[Clodfobble]

The party line is that “early intervention” is the key, but what does that actually mean? It’s early, I’m ready to intervene—what specifically do you suggest I do? We had to wait four months to see the pediatric neurologist, and his assessment was, “Yes, [Minifob] is autistic. Come back when he’s 4 or 5 years old, and I can put him on antipsychotics.” How is that early intervention? Similarly, the allergist we were referred to for [Minifobette] basically refused to do any testing on her at all since she was so young and hadn’t had an anaphylactic reaction to warrant it. It was only by sheer demand on my part that he gave her a skin prick test for a total of three foods before we were ushered out. He, too, suggested we come back when she is several years older. Do you think his attitude will have changed in the last six months? Meanwhile, the waiting list for ABA therapy is over a year long, and I cannot afford $40,000 a year regardless. Occupational therapy has already outlived its usefulness for [Minifob], and I am confident that [Minifobette] will only need a few months of it herself. So what other options does that leave me? So far, not a single treatment advocated by Thoughtful House has had any risk at all—and so far, we have seen extremely positive results with every step. I’m not sure what it is that you want me to “be careful” of. If you think I am being given false hope, all I can say is the results have been quite real so far, and I have the behavior logs and the videos to prove it. If you are afraid I will be scammed out of money, you should know that insurance is reimbursing me at the standard out-of-network percentage, and what’s more, their pricing is at a fair, up-front hourly rate, which equates to an actual hour of face-time with the doctor, and is quite a bit less than, say, the pediatric neurologist, who billed my insurance $500 for less than 15 minutes of time, 90% of which was me re-describing the same symptoms I had just given in great detail to his nurse. If you are afraid we will end up agreeing to something more risky like chelation drugs, I will admit that it is a possibility in the future, after careful consideration of the prerequisite lab test results, and whether Thoughtful House has continued to earn our trust with successful treatments. But a quick search of antipsychotic drugs shows there are far more known side effects and risks for those treatments, especially in children, and the neurologist was apparently ready to dole them out like candy to my son without any additional information or examination of him. So who should I be more careful of, again?

As for whether [Minifob] may or may not have a mitochondrial disorder, my question would be: do you think the tests showing extremely high levels of lactic acid (coupled with low pyruvic acid) were just wrong, or is it merely that you think the doctors at Thoughtful House won’t know how to properly treat the condition if the additional testing indicates he does have it? “Those guys,” as you referred to them, are all real medical doctors, not osteopaths or naturopaths. They came from a variety of other medical backgrounds, including surgery, gastroenterology, etc., and were all compelled into autism treatments because they have autistic children. Did you know that? Almost every single person who works at Thoughtful House in any capacity has at least one autistic child. They have each been compelled to completely redirect their careers, and focus all their efforts on studying, refining, and providing the autism treatments that they personally witnessed working miracles in their own children, just as I have been compelled to tell everyone I meet about the dramatic changes I have seen in [Minifob]. These changes are neither coincidental nor imaginary, and multiple professionals outside of Thoughtful House have agreed with me on that. It is a travesty that legitimate medical work has gotten tied up by the inherent politics of the situation. In fact, I have volunteered to participate in several of their currently-running medical studies, even though it means [Minifob] may sometimes receive a placebo at first and delay his treatment by a few weeks, because I know published studies are the only way to prove what everyone in that office, everyone in the PPCD program, and all the occupational therapists at ***** Rehab already know to be true. In twenty years, the biomedical protocol (the genuine set of proven treatments—gastrointestinal, immunological, and toxicological—not the silly anti-yeast, cranial-sacral, balance-your-chi nonsense that people mistakenly associate it with) is going to be the standard accepted treatment for autism. When [Minifob] was first diagnosed you were adamant that I seek out “good sources of information” (and of course I knew even then what the ‘bad sources’ were that you wanted me to avoid,) such as Autism Speaks. Are you aware that even Autism Speaks now advocates the use of the GFCF diet? As the evidence accumulates, things necessarily change. Medical knowledge is a constantly evolving thing: we laugh at what we thought was true thirty years ago, and it is utterly foolish to think we won’t still be laughing at many of today’s assumptions in another thirty years.

Please understand I’m not angry—you are a good doctor, and I have no intention of leaving your practice in search of someone who already agrees with me, because that would defeat the purpose. Instead I plan to demonstrate to you that I’m right about this, however long that may take. I look forward to sharing my children’s continued improvement with you.


Sincerely, [Clodfobble]

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