Changes

Changes

So nearly everything I’ve read about Biomed healing talks about how long it can take.  The common analogy is that Biomed healing is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.  As such, and to try to harness my expectations, I was very much keeping in the state of mind that we wouldn’t see any serious improvements for several months.  My plan was to re-evaluate after a year, and see where we were.  I really had no plans on abandoning anything, but figured after a year it would be a good time to figure out if we needed to rebalance priorities.  So I was very much surprised when, after only two weeks, I started noticing changes. 

The first was at the library on the morning after I had given Coleman his Methyl B12 shot.  I take Coleman to the library every Saturday morning.  He doesn’t enjoy books at all, despite various attempts at including them in one of the many nighttime rituals.  I started the library trip as a means to get him used to sitting and at least looking at a book.  On our first trip there were a lot of loud “NO THANK YOU”s and “ALL DONE”s but after a few weeks, he adjusted to calmly sitting through a short story.  Still, some days he barely looks at the book, instead looking away and scripting on about some show he had watched earlier.  I have to redirect him, closing the book and getting him to stop and look at me.  “I’m ready” he finally states and we open the book again and go on for another couple of pages, until he inevitably starts scripting again and we repeat the process. 

On this particular Saturday, Coleman seemed more ‘up’ than usual, and instead of his leisurely (super slow) saunter up the path to the library, he moved at a quick pace to the door and up the ramp to the children’s section.  Once there, he was unusually attentive to the book.  He would stop me before I could turn the page and stare up close at the words, examining them like it was the first time he could see.  He pointed to the words, looked at me to read what it said, then stared back again at the word.  He did this for several pages.  I only had to redirect him once or twice throughout the entire thing.  It was an absolutely noticeable change.  I thought about the B12 he had that morning.  Interesting, I thought.  Then we headed down to the coloring table.  We took our seats at the table and I started helping Coleman draw a stick figure.  He can almost do this on his own now, we’ve done it so many times together.  As we were working on it, a little girl came to the table and sat across from Coleman.  He stopped coloring and stared at her.

“Hi. What’s your name?” he asked.

Oh, how I pray you can understand the magnitude of this.  Thank God Abby was with us this day so I had a witness.  She looked up as soon as he said it and stared wide eyed at him and then at me.

“I’m Emily” the little girl answered.   

“Hi Emily” Coleman said back.

“What’s your name?” she asked him.

I looked at him, incredulous, staring, anxious… and my little man who has never had a back and forth conversation like this with anyone, who has never initiated such a conversation, who has never responded appropriately without prompting, simply said “I’m Coleman.”

Sound the goddamn trumpets everyone because shit just got real.  A true honest-to-God back and forth conversation that lasted a precious 10 seconds or so.  Abby and I stared speechless.  Literally.  It was all I could do to not get up and hug that little girl.  And I was praising Coleman so much for the amazing job talking that the little girl probably thought I was a little wacky anyway.  And as we got up to leave, I was so distracted that I left his paper on the table.  Emily came running over to us with it.

“You forgot your picture, Coleman” she said, handing him the sheet of paper.

“Thanks Emily” he responded as he took the picture from her.

 And that, my friends, was the moment that I knew we were on the right path.

 We saw so many things over the next few months that I could hardly believe the changes. There were many far more subtle changes than drastic, but still some were just as surprising as the library visit.  His focus on words and letters came alive, and he was suddenly stopping anytime he saw words to try to read them. In the supermarket, he tugged at my arm. “Fresh?” he asked.  I was confused and asked him to repeat it.  “Fresh…” he said again.  “Fresh what?” I asked confused.  He pointed above my head.  On the wall above the bakery it said “Fresh Bakery”.  And so began his reading of words.  Never once had he so much as noticed a giant banner hanging, and suddenly, I couldn’t go down the aisle in the supermarket without stopping every 10 seconds to read words to him.  It was that sudden of a change.  We now try to find words whenever we are out, pointing to signs and store names, asking him “What does that say, Coleman?”  He stares at the words, really trying to figure it out. And I’ll tell you it was pretty damn shocking to see how many words he could actually read

