Oh how time flies when someone in our household is sick! Just when I thought we were clear of it all, I got a phone call from school to tell me that BuddyBoy had quite a temperature and was lethargic. I picked him up early and the Ibuprofen I got into him helped with the temperature, but by that evening it spiked again, and he stopped drinking.

This is another area where severe Autism differs from the norm – if it was one of my other children, I would have taken them in to the doctor’s office. I would have encouraged them to keep drinking and explained that they need fluids when they have a temperature. I would have given them homeopathics and Nurofen to help, telling them this would not be negotiable. With BuddyBoy however, it’s a different story.

A visit to the doctor is never a happy occasion – he hates the waiting room and freaks out in the doctor’s office. Getting a look in his ears is not too bad because between two of us we can hold him down enough to get him in a head lock so the doctor can have a very quick look. His throat however is a different story – no matter how hard we’ve tried, we’ve been unable to prise his jaw open to look in there, let alone get his tongue out of the way so you can see his tonsils.

When BuddyBoy is not drinking, that means we can’t get medicine into him. Hubby had to come home from work during the day, and hold BuddyBoy down enough so that I could try and syringe some Ibuprofen into him. Half of it got spat out, and despite Hubby’s help, I still got bruises from being kicked – we usually need three of us to hold him down but it traumatises the other children so we generally avoid asking them for help. The Ibuprofen we use has to be compounded – he gets an allergic rash to the over-the-counter one, so we pay $50 for something that would normally cost $19, and of course can’t get anything back for that.

Thankfully we got enough into him that it started working on the temperature, and he slept for the rest of the day. The next day was a lot better though still with a temp, but at least he was drinking again, so we were able to avoid a hospital visit and get some more medication into him. He’s now a lot better but still not completely well. Being at school this year has really taken its toll on him health wise, as most of the children in his room have been sick a lot this term, so they just keep reinfecting each other. Hopefully school holidays for the next two weeks will help everyone recover and the next term will be a lot healthier!

In keeping with my traditional updates for changes we’ve seen since my last post, here they are:

• BuddyBoy waved at one of his classroom teacher aides when we said goodbye. He’s made several attempts to wave at us again, and has said “goodbye”, “see ya” and even “hello, hello” to us at home. “Puhlease” often comes out when he wants something, in particular when he’s not getting it – he’s obviously realised that saying please may help him to get his way.
• One of his sisters was doing a magic trick for him. She held a foam block in her hands, showed it to him and then covered it up. She blew onto her hands and then showed him that her hands were empty. He looked very surprised and copied her saying, “it’s gone!”. She asked him, “where has it gone?” and he pointed at her mouth. She showed him her empty mouth, and he said, “it gone”. Then she slipped the block back in her hands, blew on them, and then showed him the block, and he said, “there it is!”.
• That same sister was watching Bob The Builder with him the next night. At the point where a bicycle gets flattened, BuddyBoy jumped up and said, “oh no”. His sister repeated it, and then covered her eyes with her hands. After a minute, she heard BuddyBoy giggle, and he came over to her, pulled her hands away from her eyes, and said, “it’s okay”.
• He was handling disappointment much better, but over the last few days this has once again regressed slightly. He’s now often vocalising (loudly and repetitively) when it doesn’t go right the first time, and will continue this behaviour until it’s fixed. Let’s just say it’s not great when you’ve got a headache.
• He was rifling through my drawer and found a stash of PECS cards. He pulled out the yellow “Break” card, said, “Break” and looked at me for confirmation. This card has only been introduced this Term at school, half of which he’s been home sick. So he’s obviously picked it up extremely quickly – he has also used it at school to get a time out, but we’ve never heard him say the word before.
• He is interacting much more with us. He pulled me into his room to play, grabbed my shoe and with a mischievous smile on his face, went to put it on his foot, saying, “it’s a perfect fit!” and laughing afterwards. Which means he’s copying what he’s seen on TV, but in a context that makes sense, and he turns it into a mutual joke. At one stage in the afternoon he’d tucked himself up with his blanket, and I asked him if it was sleep time. He replied by singing, “go to sleep, go to sleep” which is part of the lullaby I have sung him since birth, as a cue that it’s time to sleep now. I laughed and started singing it, and he yelled and said, “no sleep” as it obviously wasn’t bedtime! He’s also been asking to go and visit Omi, who he’s always been very close to.
• One night he wanted “Pizza” at dinner time. I had to inform him that we didn’t have any and eventually he switched to, “piece of toast”.

It’s now been two months since we started on our IonCleanse by AMD protocol. We’ve had a few hiccups along the way, one of the more recent ones being that we needed to keep up certain minerals, and haven’t really been doing that with our girls. We’ve also increased the length of cleansing time for our boys, but decreased the number of times we cleanse for our SuperBoy, and he seems to be handling that better. For the analytically minded, here are the results: