wanted to put the book down in favor of a nice architectural history of the Craftsman Bungalow, but I didn’t.  I flipped to another page and read on, “if I interfered with what she was doing by picking her up, she would just stiffen and scream… At three years old Angela was still totally non-verbal.”  (Big deal – my son’s almost six and still totally non-verbal). 

“After hearing about allergies that affect the brain, Donna took Angela, who by then had been diagnosed with Autism, to a doctor who specialized in neurological allergies.  “Now, one year later, Angela is a different child, as if she was never that bad and all the heartache was a collective nightmare for our family.””

Yup.  And this, “Victoria wasn’t seeking help for her daughter’s autism, however – because she didn’t think help existed.  Nothing had worked and now her daughter was a picture of “failure to thrive.” 

“Victoria took her daughter, Hayley, to a clinical nutritionist (a Ph.D. level one by the way), and, after beginning an individualized nutrition program, “What was astonishing was that Hayley’s autistic symptoms began to disappear…. Her twin sister, who was not receiving treatment, remained the same as before.””

If you’re not an autism parent, you might now be thinking, “Sounds like great news!  Did you buy the book?”  But if you’re an Autism parent whose child, at almost six years old, is still communicating exclusively by screaming and hurting people instead of talking, one whose never gotten any REAL answers for your child, are you now feeling what I was feeling at that moment? 

Let me try to put into words how these kinds of stories tend to make me feel… imagine Shirley McClain emerging suddenly from the depths of my skin, leaking profusely out of every one of my pores, and screaming torturously at the top of her lungs, right there in the middle of Barnes and Noble, “GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE PIIIIIIILLLLLL!!!!!!!”  And this is putting how it makes me feel mildly.

I have taken my son to every kind of conventional medical professional that you can possibly imagine (pediatricians, developmental pediatricians - we were once on a waiting list for almost a year to get into, rumor had it, the best developmental pediatrician in Phoenix, but they called the week before our appointment and let me know they’d reorganized and that we wouldn’t be getting in – psychologists, psychiatrists, Autism institutes, cardiologists, allergy specialists, ear nose and throat doctors, G.I.’s, and nutritionists.   

They’ve all managed to diagnose the Autism, and nothing else.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  The allergy doctor informed me that Cale’s allergic to dogs.  But, seeing as how we don’t have a dog, I really don’t see how this is pertinent information.  And the psychiatrist watched Cale for ten whole minutes before putting him on a heavy duty anti-psychotic, which we’ve had to up and up and up to the point in which he has now almost reached an adult sized dose, yet that has, once again, stopped working.  

So my question is - if the kind of help this book describes can be given by doctors, then why haven’t any of our doctors given us, or at the very least directed us towards, such help?  Why have they been so content to not give a shit?  GIVE MY SON THE PIIIIIIIIILLLLLL!!!!   

I was in the middle of Barnes and Noble, with people all around me, walking back to Shane with this stupid book and that old disastrous rage all flared up in me again, holding my eyes wide open so as not to let the tears escape, when they managed to leak out anyway and roll down my face right in front of everybody.  “Oh look!  There’s a crazy lady crying in the middle of Barnes and Noble.”

I got to the table that Shane was sitting at and set the book down on it.  He looked at it for a second and then looked right back at the magazine he was reading, not because he doesn’t care but because he, too, has already seen a hundred varieties of the same damn thing.  It was our last hour of freedom, and he was smart enough not to bother wasting his time.

I bought the book anyway of course.  And, later that afternoon, found myself wandering through the health food store, scratching my head at all the stuff that’s available, and finally deciding to give Cale four times the vitamin B6 than is recommended by the FDA, along with a magnesium supplement, because my new book says this combination is the only way to see B6’s actual potential. 

The problem I encountered immediately upon returning home was this - how do you get that much vitamin B6 into a kid who can’t stand grainy textures or strong flavors, when they don’t have B6 in liquid form?  I mixed the powder in the capsules with a ton of sugar water to sweeten it, but Cale still vomited before getting it down.  And it all caught up to me, all at once – all the things that we’ve tried and the fact that Cale’s no better off as a result of any of it.  I began to cry.

