Functional Doc Apt Results…

We finally did it. Last month in April, we took Alley to his first Functional Doctor appointment about an hour and fifteen minutes away from our house. It has been something that my husband and I have always talked about and wanted to try for him. I guess you can say another thing checked off our Autism list of routes to try.

The actual first appointment was back in April (which I think I wrote about a couple blogs ago). When we went there, it was your typical medical appointment. Checked in, waited, got taken back, measurements of our guy done by the nurse, blood pressure taken (which has NEVER been able to be completed until that day) and then the doctor came in, Dr. Jacki. She was very kind, warm hearted and didn't take her eyes off of Alley. She would ask us questions starting from birth about him, while still watching his every move. The questions kept coming...pregnancy... delivery.... infancy... toddlerhood... every detail she wanted, we gave. You see Functional Doctors are very expensive and I wanted to squeeze every ounce of what we could get from that appointment. She continued with her questions, and eventually mosied on over to Alan's direction. Tried to do some physical examinations of him, nothing too in depth, but all in all a pretty standard appointment.

Then she laid it on us, those words, WE NEED TO DO BLOODWORK. Gahhhh my heart sank, we didn't have his Valium. We didn't know he would be getting bloodwork done THAT same say. Yikes. I wanted to say no, not today. We can take him to a lab once he has his Valium

( Developmental Pediatrician gave it to us for things like this, bloodwork, airplane rides, dentist appointments etc. things that would be super traumatic for our guy). But my husband was on board with getting it over with that day, and since he would ultimately be the one holding Alan in the lab area as I paced outside the door practically biting off every single fingernail I had, then I agreed to it. We just wanted to get it done. Alley got his blood drawn, six tubes of blood filled up for the kid. He was bruised on both arms for a while. Tears were shed, yelps were very loud, and he was trying to get out of it Hudini style. But I know we needed this to happen. This bloodwork could be the missing puzzle piece for our guy. We have always added to Alley inside. A lot of supplements, nutrition and Homeopathy, anything that would give him a chance at a happpier life. We have never seen what's actually going on inside of him that we need to take out. Food toxins, environmental toxins, mold, inflammation, metals , every single detail we would be able to see from those six tubes of blood. She also ran a urine analysis as well, and well that's another story (a humorous one) of us trying to catch his urine in this tube! But this bloodwork was key and we knew it was!

Fast forward to this week. We finally got the bloodwork results back. They are beyond interesting to us. He's all over the place. I mean all over. His poor poor little boy body. He has metals in blood, toxins from food and environmental toxins. His blood has loads of inflammation everywhere. This little boy, gosh my heart breaks even writing this. This little boy, has NOT even had a chance to thrive. It cuts me deep saying this, but he has not even had a chance. She said "he has one of the most all over the place bloodwork I've seen" Meaning he was high in many of the areas she was testing for. Usually kids are high in one or two areas, maybe multiple things in that same area. But he was high in many areas!! Part of me broke into pieces, again, for the 100th time. It's hard not to feel like most of this is my fault, even though I know it's not. It still hurts me that his body and brain are just hosts for things that should be filtered out naturally.

Ending the virtual appointment, I took a damn breath. It was SO much information to take in and process all at onece. Dr. Jacki was hopeful though, which gives us hope we can fix some of this. She said "we have to get his body healthier on a mitochondrial level. We have to get every single cell and cell wall healthier before we can start taking out (detoxing) the toxins and inflammation that should not be there." So that's our plan. Get him healthy on a mitochondrial level, work on his cellular health and then in eight weeks, hopefully we can start detoxing some of this trash out of him. It's all very interesting how the body and mind work. We are learning so much along our journey and we continue to be open to all possibilities for Alley. We now have the information we have always wondered about, we have answers.

Here's to hoping we can get these supplements in him that target mitochondrial and brain health, so we can move into the detoxing phase. She said it's going to be a long hual, about a year to year and a half to fully detox him. But if slow and steady wins the race, then we will go as slow as he needs us to.

With Grace,

This Autism Mama