Matthew Sumida

Monday, April 19, 2010

It feels like it has been so long since I have posted but it has been quite busy for us. I ended up having surgery and have pretty much been off my feet for the past 5 weeks. That has kind of put a crimp in our outings. I am posting just a few photos from Easter with Mark's family and a few photos of Matthew at a birthday party with his beaming smile.

He is doing so well right now, I feel like I have to pinch myself at times. We went to Irvine Spectrum yesterday (they have complimentary wheel chairs) and as wandered around we were reminded of when we used to go with Mark's parents. We never let Matthew out of the stroller as he was a HUGE eloper and when we took him to the water area we had 1 person at each entrance to catch Matthew while he ran aimlessly towards every exit. Yesterday he calmly walked along side, even pushing the wheelchair at times and chatting about the mini-schnauzer he wanted us to buy at the pet store. He has come so far, I often look at him and can hardly remember those difficult times. His progress has been nothing short of a miracle. Still, we have issues we are working on but I now know that there is nothing Matthew can't over come.
Mom and Dad are proud of you Matthew! We love you!

Mark and his brother

Matthew and cousins

My little thrill seeker

Wahoooooo!

2 comments:

EP said...: What a great update on Matthew! Way to go big guy!

And didn't know you had surgery Sylvia...Hope you are recovering well.

Hugs!
Elizabeth; April 19, 2010 at 7:31 PM
Theresa said...: Hope you are felling better and back on your feet. I miss that little face of Matthew's. Kiss him for me!; April 23, 2010 at 3:09 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.

Monday, April 19, 2010

2 comments:

Matthew Dean

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