The Left Side of the Moon

Autism

We spent yesterday morning at the Autism Walk. This is the second year we've done it, and it's really a great time. There are lots of fun activities for the kids. We had some great buttons made with pictures of me and Trouble and Blackstone and LT. There was a bouncy house, obstical course, face painting, arts and crafts. We do it as part of a team Curls organizes.

I know many families who have been touched by autism, language disabilities and speech delays. It is absolutely astounding and terrifying to me how prevalent this has become in our society. It is now 1 in 150 children who are diagnosed with some form of autism. To me, arguments that this is due simply to a broader definition and higher awareness of the disease don't quite justify the sheer magnitude of it.

The CDC's assurances that there is no link between immunizations and autism are not all that reassuring to me. There are many parents out there who have been arguing there's a connection for years. Since my pediatrician is homeopathic, immunizations are not given unless the parent wants them. Trouble started out with a different pediatrician, so his immunization course had been started as normal, and we decided to continue it, with one exception. He didn't get his MMR boosters until he was five. Dr. H's personal belief is that there may be a connection between the MMR booster and autism for children who have a history of autoimmune disease in their family. Blackstone and I both have autoimmune diseases in the family, so we decided to procrastinate the MMR. LT has yet to get his two MMR boosters, normally given at 18 and 24 months. He'll get them to start kindergarten. On their pre-school forms, I noted that we abstained from the MMR booster for religious reasons. Why religious reasons? Because that's how Dr. H told me I could get around it. I might have even been able to do this with the public school, but I wasn't as worried about Trouble getting the booster at five. He's what? like tripled in size? So the dose isn't quite as concentrated in his little body. And it's broken up the quantity of vaccines he received as an infant. Some concern is that it is not any particular booster, but the vast number of vaccines that children receive in a short time span.

Now, I haven't found any research that specifically supports Dr. H's theory, but there is more and more information out there supporting the concept that for children who have some sort of genetic pre-disposition, that immunizations or some environmental stimulus can then trigger autism. And as recently as last month, one family has won a case that vaccinations triggered their daughter's autism. Now is it the MMR booster, or is it that too many vaccines are given too close together, or is it the thimerosal, or is it like the CDC claims, that it's simply speculation that there's a connection because language development and the timing of the vaccinations coincide?

I don't claim to have any of the answers, but as a parent of two children who thus far seem to be successfully beating the odds, I'm wondering - am I just lucky, or does it have something to do with the fact that we've chosen to delay their MMR boosters? I personally know four families who have had one of their children tested for autism and have or have had those children in speech therapy for language delay. And I don't have that many friends. Now, every child is unique, and by no means are any of these children alike, and most of these children have not been diagnosed with autism. It's just scary to me,  that it's something like half of my friends have had a child tested for autism due to language delays. This just doesn't seem to be how it was when I was a kid. It just seems the CDC should be spending a good deal of time and money figuring out what the causes could be. And call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but I'd recommend to anyone with a baby right now, wait on that MMR vaccine. I'm not saying get all paranoid and don't vaccinate your baby. Because I'm sure that's the CDC's fear, if any connection is ever found, that people will stop vaccinating altogether and we'll start having outbreaks of diseases we haven't seen in decades, and overwhelm hospitals. But what is really the risk of splitting the MMR into three separate shots? Really? We're that terrified our kid's going to get the mumps if we spread it out for a year more? Because I'm actually much more terrified of my kid developing autism. The chances seem to be much higher and at least we have ways of treating and curing the mumps or measles. It seems about as likely that my kid will die of the mumps between 18 mos and five-years-old as my hitting the Power Ball, and I don't even play Power Ball.

I always in my life, search for the most reasonable path. I try to find balance in everything - between work and family, saving and spending, eating the foods I love and keeping my weight under control, modern medicine and homeopathy. It just doesn't seem reasonable to me, all the vaccinations we pump our kids full of in such a short time span. I believe vaccinations are necessary and they serve a very viable purpose, but I also believe there can be too much of a good thing.

Falling into Homeopathy

I've never considered myself the earthy, crunchy type. Blackstone, yes, in some ways. But me, I'm a city girl born and bred. So the fact that I now find myself taking my boys to a homeopathic pediatrician is a bit odd. That I drive them out to the middle of no-where, down a dirt road to a hundred-year-old farm house for their office visits, well that's just bizarre.

