Safety in a Home with a Special Needs Person

As the years have passed I have found myself making changes in my home that I never imagined, but the idea of being able to sleep the few hours at night without worrying about my son Mickie getting hurt kept me making the changes that have helped regain some sense of security.

One should never underestimate people with Autism. They are very smart, no matter how it seems and will plan for days even months a way around any security measures to get to what they want.

My son used to get into everything and for a time life was very chaotic for his sisters and me, so I modified our home as soon as a new behavior arrived. This has made it possible for him to roam free around his home, even at night, without getting hurt. He still needs to be watched when he is awake, but the changes have helped.

1. All outlets covered with metal plates (he used to rip them off and try to take out the electric cables, so don't use plastic, because they will rip them off)

2. Locked Kitchen (he also has an insatiable appetite and has pica)

3. Security doors leading to the outside (he is a wanderer)

4. Pictures bolted to the walls (took everything off the walls before)

5. All cabinets locked (used to empty them and make a huge mess)

6. Zero access to heaters and air conditioner units (used to try to pull off the cables)

7 TV enclosed in a wood case with plexy glass in front (used to brake electronics)

8 Clean floors (he would otherwise pick things up and put them in his mouth)

9 Cabinets are secured to the wall (he is a climber)

10 An outside valve to turn off the water in his bathroom (likes to run the water and flooded his bathroom years ago)Etc.....

Why Medical Authorities Went to Such Extremes to Silence Dr. Andrew Wakefield

In this interview, Dr. Andrew Wakefield shares his personal and professional insights into a number of topics, from the gut-brain connection so often seen in autistic children, to the safety of a number of childhood vaccines.

But most importantly, he sets the record straight on the harsh criticism he’s endured as the author of one of the most controversial vaccine-causing-autism studies ever done.

In addition to his hotly contested MMR study, published in the journal Lancet in 1998, he has published about 130-140 peer-reviewed papers looking at the mechanism and cause of inflammatory bowel disease, and has extensively investigated the brain-bowel connection in the context of children with developmental disorders such as autism.

Sources:

Dr. Mercola
Andrew Wakefield Interview (Full Transcript)

Wakefield Leaves Thoughtful House

For parents like me, dealing with the severe part of the Autism spectrum, Dr. Wakefield's findings gave us hope and a reason for the chaos that no one else could explain. I have never meet him and probably never will, but nevertheless I will be forever in his debt. This witch hunt against a good doctor is disheartening and unfair. I am so very sad to hear he has resign from Thoughtful House Center for Children.

By Mary Ann Roser, statesman.com is.gd/8KsJK

Council, which regulates doctors in the U.K., found that Wakefield was dishonest and irresponsible in conducting research on children in England a dozen years ago. The panel also said Wakefield showed a "callous disregard" for children at his child's birthday party in 1999 when he had blood taken from them and paid them about $10 each. He later joked at a conference about the children being "paid for their discomfort."
Wakefield's 1998 work, published in The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, fueled a worldwide scare over vaccines and autism. The Lancet retracted the study earlier this month.
Thoughtful House would not answer questions about Wakefield's departure. By Thursday morning, he was removed from the center's staff list, and the center issued a statement when asked whether Wakefield had resigned.
"The needs of the children we serve must always come first," it said. "All of us at Thoughtful House are grateful to Dr. Wakefield for the valuable work he has done here. We fully support his decision to leave Thoughtful House in order to make sure that the controversy surrounding the recent findings of the General Medical Council does not interfere with the important work that our dedicated team of clinicians and researchers is doing on behalf of children with autism and their families. All of us at Thoughtful House continue to fight every day for the recovery of children with developmental disorders."
Wakefield, who is in his early 50s, helped draw musicians and other celebrities to the Thoughtful House, where he was said to be in charge of research.
Parents who brought their children to the clinic said they saw him as a persecuted hero whose staff helped their children improve. The parents said they believe in the theory he advanced in the Lancet paper — that some children might develop a form of autism and gastrointestinal disease from exposure to the combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine.
Other researchers have widely disputed the theory. Mainstream practitioners also oppose many of the alternative treatments at Thoughtful House, including chelation — the use of chemicals to remove metals from the body.
Starting April 7 in England, Wakefield will go to the next level of hearings before the General Medical Council, which will decide whether he is guilty of serious professional misconduct and whether he should be sanctioned, which could include losing his medical license.
Wakefield does not have a U.S. medical license.
Last month, he told reporters outside the medical council's office in London, "The allegations against me and against my colleagues are both unfounded and unjust. I repeat, unfounded and unjust, and I invite anyone to examine the contents of these proceedings and come to their own conclusion."

