I'm not sure where to go next. I touched on a lot of things in the first entry. Too many perhaps to know where to head next.

There has already been an enquiry as to the relationship between us and Stephanie. I'll be totally honest. There are times when the relationship is wonderful. She can be so sweet at times. But when she gets her mind set on having something, we "gird our loins" for a fight. Well, unless it's something she can have right then. Otherwise, it tends to get really ugly.

Before we realized what was really wrong with Stephanie, this would result in out and out screaming matches. Which, of course, did no good except to get everyone's blood pressure up. We do believe that spanking is allowable and, at times, proper. However, spanking was not really an option because, first, she was too "squirmy" and strong, and second, she has a very high tolerance of pain, so it really didn't hurt her. So that type of discipline did not good (also because in order to do any "good," we would have crossed a line that made it abuse...and we definitely weren't going to cross that line).

At some point in the not too distant past, we decided that there must be more that we could do for Stephanie. We got Dr. Robert's name from someone...Aha...I just checked with Christi and she reminded me from where. We had actually thought about seeing this doctor in our area named Dr. Block. Dr. Block uses some rather unorthodox methods and is not under any insurance, so, consequently is very expensive. We called and spoke with her office and asked for any names of primary care pediatricians that had a clue about autism. She gave us the name of Pierre Robert.

We got in to see Dr. Robert (who wasn't taking new patients...UNLESS they were autistic). He has been pretty much wonderful. He is very gentle and kind, and, I think I mentioned before, willing to think outside the traditional medicine "box."

Keep in mind that traditional medicine has pretty much thrown up its hands and said that autism is totally genetic and incurable. The only way that they want to "treat" autistic kids is pretty much using B.F. Skinner's operant conditioning. Granted, there have been some results with this type of treatment, but it doesn't address the real problem, which is...what causes autism and how can it be cured?

Dr. Robert began talking about this thing that we had never heard of called "chelation." I couldn't even spell it right. We began talking about metal toxicity. See, we had gotten some information some time earlier about mercury in tuna. Well, when Christi was pregnant with Stephanie back in 1989, the only thing that she could eat that would stay down was, you guessed it, tuna. She ate a lot of tuna. There are times when Christi blames herself for Stephanie's condition, but I try to prevent that. We didn't know. We had no one to tell us, "Don't eat tuna, the baby could get mercury poisoning." As it was, Christi wound up in the hospital twice with dehydration from throwing up so much, and a kidney infection at one point.

So, we had a rather tempestuous pregnancy with Stephanie.

Anyway, Dr. Robert starts talking about metal toxicity and chelation. As we begin to discuss the mercury issue, we learn of a few other things. Somehow, we got hooked up with an outfit called Safe Minds. This organization was founded by a woman named Lyn Redwood. We learned of a book called Evidence of Harm, by David Kirby. We got hooked up with a group of parents in Keller led by a nurse named Lori Zinar (I mentioned the group in the first entry).

We learned about something else we had never heard of: a thing called "thimerosal." Here's a definition of thimerosal from the FDA website.

Thimerosal is a mercury-containing organic compound (an organomercurial). Since the 1930s, it has been widely used as a preservative in a number of biological and drug products, including many vaccines, to help prevent potentially life threatening contamination with harmful microbes.

Get that? Thimerosal has mercury in it. Mercury is poison. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Would you drink it? I don't think so. But if you had a child in the years around, say 1993 to 2003 or so, it was injected into your baby. In some cases, as much as 60-165 micrograms in one day.

I'm not quite ready to tackle the whole issue here, yet, because I'm still reading Evidence of Harm, but let me tell you, it is making me very angry. To this day, the FDA and CDC insist that there is no "evidence of harm" involving thimerosal and vaccines. Yet, they have almost totally removed the compound from childhood vaccines, now.

These government agencies have lied, manipulated data, and danced around the truth until they have no credibility left, whatsoever. They are still lying, because there is literally a boat-load of evidence that thimerosal does, in fact have a causal relationship with autism.

Stephanie was born in 1993. She received all of her vaccines, including a vaccine for hepatitis B. I don't believe that the thimerosal in these vaccines was the sole culprit in her condition. There are other factors involved in Stephanie's condition. But the facts are that, in the 80's, autism appeared in 1 out of 10,000 children. Today, it appears in 1 out of 166. Read those numbers again. Read them again. I'm no mathematician, but isn't that about a 600% increase? Shouldn't we be considering that an epidemic?

Autism strikes more children than cancer. More children than diabetes. But the American Association of Pediatrics is opposed to spending more money on autism research. The AAP is against the passing of the "Combating Autism Act" that is currently on the floor of Congress.

Just as I feared, I got a little off track. I get so angry about this issue that I start ranting. I'm done for today, though. I'll get back to the chelation issue, our further experiences with Dr. Robert, the parent group, and Dr. Hamel next time.

If you're interested at all in this topic, check out the website for the Combating Autism Act. Another site to look at is Put Children First.

There is hope. Autism is curable.

TTFN, y'all

Missed anything?
The Beatles--Abbey Road/Alice Cooper--Killer - July 04, 2012
The Beatles Eponymous Album - June 26, 2012
Autism's False Prophets - February 12, 2011
Santana--Guitar God? - November 11, 2010
Tribute To the Red Sox - September 29, 2010