Catch Up Post

I've been working out lately. I made it to the gym on Monday in time to go to the "Amazing Abs!" class. Twenty minutes of core work. Hey, I can handle twenty minutes, right? I mean, Harrison was born in less than twenty minutes, for Pete's sake (heh-heh - I used that one instead of another name!). Surely doing twenty minutes of crunches and such can't be that bad.

Yes it is, and don't call my Shirley! I did the beginner level of all the exercises. We did half the class on the exercise ball, the other half on the mat. I knew I'd be sore later. After class, I ran on the treadmill. By the time I got Harrison out of the childcare, I was already feeling my abs tightening up uncomfortably. And it's not like I don't have a 3 inch layer of fat over the top of my abs, so I didn't at least have some nice ab puckering to look forward to. Nope, you really can't tell my abs got any work.

Tuesday night I played soccer in the freezing rain. Welcome to the spring season! We only had 10 people, which means playing one short and not having any subs. We got our asses kicked handily, and I headed home with the heat blasting in the car, and I was still freezing and shaking when I got home thirty minutes later. That's one thing about wicking underlayers -- when they get rained on, they do a great job of holding cold water! After a very long, very hot bath, I felt better, but my abs were still sore from Monday.

Wednesday I very foolishly did the abs class again. I figured it would help me get in the habit of going to the class. It's only twice a week, so how hard can it be to get in the habit? My abs were still sore. I did the beginner stuff again, and my abs are still sore today. Plus my legs are sore from soccer.

Let's see, what else? Discover Magazine has a great article on Autism in the April issue. I bought two copies, and gave one to Hubby to read. It has lots of information on biomedical treatments for Autism. I told Hubby he had to read it, since it's "scientific" and he was a chemistry major. He read it. I asked him what he thought. He just made a noise, like, "Mmmm." I have no idea what that means. Oh well. I'll continue taking Hutton to different doctors, doing difficult diets and trying everything that sounds remotely helpful until he's better. I'm not expecting a full recovery, but when I think how far he's come, I'm excited. Oh, and Hubby also told me Hutton can't have the cranio-sacral therapy anymore. We've been going weekly. Because it's weekly, and it's not like a dramatic overnight change, it's hard to tell how useful it is. But, I like the doctor, and she has been great support for the dietary changes and says she can tell Hutton's improving. Because we have a co-pay, though, Hubby didn't like it. Oh well. Have to work on him more.

Also, for those who watched American Idol -- WTF? Sanjaya's performance was....OK, since my first post on American Idol, things have changed. I now find Sanjaya quite lacking in the voice department, and in fact, he annoys me. Brandon is gone. Melinda is my fave. Jordin is my second place. LaKisha third. The guys are seriously lacking. I was shocked Stephanie was voted off. SANJAYA needed to be gone after that horrific version of "You Really Got Me." I fast-forwarded through the second half of the song, so unless it changed dramatically in the second half, I stand by my initial, "It sucked hard!" The only redeeming part of his performance was the crying preteen girl in the audience the cameras kept panning to.

Oh, and even though I love Melinda, I have read comparisons of her to Arthur's sister, DW. I have to agree, the resemblance is there. What do you think?

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.