Summer reflections

As the summer break comes to an end, I find myself reflecting on how it went.

It's definitely been enlightening. My mostly recovered son didn't behave so mostly recovered while I was on vacation. As a matter of fact, he definitely had me worried for a second that I had accepted recovery as a fact a bit too soon.

Then I remembered.

Oh yeah.

I tried to stop the Valtrex again. Epic fail.

If anyone has ever had any doubt that autism is a poorly functioning biological system, all they'd have to do is take my son for a week or two and stop giving him antivirals. The difference is that big. Even in recovery he still has major ADHD issues. Having to deal with both the ADHD and autism can just be exhausting.

Got back on it and he's mostly back to normal. It will probably take until school starts to get him back to where he was.

Which brings me to another thought. My sil said something to me while I was visiting that made me realize I probably need to do a post on recovery and what it means. We were discussing water and how good Gryffin was around it and in it. And that moved on to how many children with autism drown because they have no concept of danger or drowning, or some don't feel pain or whatever it is that leads a child with autism to jump into water and drown. I told her water was still a concern for me even though I knew he was safe around water. Old habits.

She couldn't understand why I'd still be worried. She said, "But I thought you said he was recovered?"

And that's when I realized that recovery is very misunderstood. My sil is no fool. She's one smart cookie. She owns and runs a learning lab where she teaches struggling kids how to process information better and she's had ASD students. So this wasn't something I would've thought she would misunderstand. What I failed to realize is: why wouldn't she? She doesn't live with it everyday. She doesn't treat it. She doesn't research it and it doesn't engulf her life. She may not have even heard of recovery until the moment I first told her Gryffin was mostly recovered (yes, I always say "mostly recovered"). My expectation that people (anyone, not just my sil) know what I mean when I say recovered is completely unrealistic and unfair on my part.

A child recovered from autism is not necessarily issue free. Like a child with asthma, they live a mostly normal life if they have an inhaler.

So I really need to write a post on what recovery means. All the different forms and variations and how it's perceived. I'm going to post that sometime in the next week.

School is closing in on us and I feel like I haven't really had a summer. My NT son had his tonsils/adenoids removed right when we got back from vacation and that kept us homebound for a while. I wanted to do some more chelating this summer and never got around to it. Especially since I had to get Gryffin back on track with his antiviral. This summer seems to have just completely gotten away from me.

Pfffft.

At least we had some fun, though. We spent time visiting with our families and friends, something we just don't get to do enough.

2 studies connects vaccines to SIDS - 1 old and 1 new

Here's a great article to help put these into perspective: New study proving vaccines can kill children.

Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?

1. Neil Z Miller neilzmiller@gmail.com
   1. Independent researcher, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

1. Gary S Goldman
   1. Independent computer scientist, Pearblossom, California, USA

Abstract

The infant mortality rate (IMR) is one of the most important indicators of the socio-economic well-being and public health conditions of a country. The US childhood immunization schedule specifies 26 vaccine doses for infants aged less than 1 year—the most in the world—yet 33 nations have lower IMRs. Using linear regression, the immunization schedules of these 34 nations were examined and a correlation coefficient of r = 0.70 (p < 0.0001) was found between IMRs and the number of vaccine doses routinely given to infants. Nations were also grouped into five different vaccine dose ranges: 12–14, 15–17, 18–20, 21–23, and 24–26. The mean IMRs of all nations within each group were then calculated. Linear regression analysis of unweighted mean IMRs showed a high statistically significant correlation between increasing number of vaccine doses and increasing infant mortality rates, with r = 0.992 (p = 0.0009). Using the Tukey-Kramer test, statistically significant differences in mean IMRs were found between nations giving 12–14 vaccine doses and those giving 21–23, and 24–26 doses. A closer inspection of correlations between vaccine doses, biochemical or synergistic toxicity, and IMRs is essential.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Pediatr Infect Dis. 1983 Jan-Feb;2(1):7-11.

Possible temporal association between diphtheria-tetanus toxoid-pertussis vaccination and sudden infant death syndrome.

Baraff LJ, Ablon WJ, Weiss RC.

Abstract

Because diphtheria and tetanus toxoids pertussis (DTP) vaccine is routinely given during the period of highest incidence of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), this study was undertaken to determine if there is a temporal association between DTP immunization and SIDS. Parents of 145 SIDS victims who died in Los Angeles County between January 1, 1979, and August 23, 1980, were contacted and interviewed regarding their child's recent immunization history. Fifty-three had received a DTP immunization. Of these 53, 27 had received a DTP immunization within 28 days of death. Six SIDS deaths occurred within 24 hours and 17 occurred within 1 week of DTP immunization. These SIDS deaths were significantly more than expected were there no association between DTP immunization and SIDS. An additional 46 infants had a physician/clinic visit without DTP immunization prior to death. Forty of these infants died within 28 days of this visit, seven on the third day and 22 within the first week following the visit. These deaths were also significantly more than expected. These data suggest a temporal association between DTP immunization, physician visits without DTP immunization and SIDS.

PMID:

 

6835859

 

[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Blogger has gone nuts

So whatever craziness is happening, I can't stop it.  Blogger has been doing some upkeep and it's affecting all the blogs.

I apologize right now for any weirdness.  I know it sent out posts from several different days in last month as if they were all new.  Sorry guys.  I hope they work it out soon.

Biomed book: Food Diary

I have a new page for you to add into your biomed book! Woot woot!

Okay, so maybe it's not that exciting.

I was asked how to handle food, not just supplements. So here it is:

You can find it here.

Keep in mind that you can modify this easily.  All of my pages were created in Word or Excel because, well, I had no idea I'd be sharing them when I made them.  If I had, I would have made them in Adobe InDesign and they'd be hot pieces of graphic design genius.  Okay, so maybe not genius but they'd definitely be hot.

Since I now don't have the time or the inclination to create such genius, utilitarian will have to do.

For the technically challenged, if you need more room, just change the page size to legal and then pull the square on the bottom right of the table box and enlarge the table to fit.  Voila, more room.

Autism doesn't exist

I had a question from a friend with no spawn of his own today.  That question was: what do you mean your child is recovered?  I thought it was lifelong?

Well, not really.  Some do.  But hopefully this can help people understand what it means to have autism. It's a great way to get a good overview of why biomedical interventions exist and why/how they help.

More on what we already know

New Study Suggests Link Between Vaccines and Autism

Vaccine-autism link: New investigation

Sample page for the biomed book

I was asked to post an example of how I used the Adding/Removing page.  Here it is:

I said it in red but I think it's worth saying again - use it in a way that will work for you.  Make changes if you need to.