Words, Beautiful Words

Have not updated on Chandler's progress in a long time and it is long overdue.

So recently we started doing hard tank hyperbaric oxygen therapy with Harold Grams and we have been seeing some pretty big wows.

Chandler's progress had been really flat since last summer, kind of disheartening after all the gains he had made in previous years, and so we decided to give it a shot. We had tried soft tank HBOT a few years back, thought we saw some small gains, but it was the same month he had a huge lead exposure (did you know dirt is yummy) so if it was helping him, it may have been canceled out.

This has been quite a different experience. After the forth session, we started to see some really cool language. More words, more flowing language, less scripting, more jokes, more engagement... just more Chandler.

The first fun little wow happened on the way home. If we are out and he wants to go home, he says one of two things, "Mommy, do you want to go home now?" or "Go to 34 Maple Street?" He has done that for years. Imagine my happiness to hear, "Mom, how long until we get to Brunswick?" I didn't even know that he knew we lived in Brunswick!

Two days later when I went to pick him up from school, I get an email in the middle of the morning from his teacher at school. She has never emailed me in the middle of the day to tell me things, much less after school:

Ginger,

Something amazing happened with Chandler this morning. We were having morning meeting and the greeting was Buenos Dias. We usually just say good morning or hello to him. I don’t remember if we assumed another language would confuse him or if he was not responding. That’s what we have been doing all year. Anyway this morning when we came to Chandler he very appropriately said "Buenos Dias Holly" before Amy could even greet him. We were all so shocked, it was the coolest thing. James said, “He’s becoming more normal.” It was precious! He had also asked me earlier this morning, “Mrs. Williams, how do you spell Mrs. Williams? Thought you would want to know.

Jane

Gotta love James! When mom's crow about their children making big gains with biomedical intervention, sometimes they are written off as seeing what they want to see, teachers might just want to have high hopes for the child, but second grade boys are immune to treatment bias, especially when they don't know there is any treatment going on!

That afternoon his aid met me in the lobby of the school for the hand off and with tears in her eyes she gushed about Chandler's day.

"In music class he was perfect, he did everything he was instructed to do, was completely attentive and I didn't even have to repeat an instruction for him!" I've got to look up this... what is it called... hyperbaric?

We just met with his school team and everyone was telling stories about his new skills. They decided they wanted to hold off making plans for him for the summer and fall until the end of the year to see how far he goes with this.

It has only been upward from there. And have not seen any significant down side. He was a little hyperactive for the first two days, but that went away and it has been all good since. His great in the tank and the pressure has never bothered him.

We have had to take a bunch of breaks due to illness and broken cars and unfaxed prescriptions and life, but have started up again this week and hope to do another six sessions in a row and will see what happens. It is a thrill to see him making gains again.

Amazing that just giving the brain more oxygen can do this kind of healing. I will keep ya posted on how this goes.