The wheels are starting to roll

So we are about 5 weeks in. I'm back in the room. The first week was very hard, I just didn't know what to do, where to start, what was right and what was wrong. So after that first week (and blogging here was very therapeutic) I collected myself and formulated a plan. Your mum collected herself too, I think she found it harder than she expected. Though she knew much earlier than me, I was much keener to find out either way, and if it was this way, keener to get going. So these are my thoughts on the subject, all of which may be proved startlingly incorrect over time:

Autism is not exactly genetic. Maybe the combination of your mum's genes and my genes meant that you were susceptible to autism but I think there must be something else at work. Your mum just rang with the statistic that in Israel in 1982 a total of zero children were diagnosed with autism. In 1985, there were 2. In 1995 there were almost 200, by 2004 we were up to 500. Your diagnosis was slow in coming from the Psychologist because she had 5 children that month. In Netanya. In Clalit Health Network (so do your sums for the other insurers). It looks like, as your mum says, an epidemic. Oddly, there was one year those numbers went down. 2002. The year after the whole world became scared of the MMR jab. After the fuss died down and the medical profession rushed to explain that it was safe, parents (including me) decided it was ok to vaccinate in this way. And then the numbers started to climb again. Coincidence? Shit, I don't know. I'm an empirical person, I'm no believer in this or that or him or her. Just show me the numbers, the data, the evidence, I'll not come into it with any preconceived notions. And I don't trust anyone who claims to be an expert because I went to school and university with these people and they weren't so smart there, so just because they have a research grant doesn't make them automatically clever now, it just makes them the people in possession of a grant with a preconceived idea of what they'd like to prove. They might be, in addition, very smart. Or they might be unable to function in the real world and decided to stay at school forever. Who knows? Me, I look at statistics, and I apply logic. Sometimes I'm wrong, but with this vaccination thing, well, from what I read, you really need to make a careful decision if you want to pump a virus and 125 times the maximum recommended amounts of mercury into the body of a child whose physiology may or may not be typical or standard. Maybe some of the kids who have gut problems (which you definitely had, you had awful reflux and always loose poop) are the ones which have a damaged or leaky gut, and when they get the shots carrying massive amounts of heavy metals - way above what is safe according to guidelines, then the metal gets through the already damaged gut and starts screwing up the brain. And all the other kids who have ok GI tracts don't get affected so you think '50/50 unaffected kids, what is the problem with vaccines', except you are looking for 1 in 150, and if you take 150 you might not have the 1, or even if you take 300. You might need to find 3000 kids to find 20 because they could be numbers 734, 829, 1133 etc. And they don't have enough money, motivation, time or belief that that is what you need to do? On the one hand you have drug companies, on the other hand you have a poor mother. They argue opposite cases. Whose more effective in their argument? Exactly my fear. Despite the fact that the mum is the one with the kid, and mums generally know. Your mum, who actually understood you less than me, intuitively knew that something was not right for maybe 2 years longer than me. Maybe she instinctively expects responses she is not getting, and I just love you and everything you are. I didn't give birth to you, I don't instinctively know to feed you, hold you. I do it because I love you. And as for vaccines, well, just before she put that MMR vaccine in your arm, I asked Nurse Carole 'this is safe isn't it?'. She said 'of course, they've shown the reports of the Professor were rubbish'. And that image, that moment has stayed with me. It never felt right, I can't remember anything as vividly that happened in a doctor's surgery as that. It has haunted me.

I had a headache this morning. It might have been lack of sleep, it might have been lack of fluid, it might have been stress, it might have been something else or a combination of several factors. I suspect autism is the symptom of some earlier problem. It manifests itself as autism. In the same way as food poisoning can end up as a fever, and so can an infection etc. I think there are various paths that lead there. It makes it hard to isolate the cause, it makes everyone's autism a bit different. It might be bollocks, but some parents seem to say that they saw it developed in front of their eyes at 18 months after healthy development up to that point, and your mum seems to think that you've always had the signs, though we both agree that you were developing faster that lots of children in your first 18 months in areas you are now behind in like speech. Hmmm.

You have had, for your whole life, runny poop. I didn't know this wasn't normal. I've never seen another kid's nappy. But then you had a solid one. When I didn't give you milk. And since I cut down on milk it isn't runny but soft. I think you are struggling to digest dairy, and maybe you have an intolerance to wheat too. Maybe apples too. Not sure. I think autism is gut damage, not just brain damage. It might sound wacky, it might sound like I'm clinging to some notion that is not based in proven science but your mum told me that 65% of children - including you - had reflux when they were very small. You were awful with it, I remember you coughing as you fed, sleeping on a slanted mattress, explosive poops as you fed. It sorted itself out, but it was terrifying. And 65% of kids with autism had reflux??!! Too bizarre.

None of that is to say that there is no neurological damage, there undoubtedly is now. That is not to say that you do not need occupational therapy, psychological efforts to intervene and bring you up to the level you should be in speech and communication, where your deficits are becoming ever more apparent. You definitely do. We are doing Stanley Greenspan's DIR/Floortime therapy, and it is working very well. Your responding as well as I'd hoped, and though it is a long process no doubt, I'm your dad. I have a lifetime to give.