I met Dr. H (H for homeopathy) way before he became our pediatrician, when he treated me for depression. He's actually pretty commonly known in the state. While a good percentage of people will look at me sideways when I tell them we use a homeopathic pediatrician, you never know when someone's going to say, "Oh, I've seen him," or "My sister uses him." Dr. H was recommended to me by someone Blackstone worked with at the time. My mood swings were pretty erratic, I was having trouble sleeping, had crying jags for no reason, and was generally all-around miserable. However, I didn't want to go on medication, it had that whole stigma for me and it's common knowledge most of that stuffs not good for your sex drive (at least that's what I'd read/heard). So, I'd been refusing to see a doctor about it. I was still teaching then, and I figured after I quit, it would get better. But then Blackstone asked me to see Dr. H., and I couldn't really come up with a good reason not to go, so I went. I spent a good 30 minutes or more being grilled about my physical, mental and emotional state. Everything from what I ate and drank, my sleeping habits to mood swings, energy levels, bathroom habits, and what I wanted to improve on. The concept behind homeopathy (in my own words) is that in order for the body to be healthy , your mental, emotional and physical health must be in balance. If any one of those areas if off, then they're all off. If your body is out of balance, if there's anything wrong, then that can be corrected by introducing the necessary minerals/remedies into the body.

After my thorough grilling, Dr. H put me on Aurum, which is a gold compound. Who knew my problem was that I needed more gold in my life. He also suggested I stop drinking coffee and not use anything menthol. I actually did go off coffee, one of several times in my life, and I took the Aurum and I felt better. I gradually started introducing coffee after a time, though less of it, and I kept taking the Aurum until I got pregnant. At that point I stopped because even though it is unlikely it would have caused any issues with the pregnancy and I had asked my OB and Dr. H., I figured if I could, I'd rather not be taking in anything I didn't need while I was pregnant. And funny enough, while pregnancy is known to make women moody and emotional, I was the most level I'd been in my entire life. I had slight case of post-partum after Trouble was born and went back on the Aurum again, which helped as it had before, but eventually I went back off and haven't felt I needed it since. But if I did find myself emotional, weepy, and lying in a puddle on the floor, I'd definitely use it again. Now, I DO NOT recommend anyone who has depression use Aurum, that's not how homeopathy works. I would suggest that you consider seeing a homeopathic specialist and have your own work up done, if you're looking for a less traditional means of treatment.

So you might think that since Dr. H is a licensed pediatrician and he had been a big help to me, I would have picked him immediately to be our pediatrician. I didn't. I was not into the idea of driving all the way out to the middle of no-where, and felt rather confident I could find a local pediatrician that would fulfill our needs. And we did have a great pediatrician. She was a lovely woman and a good pediatrician, but Trouble was not your ordinary baby, and modern medicine was not really being very helpful. He was a terrible nurser and had to be supplemented with formula. He spit up at least half of everything he ate, and by spit up, I mean projectile vomited after every feeding. He and I passed back a constant case of yeast infection/thrush while he was nursing. He constantly had skin irritations, baby acne, eczema and cradle cap. He was constipated since the moment he was born and we tried everything and took him to see every specialist. We gave him prune juice, aloe vera juice, caro syrup, goats milk, cod liver oil, olive oil, warm baths, thermometer and vaseline, suppositories, laxatives and enemas (and I'm probably leaving some things out). We drove him to a special physical therapist in CT once a month. We saw pediatric gastro-enterologist at Hasbro several times. Nothing helped. Everyone told us his constipation was a mental issue, not a physical one. And they were right, because once he had the mental capacity to choose between going himself and getting an enema, it got better. But before that happened it got so bad he'd only go once a week when we gave him the enema.

Add on top of this his inability to hold down an antibiotic, if you got him to swallow it, 30 seconds later he'd vomit it back up. He developed allergies and asthma, his eyes were so bad during spring they swelled so he could barely open them. By the time he was about six months old, we'd switched him to Dr. H., and that has worked well for us. Dr. H. may not be crazy about prescribing antibiotics or steroids, but he will when they're necessary. But seeing that these standard treatments didn't tend to work well for Trouble, I was fine with that. And when I call Dr. H. at 9 PM on Saturday night and tell him that if I don't a get a prescription of liquid steroid tonight, Trouble will be in the ER by morning, he calls it in that night and I'll have the prescription by 11. And LT, he's still yet to have been on an antibiotic in his life, and I'd like to keep it that way unless he really needs it.