rubenpants.com - a journey…

The last two weeks have been test time in the Park-Alvarez household. These are not written or oral tests, nothing you can say with certainty that you passed or failed. These tests are medical, and spiritual. The first round was all about collecting my son’s various fluids and semi-fluids, and shipping them off to labs in the United States. This was a trial by itself, and covered everything from selecting a reasonably-priced carrier, to getting through the necessary red tape, to timing the pee/poop/blood collection so that it could be sent on a Monday and therefore had a prayer of reaching its designated lab before its expiration. So far, the results have been less than spectacular: two of our three packages have not yet arrived at their destinations. DHL initially blamed Ms. Katrina, stating that a lot of their planes were grounded, but later let it slip that they screwed up. The fact that all of these are appearing to get stuck in customs for at least a day or two complicates matters further.

The second round was the emotional and spiritual trial. For one of the lab tests (the stool parasitology), you have to take the kid off of any and all digestive supplements for several days prior, of which Rubén takes many. The test itself is three days long. Just to be on the safe side, we took him off the supplements even a few days before we were technically supposed to. In total, he was off all digestive aid for a good week and a half, at least. The result was a gradual (but very perceptible) regression in just about everything: mood, cognition, sociability, language, you name it. By the end of our supplement “vacation,” it seemed as though we’d lost months of gains.

Finally, last Saturday we were able to resume digestive supplementation. We kicked it off with a round of Candida suppositories. These have helped him greatly in the past, and this round proved no exception. Now, a week later, he’s blossoming, and we’re scrambling to figure out how to make the gains stay. For those not up on the biomedical lingo, Candida is yeast. Yeast is typically Enemy #2 (behind mercury) in children afflicted with ASD. The two go hand in hand, as my good friend Lynn tried to explain to me a while back. But did I listen? Nooooooo…

So why would we knowingly give him Candida in order to fight Candida? This is what is known as an isopathic remedy. A small, weakened amount of the bad stuff is given in order to provoke an immune reaction. This is similar to how vaccines work (only without the thimerosal, aluminum, formaldehyde etc. in your typical innoculation).

I used to believe that my son wasn’t a “gut kid,” since he didn’t have the really acute symptoms I’d read about. But from this, it’s clear that Rubén’s digestive tract plays an enormous role in his condition, and we simply haven’t been aggressive enough in treating it. We’re importing all kinds of new antifungal, probiotic, and homeopathic treatments based on the advice of our practitioners. We still follow the mantra drilled into my head from my junior high school days and, “Just say ‘no’ to drugs.” No prescriptions, not yet. While I want the yeasty beasties dead as of yesterday, I’ll only use drugs as a last resort. Even when they work, they’re only a quick fix.

So. I’m off to storm the castle. Wish me luck.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 3rd, 2005 at 11:59 am and is filed under Miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.