Matthew Sumida: Talking to Dr. H

Friday, May 15, 2009

Talking to Dr. H

I don’t have a photo but today we had one of those “wow” moments I want to remember. Matthew spiked a fever this morning so I rushed him to the doctor (he can go from 98.6 to 104 almost instantly). My poor baby was feeling pretty awful and was crying. The doctor walked in and this was their conversation….yes, I said conversation.

Dr. H : Hi Matthew
Matthew: I go home, go Matthew’s house. Bye Dr. H. Please go away.
Dr. H: Why are you crying Matthew?
Matthew: I am sad
Dr. H: Why are you sad?
Matthew: Matthew feel sick
Dr. H: What hurts Matthew?
Matthew: (he just cried)
Me: Matthew, tell Dr. H. what hurts? Can you show me what hurts?
Matthew: Throat hurt.

So they may not have been discussing world politics but Matthew had a 4 part exchange! Our doctor almost fell over! Even he is blown away by the progress we are seeing. To think of how far my baby has come takes my breath away. We are nuts about taking photos and videos (if you have not noticed) and we see the videos we took at this time last year and Matthew was just saying “I want …..” and that simple carrier phrase with different words thrown in to let you know what he wanted was the extent of his language. No commenting, asking questions and no back and forth exchanges, only requesting. We are so proud of what Matthew has accomplished and how hard he works each and every day. It confirms to us that even on a bad day, we know that the time will come where autism will be a distant memory. Great job little sweet pea!
In the end, poor Matthew had a high fever and double ear infection which made its way to his throat. Poor angel, we hope you feel better soon. XOXOXOXO

3 comments:

Roxy said...: I can almost hear his sweet voice and his beautiful smile missing because he doesn't feel good :-( I am so happy of his progress in a year.
That's our boy!; May 16, 2009 at 10:32 AM
Anonymous said...: OMG- that is soo amazing- i am so greatful you get to witness these wonderful moments of progress- Gabby; May 22, 2009 at 9:31 AM
Anonymous said...: I'm blown away with the convo he had with his doctor! Matthew's really come a long wways! He's got some awesome parents!!! -anna; May 22, 2009 at 8:51 PM

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Matthew Dean

We started this blog because we wanted to be able to keep our loved ones up to date on Matthew and the wonderful progress he is making. It has been a crazy time since receiving Matthew's diagnosis of moderate to severe Autism in February 2007.
Autism is classified by the World Health Organization and American Psychological Association as a developmental disability resulting from a disorder of the human central nervous system. It is considered to be a neurodevelopmental disorder. It typically begins before 3 and is lifelong. It is characterized by varying degrees of impairment in verbal & non verbal communication skills, social interactions, and restricted, repetitive & stereotyped patterns of behavior. Children w/autism often fail to respond to their name, are unable to speak or have delayed speech and often avoid eye contact. They tend to engage in repetitive movements like rocking, spinning, hand flapping and in self-abusive behavior such as biting or head-banging. All behaviors that Matthew was exhibiting regularly. At the time we sent letters to our loved ones, we described what autism was and that there was no cure for autism. Well...... that is not the case. You can recover from autism and to that end we are pursuing a combination of therapies. Matthew is in an intense intervention program consisting of ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis), Speech Therapy and Occupational Therapy. He is in this program for between 6-8 hours daily. He is also on a gluten-free and casein-free diet which he has been on since February 2007. We began biomedical intervention in June 2007 as well and homeopathy in April 2008. We read stories all of the time about these parents who start the diet, biomed or other modalities and see a miracle before their eyes. We have not had that experience but with each added intervention we see improvement..... 10% here, 8% there. We know that we will reach that 100% mark and that day will be the second best day of our lives, the first being when our little angel was born! We will update this as often as possible to that you can celebrate Matthew's success with us.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Talking to Dr. H

3 comments:

Matthew Dean

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