Big Bang and a Rainbow of Hope

Well, last Monday (3rd November) started off wonderfully at first –I was walking with a skip in my step as everywhere the universe seemed to be responding to me with signs. For the first time in months, I felt a sense of clarity in thought – I knew what my next step for Tália was to be. I started the morning with a coffee with my husband where I relayed my plans excitedly and we began to discuss our plan for Tali. I decided to start a gluten free, dairy free diet to try and see how she responded and commented to my husband how it would be great to meet a mum of a Celiac Child to discuss diets and get recipe ideas. And what happens, a random woman comes up to me and asks me to join her once my husband had left. After speaking further, she tells me that she lives above our office. After further chatting, I see she is studying human physiology and before I know it, she is telling me that her daughter is Celiac Disease!!! This to me was a large glaring sign that I am going in the right direction.

At about 12:54, I was driving and then the phone call came. My world turned upside down, the sky came crashing down and my heart felt like a dagger was cutting up. This is when I learned that my Dad had cancer of the stomach that had spread to the lung and possibly the liver. I was shocked. How did this come to be if we thought the had a chronic bronchitis??? Could cancer attack so quickly? I had a good cry and then spent a few hours with my husband just coming to terms with the news and my husband frantically searched google to look at what the future looked like to us. What were the facts? What type of life could my Dad expect to live? What kind of questions should we ask the oncologist? Whilst upset and shocked, information is key and knowing what to ask is sometimes so important. When a condition is alien to you, sometimes you don’t even know where to start. So no matter how difficult or painful, as with Tália I wanted to know the spectrum of options.

Together we went to pick up our girls from school – I felt like I was stuck in a cloud, I had jumped into the screen of the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Soon I would wake up back to my sunny world – chatting to Dad and Mum, Dad fussing over me and worrying about how I am going to do the shopping, how I am going to pick up the kids…. Yep he’s a worrier and to him, I’m his baby. He looks after me like gold and is the best Dad in the whole wide world. Anyway on driving to the hospital, my husband suddenly jolted me out of my fog,

‘Wow look at that, that’s amazing – it’s a full rainbow’, and sure enough, there like a huge archway going from one side of the road to the other side, like a protective arch of light around us, was the fullest and most perfect rainbow I have ever seen. It had been a day full of signs from God and here was my rainbow of hope. This sign gave me an inner strength – I knew we would be alright, I knew we would fight this, I knew that there was hope. No matter what lay ahead that rainbow was a very visual sign for me and subsequently over the last week, be it when trying to sleep or when watching my Dad preparing for surgery, that rainbow has been in my visualisation and that spectrum of lights has acted as a focal point for my prayer and meditation.

Autism can be Reversed

I feel so deeply touched and overwhelmed by Jenny McCarthy’s book, Louder than Words. Reading about her challenge in diagnosing and then finding treatment for her son, Evan, brought tears and joy to me. Reading her thoughts and experiences just was like déjà vu to me, a total emotional roller coaster. And yet she has always had a ray of hope and strength to fight through to the end. The results have been fantastic and any parent with an autistic child or child with some kind of developmental delay should read this book.

She has had her fair share of negativity. Drs who believe that Autism is something you have and something you need to adjust to (sounds familiar doesn’t it? How many times have I been told to be patient and just change my life and deal with what comes my way, that there is nothing I can do).

Jenny reveals how dealing with the different symptoms of autism can actually lead to some or total recovery from autism. It seems ludicrous that we know nothing about half of these diets etc. It seems crazy that 1 in 150 kids have autism. It seems maddening that in this day and age, we are still battling the medical world.

Reading this book has opened my eyes – Tália does not yet have a diagnosis but she does have symptoms; failure to thrive, hypotonia, general developmental delay and after reading this book, some autistic features. The joyous flapping of arms is a typical autistic feature, the loss of language – at 8 months. Tália was saying Dada, then suddenly one day she just stopped and we are still trying to get this back, her love for spinning fans and tops etc.

So, if Tália has a slight autism and also cannot absorb some nutrients (as with autistic kids), surely it would pay to start therapy to deal with these traits? Sure the physio and speech therapy are halfway there but we need to look at biomedical help too.

Yet Drs have not even mentioned autism, despite the fact that I have mentioned her hypersensibilty in her hands and fear to touch things. They have barely mentioned diet. No one has checked her food tolerances and intolerances. Nobody knows my child – the Drs see her for minutes – so they don’t see her flap. Nor do they see the positive –they don’t notice that now she can stand holding on to a surface – isn’t that a great achievement for a child who could barely move her arms and was completely floppy 9 months ago?

I know that autism is probably only part of the explanation but like Jenny who started looking at the symptoms –gut problems, yeast problems, immune problems etc. and fixed each one, I think, we, without any diagnosis need to follow in her footsteps.

And why does this feeling in my gut tell me that I am on the right path?? Well, firstly, I was amazed to see that Jenny dealt with issues at times in the same way I do. She trusted her gut and also asked God for signs – large whopping ones that fall down and hit you on the head.


Well guess what? First my mum bought Jenny McCarthy’s book in the states – she said it called out to her and beckoned to her – remember up till now we have not even looked at autism! Then last week I decided that Tália needed to have a muscle biopsy so I will probably need to go to Barcelona soon ( more signs led me to this decision). Whilst reading Jenny’s book last week, I questioned my speech therapist about autism, about metal build up in the body, about vaccinations and blah blah blah…… She said, ´Tália is not autistic¨ - I know that she doesn’t fit in the box but some things she does are the same. By coincidence (or not), the speech therapist introduced me to mum who happened to be waiting at the same time as me. And guess what, she had just been to Barcelona the previous day to see a DAN (Defeat Autism Now) Dr. She asked me if I knew what that was – if she had asked me one week earlier, I would have been lost but Jenny used DAN Drs and I was looking for a Dan Dr and low and behold where is this Dan Dr? In Barcelona! And where do I need to head to for muscle biopsy – Barcelona!!!

This fab mum gave me the Dr’s number and website. Whilst trawling through Jenny’s website , I also came across a directory of Dan Drs and Abracadabra, there, listed under Spain, was one DAN Dr based in Barcelona – there are no others listed under Spain – so guess what – we got a perfect match. The number that the mum gave me was the same as the one on Jenny’s site. Is this not a whopping sign??? I mean surely I would need to be a dunce not hear this signal???

Isn’t the next step on this road mapped out for me already? Now time to move on …time to look into autism and failure to thrive, time to go back to google and time to pack my bags for Barcelona! The adventure is about to begin……

It is nearly 7am so nearly time to get the kids ready for school. Time to close up –my golden hour for research has flown by.