Hello, I am Kimfitness chic! This is my first day of blogging, so I figured that I should share a little about myself and my family. I live near Pittsburgh, PA. I will be 38 years old in three days. I have an amazing partner, Fred, who I have been with for almost 11 years and who I am currently engaged to be married to. I have two amazing children (Skylar and Johnathan).
In my past life I worked with children with autism as a Therapeutic Support Staff, Behavioral Specialist Consultant and Teacher at an approved private school. Although, I loved working with the children with autism and their families, I decided that I need to be home for my own children. Fred, being the supportive partner, that he is said to me, "why don't you just quit your job and stay at home with the children". Shortly before this, I had started working as an Independent Team Beachbody Coach. So after a few weeks of trying to manage everything and watching my son's behavior dramatically decrease, I decided it was time to resign as Behavioral Specialist Consultant.
Prior to this time, I worked full time and tried to manage my house and family as best that I could. However, it was extremely challenging because I had multiple therapies for both of my children growing up. My daughter was born with Torticollis (wry neck), speech and fine motor delays. So over the years, we had her receiving therapy by Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists and Speech Therapists. Then when my son was approximately 1 1/2 years old, he started to go down hill. His attention span drastically decreased, his inappropriate behaviors increased and his speech was delayed. I took him to the doctor and the doctor said that he was fine, "he is just a boy". Luckily, because of the Developmental educational and professional background and early intervention for children with disabilities background, that I had, I did not listen to the doctor. I also had mother's instinct that something wasn't quite right. I made a call to Early Intervention and had the team of Early Intervention professionals come into my house and complete an assessment of my son to see if they had any concerns. Yes, they definitely had concerns! They had concerns with: his decreased safety awareness, his fine motor skills, his speech, his behavior and his self-help skills. They started providing Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Developmental for him. They also noted that he had the rosy red cheeks (that never seemed to go away), keratosis pilaris and allergy shiners under his eyes. They suggested that I have him seen by a professional for food allergies. I had told them, that both children had seen allergists and the allergist completed a skin prick test to determine that my children did not have food allergies. However, they told me that the specialist, who they referred me to, did not do the skin prick test, but did a blood test to determine food allergies. So I decided, I needed to at least give it a try. I took both of my children to the specialist for food allergies. He recommended doing hair analysis and the blood test to test for all food allergies. Got the results back. GUESS WHAT!!!!!! Both of my children had multiple food allergies and were placed on a glutein-casein free diet. Now, little did I know that all of the pain that I had for years in my stomach was really food allergies manifesting themself in pain. Also, the hair analysis noted that my children were extremely toxic with mercury, lead, arsenic and cadmium. The specialist recommended nutritional supplements for my children and also to DETOX them. DETOX my children, what are you kidding me! Well, we agreed to give the children a supplement that the children took orally that would bind to the toxins and pull them out of their body. At this time, the children were also placed on Zinc, Magnesium, Cod Liver Oil, and Nutritional Multi-vitamin. Now, insurance didn't cover this, so we had to pay BIG money to get the support that our children needed. However, what is most important to a mother and father? YES, their children being able to live to their full potential and be happy. In the meantime, I had both children placed on a waiting list with a Developmental Pediatrician, who specialized with glutein casein free diets, supplements and helping improve the quality of life for children with special needs. However, there were 200 people on the waiting list for this specialist. In the meantime, we ended up having BHRS services come into our home and daycare to help support our children. We had Behavioral Specialist consultant and Therapeutic Support staff for both children. It is very difficult having strangers come into your house and help your children, when that is the same thing that I did for a career. However, it is not wise to provide therapy on your own family! Fast forward about 1 year and both of my children finally got in to see the specialist. YEAH! Well, after having blood tests to for specific genetic disorders, we found out that our son, had Fragile X grey zone! Devastating to hear that news! However, I didn't care what he had, I still loved him and I was determined to help him overcome it as much as possible. We had Outpatient Speech Therapy and Occupational Therapy added. I will never forget the day that he was sitting in the living room and starting piling all of his toys in the middle of the living room, repeatedly saying over and over again, "gotta take toys to sunnyside", "gotta take toys to sunnyside" until I blocked him and redirected him to something else. To make things worse, I had psychological evaluations for him and was told that he didn't have "Autism" because he didn't stim and the fragile X ruled out autism. I went round and round with numerous psychologists, who i worked with. The doctor, who specialized in autism and glutein-casein free diets, said to me that he did have autism and that it didn't matter what the diagnosis was. However, me working as a BSC, I knew that it did matter because the professionals working with my son had to develop the treatment plan based on the diagnosis, which by the way was "Disruptive Behavior Disorder, NOS". Are you kidding me!!!!! So after explaining why diagnosis matters, the autism doctor (we will call him) referred us to a colleague of his for neuro-psychological testing. ALL of this while I was doing everything humanly possible to help the clients that I worked with. AND I COULDN'T HELP MY OWN SON! Well anyways, I took him to the psychologist referred by the autism doctor for neuro-psychological testing. Guess what I was told? Yes, he did have a mild form of Autism and Fragile X grey zone frequently occurs with autism! She also told me that his brain "gets stuck" at times, but he had normal to above average intelligence. All of the hard work and refusing to give up was finally starting to pay off!
Well, I guess this is a lot more about my family and me than I had planned to share. However, when you can understand what the journey has been for our family, then you will be able to understand the type of person I am and why I am the person I am! I will share more tommorrow about me and more recent events!
No comments:
Post a Comment