Business as usual.....

Just a little story about what went on in my house last night. It will serve to illustrate what food can do to Salamander's brain chemistry. It will also serve as an example of the type of stuff that goes on in our house on a rather frequent basis that may or may not be related to his autism at all, but that certainly serves to make life more, uhm, interesting...

Don't know yet why what I describe below happened, am just relating the what.

Salamander continues to be in one of his 'I won't touch any animal protein' phases, and I can see him loose weight (mainly muscle mass, and he doesn't have that much weight to spare), so I am always looking for other protein foods that I can get into him (as explained in previous posts, we can't do cow, goat or sheep products, can't do soy or eggs or peanuts either). I've been trying to get him to eat beans for ages, with little luck.

To my surprise when suggested he try some Pinto Beans with dinner last night, he agreed. He ate about 6 or 7 beans (I know, not a whole lot, but better than nothing), and ate most of a salad we had made for him (fishing out every piece of chicken and putting it aside, of course).
Within 45 minutes from finishing dinner (and the only new thing he had that night were the Pinto Beans), his ears turn bright red. He is getting this glazed look in his eyes, and he cannot keep his head up - it keeps drooping down and falling on the table.

We are working on home work by that time. We started with some regular and irregular verbs. He was a bit slow, but was able to get through the assignment without too much help (just a little redirection from me every once and a while, and reminding him to keep his head off the table LOL).

Then we're on to math - and math is definitely his strongest subject. To my surprise, this poor child can't get any of his math problems solved. He can't seem to retrieve the most basic math facts from his brain (could not figure out that 1 + 4 is 5, even when I gave him a bunch of crayons to use as props), can't remember the borrowing and carry over rules, can't remember all the little math tricks I've taught him for when you need to do additions/subtractions that bring you over 10 or under 10) - and I know that he has this stuff down, as even about an hour before dinner, we had been doing some kitchen math without any problems.
So we struggle through math home work, and I can see Salamander literally go further and further 'off line' (staring at the wall, withdrawing in himself, not hearing what is going on around him).

Bed time - he has been upstairs in his bed for maybe 30 minutes when we hear this horrendous scream. He comes streaking out of his bedroom, runs down the stairs into the living room - all the while continuing to screech - like he's terrified. When he calms down enough, he explains that he saw 'floating white things' in his bed room, moving out of his room into his brother's bed room (the kiddo obviously had had a really bad nightmare, almost at the hallucination level). Thing is though he hasn't had nightmares like this in a LOOOOOOONG time (he used to have these pretty much every 2 -3 nights throughout the night before we cleaned up his diet - can you say 'Sleep optional'??).

He did go back to sleep eventually and slept through, but this morning he was really struggling ('as slow as a slug in molasses'). He even said to me 'Mom, my eyes are open, but my brain is still not awake'.

So now the quest has started on what the heck in Pinto Beans (phenols?, oxalates?, salicylates? purines?, sulphur?) that could have caused a reaction like this. Poor Salamander has a big math test today at school. Hope his brain has come back 'on-line' by then, as otherwise he (and his teachers) will be in for a rough time.

As a side note, you should see what happens to Potatey, who is very much NT, very easy going, very caring, very protective in his own, almost 3-year old, way of his big brother, when he eats corn on the cob - he becomes a PSYCHO!! He will kick me, slap me, pinch me, bite me, torture the cat, find whatever means he can to aggrevate his older brother - not like him at all - all within about 1 - 2 hours from eating.

Oy....

Welcome to 'business as usual'