A.D.D. Be Gone! (And a Food Update ;)

Okay, this will be a quickie since we're off to run a gazillion errands as soon as the littlest guy wakes up from his nap. 

Right before we started the dietary protocol, we were given an assessment from L & N's neurofeedback counselor for L to be assessed for A.D.D.  The counselor and I agreed that L is a textbook case: spacey, hard time focusing, slow at getting everything done (including going on a walk!), indecisive, etc.  The assessment was more of a formality to confirm my concerns so that the counselor could see if there were different areas she should focus on for brain training.  Well, the other day, as I was thinking again upon L and the healing of her nervous tick, I suddenly realized that all of her ADD symptoms were gone! Vanished! She is now an assertive, confident, focused, and diligent child! She is still sweet and compassionate, but other than that, she has a totally different persona!  I was so focused on L's tick that I completely missed noting the other equally exciting healing! Thank you Lord!

Okay, now on a totally different tangent, we tried reintroducing corn a few weeks ago since it's in practically everything processed. That would have opened up the worlds of tortillas and chips, cereal, limited candy, and pasta. Hooray! However, after a week or two of bringing it back in, we noticed lack of body control again (not so much in spatial planning, but in being overly rowdy) and wide emotional mood swings (elated to weepy). Plus, Brent and I agreed we just didn't feel good. We felt bloated and heavy again. That's interesting since that was such a normal feeling before that we didn't notice it. Now we see a BIG difference! So, corn was moved out of the cupboards again, with the hope of having occasional quinoa pasta (made with cornstartch) since it's a minor ingredient and it is highly processed corn which shouldn't be too inflammatory in small amounts.  We have given it a couple of weeks since then, and now we see him being back to how he was before. He's much more emotionally stable and more in control of body function.  So, even though he tested negative for a corn allergy in his bloodwork, there's obviously something going on there!

Now that it's been a couple of weeks of a stable diet, we are attempting to reintroduce citrus. We are taking it very slowly, and starting with the clementine oranges that are in season (and on sale!) here.  We'll see how it goes on this next step of our eating adventure!  :-)

Merry Christmastime!
Hill and The Gang

Two Unexpected Healings!

We are plugging right along with the dietary protocol as we wait for our appointment with Dr. Russell in Texas. However, in the meantime we have had two unexpected recoveries!  First off, N's twin sister "L" has struggled with a nervous 'tick' since infancy; one she could not control nor even feel as it was happening. At first she only did it at home and we hoped she would grow out of it. Unfortunately it has gotten worse and more pronounced and then, last spring at her ballet recital, she actually stopped dancing and started ticking on stage. It was heartbreaking. She had been doing neurofeedback for over a year in hopes of helping her, but it didn't seem to be doing anything positive. Well, she informed me yesterday that she can now recognize when it's about to happen and stop it! She also realized that she pretty much had a constant stomach ache before, but she just accepted it as normalcy. Now she's realized that it was defnitely not normal and can pretty much pin it down to a dairy allergy!  Hallelujah! I just want to cry every time I think about it!

The other healing came in the form of my own body. For about 2 years I have been taking synthetic thyroid hormone for an underactive thyroid.  The medicine is designed to fully kill off your thyroid and then act as a hormone replacement for the rest of your life.  I started feeling numbness in my arms and legs along with dizziness and other symptoms. The bloodwork ruled out diabetes and MS ( thankfully!) but it showed my thyroid levels were now too low! We reduced my meds to the lowest possible level and it barely raised my thyroid levels. I did some more research and found many cases where people testified that eliminating wheat and gluten somehow healed their supposedly dead thyroid to start functioning again. I made the decision to go ahead and stop my medicine and dontcha know? My symptoms went away completely. I feel great and not at all fatigued or cloudy like I did when I was first diagnosed. I am scheduled to go back in two weeks to have my levels checked again, and I can't wait to see what they are!  It makes sense since the medical community now considers thyroid problems to be auto-immune related!  It's all coming full circle and it's all making so much sense! Praise God!

Side note: If you didn't see my earlier Facebook update, I have now added a tab at the top with a lsit of our current favorite foods as well as  links to great recipes and resources.  Be sure to check it out and comment or email me with additional items that I can include. I would love for this to be an interactive resource board! I may do a little facebook research, and if there aren't any good clean diet recipe sharing groups, I may just have to start one :)

Have a wonderful weekend ahead, and Happy Thanksgiving! My little cornucopia of blessing is overflowing these days, and I pray the same for you.

Blessings,

Hillary

October 5th and so much GREAT news!

First off, we are so thrilled and thankful that we ARE able to get N's SPECT Scan done at Providence Hosp. in Anchorage! I should be able to call and make the appointment today. The Radiologist said that there is a 2-3 day turnaround time, so we should be able to get him up there in the next week or two. It is PFD time up here, so flights are booking up. That will probably be our biggest delay.

We have received back all of the bloodwork. Everything came back normal except that he is extremely low in Vit. D.  It's not uncommon up here, but his levels were pretty low-especially considering he takes a mulit-vit that has Vit. D in it. So, we're upping him an additional 1000 i.u. a day.

The best news of all is that we are already seeing massive improvements!  It's crazy and almost creepy. I didn't expect to see any changes for at least 6 months by what I've been reading, but it's like a switch has went on. There are two things we have struggled with N about for years. To avoid embarrassing him even more than I already am by having this blog in the first place, I will just say that the human body is full of cavities and spaces, i.e. stomach, bladder, mouth, sinuses.  In order to gage that a person has a 'full' feeling in this spaces, you have to receive the message from your brain.  Well, my son was not getting those messages so we had food stuffing and over reating among other spatial-planning issues.  Like a switch, the past week he has spun a 180 and begun paying attention to his body in normally-developing ways.  He has suddenly become the sloooowest eater; taking smaller bites, visiting pleasantly, AND leaving food on his plate instead of reaching for 2nds and 3rds!  He is also paying attention to those other biological signals and making sure that he empties those other cavities when they are full. (Is that cryptic yet clear enough? lol)  After seeing him calmly put down his Nintendo DS and walk to the restroom the other day, I asked him if was able to better pay attention to his body now, and he said "Yeah. I can feel it so much better now."  Wow! It's amazing, yet it makes so much sense. If you live in a head cold-like fog 24/7, it would be understandable that your bodies' signals would be so dulled. No wonder he didn't feel them until he was about to explode or throw up!  

Finally, the last bit of news (which also ties into the above), is that his Neurofeedback counselor has been able to successfully work with his front temporal lobe the past two sessions. She is getting a strong signal and he doesn't seem to be complaining about the instant headaches he was getting whenever she tried to stimulate that area before.  When I told her about our successes with his spatial planning, she is quite sure that he is finally laying down new pathways in that area of his brain. The pediatrician and I both wish we had been able to do a SPECT scan before she started doing that so we could compare it to now, but oh well...Besides, there's only so much radioactive tracer that I want to inject in my kiddo! 

Anyway, thank you for your kind words of encouragement. We are so hopeful and optimistic. The Lord is really working in incredible ways. I pray that we continue to be patient and trusting and not get ahead of Him. I also pray that, somehow (!), our experience will be a help to others who feel stuck on the 'A List'.  Hugs and Blessings to you all!
Love,
Hillary