Of course, life always has a funny way of easing my mind at the moment I need it to, if I let it.  Just then, Isabel handed me a book from her school library and insisted that I read it to her.  I stopped and read her the story.  It was called, A Bad Case of Stripes.

In the story, the main character is a little girl who is a people pleaser.  She gives up the one thing she loves the most (lima beans) so that everyone else will like her (because everyone else thinks lima beans are gross).  After this she catches a disease in which she literally becomes a physical manifestation of who others are or what they want to see. 

She starts out with stripes on her skin, but when the kids at school call out, “stars,” the stripes turn into stars, “spots,” they turn into spots, etc.  When the doctors try to help her with medication, she becomes a giant pill.  When the herbalists try to help her, she becomes a giant plant.  And when a new age hippy tells her to relax and become one with her room, she does.  Literally.  The pictures on the wall become her eyes, the bed her mouth, etc.  Finally, a little old lady comes to her house and gives her some lima beans.  She eats them, once again becoming okay with who she is in spite of what others might think, and is cured of her “dis-ease.”

I don’t know if it’s just that this particular story showed up at just the right moment, or what.  I’m mean, I’m an educated woman.  Should I really be getting profound insight from children’s stories?  But I had reached a level of desperation, once again, that left me open to anything.  I took it seriously.  As a result, that little story settled me right down.  And, when I think back on it, I think this might have been my very first step out of the box.  

Just for clarity’s sake, there are two pieces of insight that I got out of that story.  The first was that my son had become who other’s (including myself) had made him.  Autistic.  Non-verbal.  Problematic.  Etc.  And I realized that my son will always be, for me, whatever I see him as.  So I decided to quite thinking that I know what, or who, that is.    What’s important, first and foremost, is that he’s as healthy and happy as possible, so that who he really is (whoever that might be) can shine.    

This freed me from all sorts of fixed ideas about what I think my children with Autism need, and led me to this prayer, “God, help me to forget everything I think I know about my kids, so that I can have an open mind for a new experience.”  Yeah, I stole the basic tenants of this prayer from somewhere, but I can’t remember where so I can’t give proper credit at this time.

The second bit of insight I got out of that story made me giggle at myself.  Reading three pages out of some book and then rushing to the health food store in search one thing that’s a cure for Autism, sort of reminds me of that commercial in which the guy gets on the scale to weigh himself, gets off the scale and runs around the track one time, and then gets back on the scale and hits it (surely it’s broken!) because he hadn’t lost any weight by running around the track one time.  I love that commercial.

I realized that, in addition to setting aside what I think I know, it’s probably going to take some real time and some real research and some real effort to get new insight into my son.  I realized that I can’t do it alone, yet that everyone I turn to for help is going have different kinds of answers, none of which I can afford reject outright even if I get conflicting advice.

I can’t believe everything AND I can’t NOT believe everything.  None of it’s true and all of it’s true, if that makes any sense.  In fact, I’ve come to think that the whole concept of truth might be a bit of a limitation in and of itself.  I don’t have to worry about whether or not something is “true.”  All I have to know is that if I've prayed for God's will, and something is right there in front of me, it’s right there in front of me for some sort of reason.  It may be there to help me examine different possibilities, or it may simply be there to lead me to the next thing.  So I just keep praying for healing (if it be God's will), keep doing the footwork with as open a mind as possible, and keep trusting that God is putting the next right thing in front of me. 

The results have been truly fascinating so far, so much so that if nothing but the journey itself comes out of it, it will have been totally worth it.  I’ll have to tell you all about it in my next blogpost though, because today is Saturday and my kids are all looking at me like, “What are we doing together today mom?”  It’s time for me to go and put up a tent in the back yard and teach my kids how to pretend camp.  Maybe we’ll sleep in tent in the backyard tonight, even though it’s still pretty cold outside.  I bet I would get some really good snuggles in then!