I haven't posted about Autism lately, so I know all of you who read my blog (crickets chirping) for my deep insights into Autism (dead silence) have been waiting.

Hutton went to a new doctor Monday. She's a naturopath, but also a DAN! doctor who treats a few of my friends' kids. So, Monday the boys and I drove out to Seattle (this is post Spawn of Satan morning) and spent an hour and a half with our new doctor. I now have to get all the labs figured out for Hutton. We did the same labs a few years back with another doctor, but since Hutton's pediatrician seems to have not sent on his records to the new doctor, and it's been a few years, we figured it was worth re-testing. Insurance covers some of them, so that's good. It doesn't cover the new test that tests for metals in the blood, but the doctor recommends that before she'll see if Hutton needs chelation. It does cover the urine and stool testing. That's right. Did I mention how much I love collecting stool samples, being sure to "Take multiple samples from different areas of the collection tray"? Yep, you dig around in poop and get multiple little chunks to cram into a couple of vials. And, you get to do it two days in a row! Joy! I do like this bit:
Caution: Avoid contact of the skin and eyes with the fluid in the vials. For eye contact, flush with water thoroughly for 15 minutes. For skin contact, wash thoroughly with soap and water. For accidental ingestion, contact your physician immediately. If you accidentally did this BEFORE the poop was in there, that would be one thing, but after? I think you'd need more than contacting your physician.

Back to the doctor. Of course, I blushed and looked guilty when she started asking me about my non-doctor-supervised chelation of Hutton over the past year or so. Why do I always let doctors, even the naturopathic ones, make me feel stupid about decisions I've made, that I have researched thoroughly? Sure, I used the Internet for research, but it's not like I was looking on the "Chelation for Dummies - No, Really, We Only Want Stupid People Here" site. No, I used a technique a PhD in chemistry used to chelate himself, using ALA and DMSA. Now, oral chelation isn't the fastest or best way to chelate, but when your son's first "autism expert" doctor wants to just sit on his ass and "wait and see" how ABA therapy goes, while the very important young years of my son's brain development tick by...no thanks. I'll just do it on my own. It's hard to tell just how much Hutton improved from my DIY chelation, but I wasn't able to do metals testing of his blood. Though you can buy DMSA online, I wasn't able to track down any black market blood testing kits. And even if I could, I wouldn't have been able to get blood from my child to test. I'm squeamish, and I don't really go for injuring my children with lancets.

So, I'll try to collect my son's urine and stool sometime this weekend, and get to a blood-drawing lab next week for the fun part. Then we'll wait several weeks for the test results.

Tuesday, we saw another of Hutton's new doctors: the cranio-sacral therapist. This doctor basically massages Hutton's head and pokes around on his abdomen. Through this, though, she can tell Hutton has definite food allergies (she also wants to at least cut out cheese from his diet. Damn. More support for the difficult GFCF diet!) Her husband comes in and helps do some stuff with Hutton's arms at the end of the appointment. We've been going weekly for 3 weeks, and so far, it seems to help. Hutton was very calm and talking in much longer sentences the weekend after his first appointment. It may sound kinda kooky, but we'll see if he continues to improve. I'm not closed off to anything that might help Hutton. (Well, I'd probably turn down a Evangelistic faith healer. Matt-Man's posts from the last couple of days have reminded me that I totally forgot about the faith healers! I will probably avoid things that involve snake handling, as well.)

A big plus to the cranio-sacral therapy: afterwards, the husband gives the boys BALLOON ANIMALS! These are very exciting. Tuesday, Hutton wanted a dog, and Harrison requested a duck. The husband couldn't quite remember how to do a duck, so it didn't turn out as well as the dog. Here's a picture:

Hubby saw this "duck" on the kitchen counter. I told him it was a duck, and he commented that he didn't think it was supposed to be a cock and balls, but that's what it looked like.