Like, where’s my BFG?
This picture that Mitch took of me last week is starting to cause a funny stir over here amongst my friends. The only thing missing is a BFG and a don’t-mess-with-this-mother facial expression, but i won’t go into the details of the reasons behind the evolution of this picture.
This is more like it…. so i’ll definitely have do a skirmish at least once in this lifetime in order to score my trophy photo. I’m sure i’ll get there, one day - in the not too distant future. The world as it is, has made me need to become this way as a mother.
…or yes, even this one with the child hoisted on the hip and an even bigger BFG! 
Strangely enough, my life seems to be mirrored to the fictional characters of these Super-BFG-Moms battling with Doomsday-isms atm. The battle, acceptance and integration of Autism continues. There has been great progress in our lives, however draining - I can’t exactly quit at this job.
Received an invitation to attend a meeting over at Springwood to get involved in working on developing support groups for families affected by ASD in the Blue Mountains. I look forward to following this up and seeing where we can take it. I can already intuit that it’s got the potential to go somewhere really amazing.
When we say things like,
“XYZ is so bad, that i wouldn’t want to wish it on my worst enemy.”
I feel very differently about Autism.
My family was heavily exposed to many hardcore toxins during my pregnancy. Chronic maxed out exposure to very high levels of VOCs. MDF, carpet, paint, solvents - it was a fresh NEW building - and they were still completing construction on the appartment even after we moved in too, heaps of building & construction dust everywhere. This appartment was also next door to the street where we lived in for years before it, which had one of the highest levels of lead in Sydney.
Although my own pieces to the puzzle is not completed yet, i have enough pieces to see the emerging picture and intuit it already. I experienced my first attack of MS during week 17 of my pregnancy and that my son’s autism was present at birth (if not in utero)? A clear cut case of living with a heavy toxic load at the time. How can this unknown environmental trigger be such a bloody mystery anymore?!
Whilst people continue to argue over thimerosal in the freaking vaccines ad-infinitum, I find it mortifying that businesses are allowed to sell & produce hazardous products (& by-products) that are already known & proven to not only harm the healthy development of a baby within the womb but also seriously affect the health of older people too.
Like, my apartment did not come with a sign on the door that said,
“Living in this place, is going to seriously harm both you and the baby.”
With the hindsight I now own in my life, i would’ve chosen differently - but i can’t turn the clock backwards.
1:150 will have autism…
1:140 will have autism…
and today, i see
1:94 boys will have autism…
Do i care about the numbers or where they come from? No - not much. We’ll just see the trend continue and then we’ll be left with a very high population of parents starting to go through it. More, and more and more - and the schools are already facing it. Allergies on the rise. Auto-immune diseases on the rise. ADDHDPDD(yadda yadda) - just add any other illness, other mental & physical developmental problems into the picture where many parents are going to be loaded with the stigma of “bad parenting”. Supply & Demand will undoubtedly kick in, to enforce changes to the way people do things - it’s already happening in our lives. Our situation is commanding change - fail to change or adapt, then all hell will break loose and for each moment where constructive change can kick in which makes a difference, it opens pandora’s box that yields itself into turning this world into a better place than it was before.
Isn’t that the beauty of humans? That we have an amazing capacity to adapt? Which then makes me reflect on a cockroach’s ability to SURVIVE…
Sometimes - it does feel like i am in the middle of an X-Men movie where this world has just reached the stage of humans starting to give birth to it’s early Mutants. A mixed blessing, as who knows what the bioaccumulation of chemicals could possibly bring to the world in the future. Some big problems ahead perhaps, but the coin will always have it’s otherside and the ying will have it’s yang.
My own Doomsday occured on the day that i gave birth to my son, where the landscape in my mind was no different to Sarah O’Connor. For now - i can continue to be grateful for the amazing things that have resulted in our lives because of just how hard it’s forced us to change & adapt.
JackP said,
March 14, 2008 @ 11:11 am
I guess a lot of the ratios (e.g. 1:94) will relate to exactly who is doing the telling in some cases? For example, I work in the IT field so I wouldn’t claim to be any sort of expert on autism (so please inform & educate me where I go wrong!) but as I understand it, it’s kind of an ‘autistic spectrum’ depending upon how withdrawn(?) disconnected(?) …autistic someone is.
And I also think that is what is sometimes referred to as Aspberger’s Syndrome is something on the ’slight’ end of the autistic spectrum. And working in the IT field, I’ve met probably a higher proportion of people who exhibit at least some traits that I would associate with Aspbergers (sorry about spelling) than I would tend to find in other fields. I’m not saying that they have aspbergers, but it’s possible that if autism is a spectrum, that these people are at the very end of it? (or have I misunderstood how it works?)
The other point would be that a field like IT, which relies on logic, and yes, little human interaction, leading to the geeky IT stereotype, is perhaps a career which would be more attractive to someone who prefers logic and can find other people difficult to cope with (really sorry about my awkward language, I hope you understand what I’m trying to say!)
…might naturally gravitate to IT.
These people might, by some definitions, be classed as autistic, or by some definitions not. Depending on whether you were representing an autism society or some other group with opposed aims (e.g. chemical manufacture or something), you may or may not want to include these ‘mild aspberger’ people into your autism ratios.
In short (hah! - this comment has been in long if ever I’ve seen one), I’d always stop to question “who’s feeding me this statistic?”
R’acquel: Long & interesting comments that ramble off on tangents and tickle the brain - that’s how i like it.
