Ok, you're allowed to eat

An excellent morning. You woke at 6.50am, and were in a good mood. We made it before Dania to the OT, and she changed the room. Knowing how attached you were to א5 (your favourite room, I was wary. But you had been in 9 before and had a fabulous time. I decided to spend a lot of time watching Dania work with you, and you were very very responsive. She was again shocked at the amount of eye contact, and how good your Hebrew was. We discussed Yael's worries about us being despondent, but we said that when you see how great you can be, and then we see you practically non-verbal kicking and screaming on the floor, you can maybe understand. She said she would let Yael know that you were saying "boi hibuki" to Dania, then turning to me and saying "want a cuddle" and then switching back to Hebrew for Dania. Yael is definite not aware how good your language skills are. You asked to get up, go down, slide, everything you can imagine in Hebrew. Really some excellent stuff happening, and clearly the therapy is working. She told us to do sleeping/wake-up games but you started those off yourself in the sherut on the way to Rehovot 9 months.

Mummy got a call while we were in therapy from another Ayelet, this time from the Baker Centre in Bar Ilan. She fixed up a time on Monday's at 8.15am for us to go to therapy there. I'm very much looking forward to it Dania was very excited for us too as she said they are the experts, and she knows lots about lots of disabilities, not just autism. She said we'll learn lots from them. So we start in a week.

We discussed your hugging with Dania, and she said we must hug you every time you want one, tightly. Also not to make sudden unexpected movements, or short stroking. We should do long firm strokes down your arms, you might resist at first but persevere.

On the way back, we went to Eden, but it is getting very hard to keep you under control in a supermarket - my fear is basically that you will lunge at the bread! You used to steal Haman's Ears from Mister Zol anyway. I wanted to buy nappies but I gave up. Still, your cornflakes are on Buy 2 Get 1 Free, so as long as Roni doesn't ban corn, we'll be in there later stocking up. You eat a box a week.

You were happy to go and see the cat and give her some breakfast earlier. Someone stole her bowl, but she was affectionate and you were happy. You knew what we were doing too, you said "go see cat". And the cat came running over. I'm glad I waited and came up with a painless way for the cat to not upset your mum and not scratch you. We'll feed her every day till she goes off somewhere sunny.

We had a pretty good morning, but you were tired and flaked out at midday, so I put you to sleep. You slept for 4 hours, waking about 5 minutes before I took you to Safta's. You woke up happy enough though, and we fine despite the rushed drop off. I raced over to get Mummy, and got to Rehovot with about 10 minutes to spare.

Roni was great. She allayed our fears about the candida. We could either do a diet (which is not a good idea since you are very restricted anyway), or we could try the drug that the labs recommended called Fluconazole (which is going to need to be prescribed and it might be hard since it is usually used to treat vaginal thrush), or we could try isopathy, which we don't know a lot about, or the final option was a natural non-pharmaceutical route with a series of remedies designed by Roni and Dr Berger. I think we all thought that Fluconazole would be better. It is the quickest acting which allows us to get on with things quicker, it is the most successful in the long term too. Dr Berger said apparently he'd love to do something natural but the thing keeps coming back so you end up trying it anyway. If it works, we'll use the natural route for maintenance. So, you don't need a diet, you can eat what you ate last week, I can buy fruit, etc etc.

We were also told to try Glutathione cream, it balances out something which I can't remember. Roni swears by it. We'll get some from Morris in the homeopathic chemist on Netzach Israel in Tel Aviv. She recommended we get some CoQ10 too, a co-enzyme as mentioned on the lab report as well as some probiotics - she said Klaire's Therbiotic #1 is the best, though I don't know if we will be getting it shipped over or buy them in Israel.

So all in all, not terrifying. She went through the whole thing with us very expertly and in detail. She wasn't surprised to see you had yeast, she had mentioned it in our first meeting. She also said lots of things correct themselves as you deal with things like yeast and the other mineral deficiencies.

I wanted to go to the game tonight - Maccabi were playing at home against Ashkelon but the meeting ran late, and Safta wanted Mummy to pick you up. I wondered, and I think Mummy did too, why now you have a diagnosis that Safta gets tired and we have to come 'now' whereas when we weren't making these positive changes that she notices too she could have you for the whole day. So I drove Mummy back. I should have gone to the game. I need to make sure that I am looking after me too, you need me too. If I only think about autism I end up going mad.

It gave us a chance to make sure you could keep your bedtime routine. Apparently you had been an angel, and you had a bath and were asleep just after 10.





Little Steps: "want to get down". You used to say "down" or "go down". Dania was blown away by your Hebrew. Somewhere along the way you made an association between "kaved" (heavy) and "kaveret" (beehive) which was interesting.

Today's Food
Breakfast: One banana, Cornflakes and Rice Milk, Banana & Date Smoothie with calcium
Snack: 2 Gummy Bears
Late Lunch: Fried egg, chips (very English!)
Snack: Chocolate cake
Dinner: Banana, apple, mango juice