Dope

No cure exists for autism.  That much we know.  But something that I haven't really discussed much in this blog, and that perhaps bears looking at now, is how autism is treated organically.  And by that I mean, what do parents and caregivers do to alleviate the symptoms of autism other than take their kids to therapy sessions and seek out specialized education?

You can't really treat autism as a whole.  It's a mystery, it's an enigma, we have only scratched the surface of it.  And each child is different.  What one autistic child does may be unique to that child.  However, there are main symptoms of autism that many children share, that often can be alleviated with the help of medication.  Some of these symptoms include:

OCD (obsessive compulisive disorder)

Repetitive behaviors

Aggression and irritability

Mood swings

Self-injurious behaviors, such as picking at a sore 

Anxiety and general nervousness

Disrupted sleep

We have personal experience with all of the things on this list through our son, Logan.  He has exhibited all of these at one time or another.  

There are some people that are violently opposed to putting a young child on any kind of anti-psychotic medication.  There are many people who point out the risks of medicating children with drugs such as Risperdione and Naltrexone, because medicating children with these types of drugs is not an exact science.  Children change all the time. They grow, their weight changes, they may not respond to the medication the way that is expected.  And many of these medications have side affects such as weight gain, increased irritability, and eventually, tolerance.  This means that over time, the child will develop a tolerance to the drug and it ceases to be effective.  And some people believe that it's just plain wrong to give your kid a medication like that, and that a good ol' fashion whippin' will do the same thing.  These people are ignorant and have never had to raise a disabled child.

It's a difficult and sometimes heartbreaking conundrum.  Do I medicate my kid and watch him get heavier and perhaps, even , sit back while his personality changes?  Or do I not medicate him and watch while he beats his head against the wall or engages in multiple temper tantrums a day?  Which should I do?  I can try something else.  Perhaps change his diet.  Perhaps move out and separate him from his siblings.  Perhaps have him committed.  You see, folks, it's not that easy.  It's not like treating a bacterial infection.  "This medication isn't helping so I'm going to go back and get a different one."  It doesn't work that way.  There aren't many specialists in the state of Texas who will treat something like this.  A normal pediatrician, in my experience, hesitates to mess around  with these types of medications.  You can't call up the autism doctor and set up and appointment for your kid.  In the state of Texas, good help is hard to find if you're looking for someone who will evaluate your child and then recommend a medication that's appropriate for what he or she is going through.

In conclusion I will acknowledge that yes, there are side effects.  Yes, sometimes they are detrimental.  Yes, you should exercise extreme caution when choosing a medication for your child.  But you are also the only one who knows what is best for your child, and despite what other people may say, that is what you have to rely on.

No Room at the Inn

Do you remember that a couple of entries ago, I mentioned that we were going to get Logan re-evaluated?  The purpose of this was that it had been so long since his last evaluation, and this person we took him to said that she might have some ideas that could help him.  Well, today I met with this doctor and got the results back of Logan's evaluation.

And it said that Logan was autistic.

Ha!  Got you.  Of course he's autistic!  I won't go into all the details of this test.  Suffice it to say that no new information came up. What was incredibly sad, and incredibly frustrating, is that this doctor, who had said she had some ideas that could help us, changed her mind and told us that we needed to go to some outfit two hours away from us.  That they could do a bang-up job with our son, and that she wanted to "wait" on having him come to see her.  Oh, and by the way?  This other place does not accept insurance.  No big deal.  It will run us in the thousands.  When I got home I checked out the place she was talking about.  The word "autism" did not appear anywhere on their website.  We had been kindly shown the door and asked not to come back for a very long time.

I only feel mildly disappointed.  You see, this is the story in the state of Texas.  We hang out at the bottom of the pool when it comes to services for the mentally ill and developmentally delayed.  More often than not, people with a child like ours are pointed in one direction, and then another, and then another.  No one has the time or know-how to deal with someone who falls in the severe range of the autistic spectrum. Parents of autistic children knock on doors and are told, "We can't help you here, but maybe this other place can."  And it becomes a journey of nightmarish proportions that lasts a lifetime.

Why does Logan need to go?  You ask.  He's doing fine. He goes to school.  It's not that he NEEDS to go or something bad will happen.  It's that children like Logan do need a lot of extra help.  They have such a complexity of communication and  behavioral issues that finding someone who specializes in that is like searching for the holy grail...it's elusive, and legend tells that such a things exists.  It will take you forever to search for it, and you may never find it.  However, if you do, you better hold onto it because it may be the only one!

Did anything positive come out of this scenario?  One thing that I can tell.  In all the testing she came up with one thing that sticks with me:  Logan is happy at home.  Logan is most secure at home.  Logan wants mommy to play more.  And perhaps this much is true...perhaps no one can help him more than his family.

And that, at least, is something we CAN do.

I Ruin Pants.

Many children with autism display obsessive-compulsive tendencies, some to a greater degree than others.  These behaviors and tendencies may range from wanting to wear the same type of outfit or clothing every day, to needing to look up information about trains or cars or vacuum cleaners.  What happens when these behaviors are blocked and the child is not allowed satisfy their compulsions?  Frustration occurs.  Anger occurs.  Screaming, yelling, kicking, hitting,  tantrums, self-harm...I have seen it all.

Each child with autism is different.  They display traits that are similar but in different ways, and they don't all do the same things.  For my son, clothing is important.  It's important in the sense that he is very uncomfortable in long pants, especially rough materials like denim or anything with a tight waistband.  He would, if we allowed him, wear shorts year round, rain or sun, snow or sleet.  The temperature appears to make no difference to him.

Tomorrow it's supposed to get very cold here.  Logan's teacher, and myself, both talked with him and explained that tomorrow, he would have to wear long pants.  My big mistake was leaving a pile of laundry on the table!  We came home from school before leaving again to pick up my oldest daughter, and during the short time we were home,  he found a pair of scissors and a pair of cargo pants (one of the few pairs of long pants he owns) and proceeded to cut a hole in them!

He immediately told me what he had done.  He said, "I ruin pants."  He thought if he cut a hole in them, then he wouldn't have to wear them.  Knowing that he might have to wear those pants the next day upset him so much, that not only did he cut a hole in them, he began keening and hitting things (including himself) for the duration of the afternoon.  It's still going on as we speak.  Even after I removed all the laundry and told him the pants were gone, he was still upset.

This is an unvarnished truth about autism.  This is one of the not very pleasant facts of this life...that your child will ask you, over and over and over again to the point of exhaustion, for something he is fixated on. He will get angry and loud and destructive if his compulsions are frustrated.  And it will take him hours to calm down.

What does a parent do when their autistic child acts like this?  I don't know what other parents do.  I know what I used to do.  I used to get really angry. I used to yell at my kid.  I used to cry.  Now I just wait it out because if having Logan has taught me anything, it's that every trial is temporary, and this one, too, shall pass.  The other thing I do is just stick to my plan.  I move on to the next thing I was going to do.  It doesn't matter if he's screaming or not.  It doesn't matter if he's angry.  It's like shopping for groceries in a hurricane, people.  The wind may rage and the rain may pour but I'll be damned if I get cheated out of my trip to the store.