We’ve had a busy but productive day. Bill was well enough to go to school this morning thank goodness so off Beth and I went on one of our mammoth travelling Thursdays. After dropping the 2 littlies off at school we headed off to Frankston to see Flaxseed Guy. Beth was in fine form this morning, asking all sorts of questions and answering them too. Mainly about various movies which seems to be her preferred topic of communication. Richard was talking to somebody so the naturopath -Â Alan stayed in the room with us while we waited. Beth and him got into chats about which movies they had seen and this continued on when Richard came back in. They were quite impressed as she doesn’t often talk to them, especially not at length. She also pulled out of her repertoir her catchphrases such as “that’s dithpicable” from Daffy Duck and “doh” from Homer Simpson much to their amusement. Pauline who works on reception also commented on the fact that Beth had said quite clearly “Hello Pauline”, something that she hadn’t done before.
The numbers that are meant to be going down with the flaxseed oil seem to be. Last time we went they were at 80, now they are at 14. Between 1 and 10 is a good number, meaning that no damage has been done to the brain. I told them about Beth’s moods lately and sleeplessness so Richard suggested that we checked her liver again in different areas as this can cause sleep issues and moodswings. I said that I thought that it was just the fact that she had hit puberty. (I’ve ordered a book from my friend Kerry who sells learning ladder. It’s called Princess Bitchface Syndrome, all about girls and puberty. Let me know if anybody would like the book and I’ll pass on her number.) They did the testing and to my relief found nothing. This did give me even more faith in Richard as he could have suggested further treatment and I would have accepted that. He said to do what we have been doing for 4 more weeks, after that the number should have gone down sufficiently and then we should be finished. I asked him to do a report for me so that I can take it to the DAN (defeat autism now) practitioner so we don’t double up on assessments. He’s the allergist so I’m raring to get that one started. I’m so pleased we’ve seen it through with Richard as I have seen improvements in Beth’s communication. I wonder if how good she seemed this morning also had something to do with the fact that she had a good night’s sleep?
We popped in to visit my friend Lesley who lives just around the corner from there, then headed off to Sensational Kids. Melinda the OT has left and is not being replaced for another 2 weeks. We still went to see Rod though.
It was a good session today. Rod had the pictured soft tube, I suppose you would call it and Beth was inside it for most of the session. She had Rod holding her in it upright to start with and then ended up on the floor, asking Rod to pick it up and swing it around. He told her that he wasn’t strong enough so they got into a game where she would suggest a big animal to lift her up. Rod would then talk to the animal and ask them but they always wanted Beth to do something first. She had her Little Angel magazine so the elephant for example asked her why she liked reading it. She said it was because it was cool. The elephant didn’t understand what cool was so Beth explained that it made her happy to read it because it was awesome. This satisfied the elephant so she got a ride. She had to speak dinasaur as Rod didn’t speak dinasour but he had to speak Gladiator because Beth didn’t know how. It was a good fun game and Beth was really engaged as she was getting the physical stimulation to keep her ‘up.’ At the end Beth had to tell me the story of how she got so many rides in the tubey thing which she was pretty good at, though she forgot about the dinasaur speak. Rod is trying to get her to understand things without us giving her direct answers. When he was helping her with the story he would gesture to things or make movements rather than just telling her the words to use, therefore she had to use her own thought to tell the story. All in all I was more than happy with today’s results.