A Petition to help Dr. Andrew Wakefield

"The Nigel Thomas Petition"
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/gmc/

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• Doctor behind autism-vaccine scare censured (cbc.ca)

Lack of Empathy

Tonight I was reminded of the long road ahead for Mickie.

It was right before his bed time, when I noticed he had an accident on the carpet in his room. It's really no big deal to me, though I usually clean in the morning, I didn't want him to walk around in a dirty carpet. I got the shampooer out and proceeded to clean the area.

As I walked out of his room I stepped over the wet area of the carpet and as soon as I set foot on the tile floor I slipped and fell on my left knee. I screamed once, then just tried to breath slowly till the pain subsided, but I couldn't get up right away. I looked up and saw Mickie walking towards me, and he looked annoyed, but at first glance I thought he was sad because I was hurt, but instead, he just started pushing me to get up. I suppose he knows I don't belong on the hallway floor.

It was then that I was painfully reminded once again, that Mickie feels no empathy yet. I don't remember a time when he cried when someone cried or got hurt. I understand that this is an autistic trade, but I have heard of cases where they develop empathy and in time my hope is that Mickie will too.

Emergency Medicine at It's Best

Last Friday afternoon, as I was walking back in the house from the back porch, where I had just started a load of laundry, I heard Mickie cry. He was in the hallway that leads to my bedroom and making the eeeeee sound that usually follows pain. There was blood running down the right side of his face! I immediately imagined the worse. I thought he had cracked his skull open and I couldn't tell where all the blood was coming from. I embraced him and screamed for my daughter who was towards the front of the house.

I didn't want to look! I've fainted at the site of blood before, so she and her big brother looked for me. It was a cut on his left eyebrow, only I didn't see it, because Mickie's hair is very long.

I called the paramedics, who eased my worries about the wound not being as serious as I first thought. The ambulance drove him to the hospital and I rode in the back with him. Mickie seemed more worried about being in a strange vehicle then about the cut on his face. He was taken to San Antonio Hospital in Upland, Cafifornia, where upon arrival an older looking nurse greeted him with a cute brown plush dog. He took it and made it his own right away, but continued to fuzz and cry. A bracellet with his name was placed in his left arm, which he proceeded to rip off.

We were then taken to a private room, in the new emergency wing. A nurse walked in and asked me if he was allergic to anything-a trick question for me, because Michael is not allergic on paper, but very sencitive to milk protein and his body does not flush out heavy metals very well. She asked me if I wanted him to have a Tetanus shot, to which I replied.........

His autism is directly linked to the vaccines he recieved as a baby and the last time he was vaccinated, was in 2000. He can't get rid of metals. Does it contain Mercury?

She said....Oh this one probably does.

She walked out and a few minutes later a male nurse walken in with her and decided they would go old school and stich him up without putting him under anestheshia, which sounded great to me.

A few minutes later the doctor walked in and she said to him something like......Just for the record she is refusing a tenanus shot, so there's no need to ask her again.

While they got ready I heard them talking about how they didn't understand why they can't just stitch kids up without putting them to sleep or waiting for ex-rays and keeping them there for hours.

The male nurse rapped Mickie in a sheet folded in 4 and held him down, while the female nurse held his head. I held his legs, so he didn't push up-he has strong legs. The doctor proceded to apply a local anesthetic, then he put in the three stitches, which he tripple knotted to make sure Mickie didn't pull them out.

I couldn't help but noticed how much they enjoyed praticing medicine.
They patched my special boy old school and sent him home within an hour-It doesn't get any better then that.

Later that day when I told my mom how he was treated-she releid to me, that San Antonio Hospital was ranked within the best 100 hospitals in the US. It was easy to understand how they had earned that status. A thankyou note is on it's way to the nurses and doctors at the emergercy room.