A Little Update…

It has been a little bit since I have written a blog. With school starting and all kinds of practices and places to be, along with my preseason starting, life has just gotten in the way. But I figured it would be a good time to write a little update about the detox we have Alan on.

So all in all it is still going well in my eyes. Physically he has tolerated it better then I expected. The physical downfall is getting seven to eight supplements in him a day, orally. We have gotten it down to a science and he complies some days and others he takes off running because let's be honest, these absolutely taste like dog poop. I'm not kidding. This is where I struggle most is the fact that he has to swallow this stuff every morning. The only thing that I tell myself is this is the way to get the junk out of him that does not belong there. It's such a mind game being a caretaker. The balance of hating what you have to do with your child at times, but in your heart and gut you know it's the right thing for them. So damn hard.

He is still holding onto "Mama" which we are thrilled about. It is still on demand and it is not yet where he will initiate but hey, as long as it is still here, I am a happy camper. He's trickling other sounds/words in there as well. He will try "Oooo" for GO and "paapa" for Papa. This is a direct result of this detox process. He has never had this much verbal for this extended period of time. We are so grateful for that and hoping to build and continue on his verbalizations. It hasn't been all rainbows and sunshine though. We bumped up his dosage of what we call the Toxic Binder about a month ago. It was within a week of doing that, we saw a pretty aggressive and angry Alan come out. We virtually met with the Functional Doctor and she wanted to scale the binder back. This is what he takes so he can excrete the toxins in his body. It physically binds to them and moves them out. She said when we detox adults too fast it comes out as physical symptoms. When we detox children too fast, you see the repercussions behaviorally. So we all decided that peeling back the toxin binder to the original dose was the best decision. He still had some flare ups that were unusual. But all in all it got better once we slowed it down again. At this rate it'll take us three years to get through one whole detox, but everything we do is on Alley's terms, and this will be no different.

We have supplemented in the mean time with our favorite essential oil rollers depending on his day, I'll use his calm or his happy, which seem to help. We use his sleep one every night on his feet because we hit a rough patch with sleeping for a while. He was not falling asleep until between 12:20-1:00 every single night. We were in a rut and finally have gotten him to a decent bed time with the start of school. We have also started dry brushing his limbs every day to assit with draining his lymphatic system and regulating him as well. All these different actions have helped our guy little by little. We see a big difference in him then a couple weeks ago and it's amazing to see. I know these little tricks will help for a bit and then we will be back to the drawing board. That's just how life with Alan goes.

His next Functioanl Doctor appointment is coming early October. We are supposed to be giving him double doses of his supplements by now and we are not. I know that is on the horizon and next step in this process but I would be a huge liar if I said I wasn't nervous and very apprehensive about changing dosages again. I have to trust the process and see what she says and I know this in my heart, but if things go a little crazy again, I have no problem trusting my mama gut and pulling back.

Pictured below is Alan on his first day of third grade! Such a big guy.

With Grace,

This Autism Mama