Monday, August 11, 2008

Great DAN Visit!

We went to Richmond to see our DAN (Defeat Autism Now) doctor on Friday (pictured right). She's a developmental pediatrician with 30 years experience, has been a part of the DAN movement since its beginning, and has testified before Congress regarding the link between vaccinations and developmental disabilities. This is the third time we've seen her and I like her more each visit. Matthew was an angel at the office and flirted with the staff...the nurse there calls Matthew "her little boyfriend". :) But things got ugly when we went to a nearby lab for the blood work. I'm hoping that will get easier for him with time/experience.

Matthew will continue the GFCF diet, his daily supplements, and will begin DMSA transdermal chelation this month. If I hadn't done so much research on this topic I would have been scared/said "no way", but I am confident in what we're doing and excited to start the heavy metal detox process. We will apply the cream to his arms (or feet, or back) over a 3-day weekend twice per month. That's it...pretty simple...no suppositories, no oral meds, no IV's. It is the least "invasive" way and I am very comfortable starting out with this low/slow method. Eventually we might switch over to the [Andy Cutler] oral method, but let's just try the cream for now and see what we can pull! We'll be checking his blood (for kidney/liver functions & mineral levels) every 2 months. We'll also keep an eye on his gut yeast issues b/c that tends to flare during chelation (but less so with the transdermal). I bought some Yeast Aid from Kirkman's and have a prescription for an anti-fungal in case we need it.

4 comments:

M. Christensen said...

Sounds good, we are a little behind you guys in that we are still working on the gut. Good luck to Matthew! The blood work is so hard. I don't know if it gets any easier. My husband uses his phone to put on mickey mouse clubhouse to distract a little, helps but only a little. Melissa

Anonymous said...

glad to hear you've got a great DAN! i hope Matthew experiences some great gains as a result of chelation. keep us posted on how it goes!

hopefaithbelieve said...

That's great that you love your DAN (I think that's so important). Don't be scared of IV chelation. We do oral DMSA and IV EDTA (we've tried DMPS, but the results were not as noticable)...the gains we have made with IV chelation blows the other way out of the water! We still do oral once a week, but once a month we do the IV. Nearly every third time, the results are mind blowing!

GFCF Mommy said...

I saw Dr. Megson on "Beautiful Son" and am so jealous! She looks like a warm person and a terrific doctor. I thought she had a really sensible approach.

I don't know why I thought she was in Lynchburg. There must be some other autism center there I was thinking about. (We used to live in Charlottesville before our son was born).

Katherine