I agree with and understand the sentiment of what you’re saying.
The only statistics i pay close attention to are the ones that life presents to me in the cold hard flesh. Something tangible I can calculate for myself. Perhaps this might tickle your brain and maybe you can correct me if you can see any errors in my own thinking of layman math over here;
Including my son, there’s another child in the year ahead of him with Aspergers who also requires an aid. The Principal of the school, also has a son with Aspergers - requiring the assistance of an aid (but his son isn’t attending the same school).
2 kids on the spectrum at my son’s school already, amidst a student population of about 300.
There - that’s 1:150 kids being affected by it in this community in my face already. Is it fair to include the principal’s son into this equation which would bring that down to a 1:100? Probably not, but that’s all it’s going to take. Just ONE more child with ASD attending my son’s school - and those ratios are going to face a dramatic shift.
The thing is… there was another student who attended my son’s school no longer there. We wasn’t diagnosed with Aspergers until he started highschool, after he was suspended within the first week at the new school. He’s now home-schooled and doing well. All up - that’s 1:75 families associated with my son’s school, already affected in this community. The odds of another child entering into my son’s school that’s going to require another aid? Quite Probable.
I don’t need to wait for some unknown (to me) world authoratar who’s forgotten to add my autistic son as a number into the publically declared statistics online, to do my own math for me. It’s in my face.
I’m not the only mother in my community saying,
“Hey - i want to do something about helping our children (and ourselves as parents) and i’ll do whatever it bloody takes to make it happen because necessity (MY CHILD) is commanding action to take place, RIGHT NOW!”
We wouldn’t have access to the support & resources that we do, if there weren’t many parents who had to go through this before us. It’s been a rough week but i look forward to the meeting on March 25. Can end on a positive note nontheless, after receiving an email from another friend who thinks that bf gun is tucked into the back waistband of my jeans in the hipshot. It made me laugh out loud, and i’m feeling all the better for it.
Like, sometimes - you just need a bloody sense of humour (and a bfg) to get through it all…
RR said,
March 14, 2008 @ 8:45 pm
I can see big things coming….
R’acquel: Me too!
*hugz*
richard said,
March 19, 2008 @ 12:40 am
How to respond? There are just so many comments to offer … but I think I will simply focus on 3 problems / concerns it raises for me.
(1) As a general rule, I have a problem with labelling - I think it tends to be overused simply because it allows people to categorize and forget. Although, I do recognize that there are definitely circumstances where correct identification is important.
(2) The effects of environmental chemicals is poorly understood, studied and documented. Add to that social influences affecting gene expression and you have a very, very difficult mess to understand. About a year ago, I was having dinner with some educators and the conversation turned to the rise in ADD / ADHD. The dominant thoughts at the table were (1) the increase is due to better diagnosis, (2) the increase is due to environmental pollutants / contaminants, (2) the increase is due to misdiagnosis. I put forward (outside the box, as usual), the idea that it may have to do with loss of social factors that previously mitigated against ADD / ADHD expression - namely that in the past, children tended to stay home with a caregiver (usually the mother) longer than they do now. Nowadays, kids get sent to daycare, early education programs, etc. Recent studies have shown that baby rats (or was it mice?) who are groomed by their mothers, exhibit less anxiety than those that are not because grooming affects the way certain genes are expressed (the most obvious example of non-chemical influences affecting gene expression is animal coat colour. The colour of many cats and dogs is dependent on temperature, with the tips of the paws, ears, tail often being a different colour because they tend to be cooler). In our own case, we certainly notice that Jason is calmer when one of us is at home. He was an absolute disaster when he used to spend the day at daycare. So, now, we pay for someone to be home after school so he isn’t away from his home environment for extended periods. It would be preferable if one of us could stay home (JJ is much calmer when I am home for a few days).
(3) I find most scientists to be no better than religious fundamentalist - believing only in the literal written word. Present a new idea to a scientist and the first thing they will say is, “Where is that published?” If it is not published, it is not real. As previously mentioned, JJ has eczema and I am 100% convinced that certain foods aggravate it (cow dairy, nuts of any sort, spinach, soya. He may also be sensitive to wheat, but it is hard for us to confirm this). However, the doctors don’t believe it because it is not part of the sacred canon. When we were in Peru, on dermatologist, to prove to us that it had nothing to do with the food, prescribed prednisone for JJ. JJ immediately improved. He discounted our observation. (Not that I want JJ on prednisone.)
Finally, part of the increase in “disease” may be because we are able to intervene and prolong life. Sofia always tells me how surprised she is that there are so many people allergic to peanuts in Canada. She never heard of that in Peru. A Sudanese friend of mine said the same about peanut allergy and Sudan. My comment is always that (1) people tend to be poor, (2) health care is quite poor, (3) infant mortality is relatively high. If the child dies of peanut allergy, it is likely to be attributed as a tragic infant death related to poverty rather than some external factor (like peanut allergy).
I have no idea what quality of life JJ would have without his creams and antibiotics. His fingers tend to get infected fairly often and he is on antibiotics a few times per year for that. Perhaps, in another time, he would have already died from complications from skin infection. My main concern is that that he will contract an antibiotic resistant strain of Staphylococcus Aureus.
BTW, you can always Photoshop (or GIMP) in a BFG.
R’acquel: I admire people who know how to talk things out thourough. Thanks Richard. How to respond? I’ll take my time by following up with your links first to gain more insight from your own perspectives
At the stage of needing to review my son’s situation with school atm, along with a deadline to complete.