05/19/2014
Our first son, Jeffrey, born in 1988 was a chunky blond towhead. Ge**er baby. Loved to eat, if he wasn’t eating, he was squawking. So mom stuffed a bottle in his face. It got to a point that he was so full he would puke it back up again, but she rationalized he just puked up his whole lunch, he must be hungry again. Couldn‘t be his belly might hurt from something else. Parents are not given an instruction manual on their way out of the hospital, so what to do? This kid was so round he didn’t crawl. He flopped across the room until he couldn’t flop fast enough. So he figured he could see better where he was going if he scouted first, and learned to pull himself up on furniture pieces. Once he had a target, he was off to the races. Walk? Hell no, he was gonna run there before anyone else got to it. Besides, if he ran he might get three steps in before he was on his belly again instead of just two.
Jeffrey had the normal run of childhood issues, including a few ear infections, a nice case of chicken pox which he gracefully shared with brother 2 three weeks later, and he passed it on to brother 3 in succession. He got all the stuff the pediatrician told us he needed, what did we know? We were so busy trying to keep him pacified and bandaging up his forehead from a kid who firmly believed in “run don’t walk”, and “lead with your face” philosophies we had no time to read about anything else.
Jeffrey’s real trials began with his third round of shots. He got sick within 24 hours of receiving several injections in one visit. We hadn’t noticed many symptoms with previous shots, maybe just a little lethargy for a few days afterward. This time was different. The first night, he was sick, restless, and mounting a fever. By the following evening the fever was starting to scare us, it was high 105’s and he was miserable.
I have to thank Dr. David Fields (dad of Miami Dolphins’ punter Brandon Fields) for a bit of parental training we didn’t know would ever be useful. He related a story about a child who had encephalitis as a result of a vaccine reaction-- as a warning to us about vaccines for our children and suggested we do some research. I really didn’t take it too seriously at the time, but I heard enough to recognize that the hallmark of encephalitis is a high-pitched, inconsolable cry that is described by some as being like singing.
When I heard just that coming from my kid as his eyes rolled back in his head like a kid having a seizure I knew something was very wrong. We got on the phone to our then current chiropractor, Dr. Herb Schraw, and asked for help. We got him adjusted and kept him hydrated as suggested, but when Jeffrey ‘recovered’, he was not the same. His normally bright, engaging glance was different. He didn’t play with the vigor he used to, and he didn’t like to make eye contact anymore. He began to have issues at school, gradually at first, but increasing over the next year or two.
Jeffrey suffered with “depression” throughout most of his school career, and spent a good deal of time struggling with grades. We tried to avoid medicating him and focused mainly on counseling, but even medication did not seem to help him the way we wanted it to. It didn’t fix his problem. It wasn’t until his senior year in high school that he was finally diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a milder autism-spectrum disorder that was largely unknown to his teachers, ourselves, and even most of the counselors at the time. The diagnosis did more to help him than any other therapies, as he could finally understand his tendencies—we read the list of Aspergers’ symptoms, and said, “yes, that’s Jeffrey.” His depression improved because now he had a handle on why he was the way he was, and he met others like himself who he could relate to.
He now works a regular job, enjoys physical labor and sports. He hopes to have a military career in his future, but the diagnosis is a bit of a sticking point with them. He has a girlfriend who is very good for him, she keeps him in line and seems to understand him, maybe better than we do. I believe his symptoms have improved over time, beyond just the depression, a testament to our brain’s ability to heal over time. I am thankful for those who came before whose stories helped us understand what was happening to Jeffrey, and whose input helped us reach the decision to halt further rounds of vaccines, preventing any further damage to his brain.
