In the works

This week I've been making more calls for the next steps in Nate's treatment. I've been looking for a DAN! (Defeat Autism Now) doctor. These are doctors (sometimes pediatricians, sometimes internists, sometimes other M.D.s, sometimes more "holistic" doctors) who usually have been to one or more DAN! conferences and believe in treating autism biomedically (enzymes, diet changes, supplementation, toxin removal, more) in addition to traditional therapies. I want to start taking Nate to one because some of the next things I want to try should be medically supervised (like if he needs treatment for yeast overgrowth, which often requires prescribed medicine).

The first and most prominent place I called is so full it is not taking new patients and apparently is not even using a waiting list (the girl on the phone was pretty rude, even when I read out loud to her an e-mail I'd received from one of the doctors there). However, another place I called sounds much more promising: the receptionist spent a good 15 minutes on the phone with me describing the doctor and her work, which includes a 2-hour initial appointment. The receptionist said about 30-40% of this doctor's work is with autism, which I like since some of the other places I looked at made little or no mention of autism. In addition, this doctor holds an open-to-the-public session one evening a month, so we could go talk to her and meet her without committing to a large first appointment fee.

This week we also went to get Nate's blood drawn for a second time. We'll have to go back to the lab for a third draw since the amount of blood needed for all the tests the neurologist wants run is too much to draw at one or even two times. Most of the tests are measuring things I don't understand unless I look them up: DNA for Fragile X, carnitine levels, quantitative plasma amino acids, acylcarnitine profile, and quite a few more. There will also be results for levels of lead, lactate, and ammonia in the blood. Whatever doctor we end up going to will no doubt use these results (and maybe more) in determining what we'll try next.