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Dear Family and Friends,
Many of you have emailed asking regarding how Derek is doing, and my apologies for not getting back to you, and apologies for such an informal letter. I just have not had the time to respond to each one, so I hopefully can just cover all at once.
Derek underwent a thoroughly evaluation at a local hospital in October that specializes in children. It was a day long process, meeting with developmental pediatricians, occupational therapists and audiologists. They did confirm that Derek is autistic, but falls into a high functioning category. They left us with many recommendations and suggestions which we are working on currently. The diagnosis wasn't a huge shock, more of a relief as we've been pushing for answers for so long.
Our journey to work towards helping Derek is going to lead us on a path of many choices. We've found that within the autism community many different beliefs and ideas as to why and how to fix things. Some are basic therapies, some are intense therapies, and others are biomedical approaches. We feel that attacking this at all angles is what is going to work for us. Even though many of the experts disagree with each other, the one thing they do agree on is to do whatever it is as young as possible and the child will have a greater chance at having a better recovery. So we are starting now, have started really. We've gone the biomedical route first as its been the more simple of the two, and Derek will begin a process called chelation within the next couple of weeks. Basically this process will remove heavy metals from his system. Thankfully a doctor back east with an autistic son has made up a formula that is transdermal, meaning it can be rubbed on the skin so that becomes one less pill/vitamin/mineral we have to coax down Derek's ever discerning palate.
Therapy is there, and available, all one needs to do is decide what works best for their family. At present we've been suggested that 20-25 hours of therapy per week is good. The bad part is coming up with the funds to do this therapy. It turns out though Oregon has one of the highest autism rates in the country, its also the worst state for accessing any therapy through the schools or respite programs. We've found local groups of other parents and what happens is parents either pay for this out of pocket, incur insurmountable debt, or leave the state. We are looking at all options right now. I'm not sure what we are going to do.
My apologies again for not corresponding with everyone, my head has been buried deep into chelation methods and therapy leads. I come up for air to spend time with my family and that's about it anymore. I've had to abandon some desires and dreams but I'm sure those will be there when our little guy is doing better.
I have started one of those online blogs, but I've been terrible at keeping it updated, but it may be the best information you'll get out of me at times so please check in there when you can, maybe now that I've told you all I'll have greater pressure to keep it recent. The URL is http://www.livejournal.com/users/stacy_
For those that can offer me ideas, or put me in contact with someone you know in Oregon who might have ideas or suggestions I'm open to everything. To those who I've been corresponding with for the past 6 months on GFCF diets, chelation and everything else thank you so much for your help so far, you have been wonderful and so informative. Please let me know how your ASD kids are doing, I haven't heard from many of you in a while, I'm sure you are all just as busy as we are.
If anyone has any desire to donate to charity or into those bands everyone wears (as in the Lance Armstrong type) please think of autism research, no one in particular just research, anything to help us all find out how to help our kids.
Our love to all and may you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
~Stacy