His expressive language seemed to get a kick start as well, and he would say things that encompassed multiple thoughts, something he had never been able to do in the past.  For example, on the ride back from New Hampshire one Sunday, he called from the back seat, “Bathroom?” which meant he had to go.  “Ok, bud, I’ll stop at the next exit and you can go.”  Satisfied, he returned his attention to his DVD, and a few minutes later asked “Max and Ruby?”   He was watching a different show and he wanted Max and Ruby.  “Ok, give me the DVD” I said as I reached back, intending to swap out the DVD.  He looked up and said instead, “It’s ok.  You can change it when you stop.”  Those Exact Words.  Oh, how hard it is here to express the meaningfulness of such a statement, how hard those thoughts are for him to verbalize.  How he could not only understand we would be stopping soon, and that we could change the DVD at that time, but also that he could also put those thoughts into words, and that he was ok with waiting until then.  Trust me when I say it was striking.  Abby was sitting beside me and after he said it, she said “Wow, that was impressive.”  And it was.    

He also was more engaged, more interested in what was going on around him, and that became apparent in many daily activities.  But over Christmas, it was unmistakable.  Never a fan of presents, he refused to open gifts in the past. We never knew exactly what he didn’t like about it, but at birthdays or Christmas he would run out of the room or just yell “NO THANK YOU” when you tried to get him to open presents.  So this year I only wrapped one or two of his gifts.  And on Christmas morning, I regretted it.  As we opened gifts, we asked him if he wanted to open one and he smiled.  He opened that gift and was talking about it all the while.  “What is this?” he was saying.  And when he got the wrapping paper off, he exclaimed with excitement “It’s a box!”  And when we showed him that he had to open the box, and there was gift inside, he did so and was super interested in all of it.  He didn’t care much for the actual gift itself, but for the first time ever, he actually wanted to participate in the activity.  It was the best Christmas present for all of us. 

Above all, the most drastic and noticeable change in Coleman was the overall reduction in his anxiety.  This was a game changer.  Even in school, where they track the number of aggressions and tantrums Coleman has on a daily basis, there was a noticeable difference.  He went from 10.7 aggressions per day when he started, down to 5.0 before we began the supplements.  In January –March, he averaged just 1 per day.  And zero tantrums.  ZERO.  His School/Home Journal came home every day with comments like “Great day again”, “Excellent work at the desk”, “Great mood”.  And we saw the same thing at home.  It was like someone had ratcheted down his internal meter exponentially.  Every night I found myself saying “I can’t believe how low key he is!” and saying to Billy “Isn’t this great?  He is so happy.”  I think the reduction in stress across our household declined ten-fold.  We all lived a little better during this time.  We were even able to start eliminating some of the unproductive OCD habits.  We approached this slowly but made meaningful progress.  For example, we started with one of the before-bed OCD routines of touching all the corners of Emma’s bed.  We said “Tonight you can touch them, but in 2 more days we won’t touch them anymore ok?” He paused.  “In two days I won’t touch them?” he asked.  “Right.  You can touch them tonight but in two days we’ll stop.  You don’t need to touch them anymore. You’re fine!” I said optimistically.  And the next night we repeated it, and said “One more day and then no touching” and on the next night, he looked at me as he approached Emma’s bed and asked “You don’t need to touch them?”  “Nah! You’re fine!” I exclaimed like this was some great piece of news.  And that was the end of that.  This was simply not possible before. 

We used the same approach to break out of the “Go that way” habit he was so deadlocked into.  You might recall how he would completely melt down if we drove a different way home, sending Coleman into hours of unstoppable hysteria.  With this new Coleman, though, I thought we had an opening. “Today we’ll go that way, but tomorrow, when we go to gymnastics, we are going to go this way, ok?” and I pointed the opposite direction than we normally took.  I reminded him of that plan as we drove to gymnastics the next day too and after gymnastics, as we approached the dreaded intersection, I reminded him again.  “Remember, today we are going to go this way.  It’s really fast!  Later we can go that way again.”  And I held my breath as I turned right onto Main Street.  But my amazing, calm little man just repeated me.  “We can go that way later.”  And again, that was the end of that.  Now I drive down Main Street at least once every week to keep it alive for us.  Two OCD habits down, about one hundred more to go.  J

So the changes are absolutely real.  Perhaps they sound small to you – I don’t really know – but to us, well, these are mountain-moving kinds of changes.  So we are keeping on this path, cautiously but resolutely moving forward.  We have a long way to go, but we can do this.  We will do this.