A Great Time (More on My Son Part 37) It has been some interesting events (like always). Lets start by talking about his medication. As mentioned before he has been on .25 mg of R. The last meeting I attended with the counselor and physician responsible for prescribing our son's medication was not a real positive one. We were discussing increasing the dosage to .5 from it's current .25 dosage. I asked the question, if the medication dosage is based on weight and if so, what are the weight to dosage ratios. The Dr. stated that he prefers to prescribe based on the patients need and the increase we are talking about is insignificant. I was shocked to say the least. I can easily be accused of being overly cautious when it comes to putting my son on behavior meds, but for his to say the difference is insignificant I thought was crazy. It is double the amount his body was used to. They way I see doubling anything is a significant change. I tried to put it in perspective for the Dr. by posing the situation, if the bank called and was to double the interest on a loan you had, would you consider that to be significant? He got defensive pretty quick. My wife was looking at me in disbelief. I continued by explaining as a parent it is my responsibility to question an monitor what meds and dosage my child is on and question the purpose. He told me I am not being helpful and should just trust him. I said all I need to know what is the recommended safe limit based on his weight. This could have easily been settled by him going to his office and returning with his Physician's Desk Reference. He then accused me of not trusting him and questioning his credentials as a doctor and should not be so defensive. He did say “Fine! I will not prescribe a higher dosage until I get that information to you, you might think you are helping and doing the right thing, but you are not”. (Still did not bother to walk his @$$ across the hall to his office nor call for an assistant to bring him that information readily available. It took all I had in me and a quick little prayer to God to keep me from telling him what I thought of him, instead I politely excused myself from the office went for a walk ( my wife remained and continued the appointment with the counselor and excuse for a doctor). We did end up increasing his medication after questions and concerns were addressed and have been more than happy with the results. On another note, the real reason for this entry is to tell of a recent Birthday party we took our son to this past weekend. The party was at a bowling alley. Our son had never been to a bowling alley before and I was definitely concerned about the noise with his sensitive ears. He LOVED IT. He was excited to try an bowl and actually placed second in two games bowled by the children. Yes they did have the bumpers up and in place so no child could throw a gutter ball, but still he was happy as could be. He also behaved very well, even with the other children. When the bowling was over and the time came for hot dogs and cake he sat nicely at the table and proceeded to eat his hot dog and chips. He would pick up just the hot dog and eat it without the bun and every so often, he would pull his arms into his chest (with hands under his chin) and tighten all his muscles in his body (his form of stimming). A few of the children noticed this and after about the 3rd time actually began taunting him about it and the way he was eating his hot dog. A friend of ours happened to be standing near the children's table and noticed the kids picking on him. She said CJ got a hurt look on his face, but did not cry and did not act out (like the pushing or hitting he has exhibited in similar situations in the past) instead he looked at her (the adult) and told her what was going one. She was already getting the other children to stop and admonishing them. But the important thing was he did what we have been working to get him to do for months, instead of reacting physically toward the other children. This was a tremendous milestone for him and his efforts to overcome his challenge. We were so happy and I know there were no prouder parents yesterday. Thank You, God.

Autism Family Weekend, April 9th, 10th & 11th. April 11th is our first annual swim-a-thon to benefit autism. Location: Gunstock Inn & Fitness Center, 580 Cherry Valley Road, Gilford, NH., 03249, www.gunstockinn.com Contact Stephanie at sbastille@metrocast.net or call 603-556-7502. Details are still being worked out and will keep everyone posted. This is the 3rd year for hosting the Autism Family Weekend and am looking forward to seeing some regulars and new faces.

FRIDAY, Feb. 26 (HealthDay News) -- It's not a particular brain region that makes someone smart or not smart. Nor is it the strength and speed of the connections throughout the brain or such features as total brain volume. Instead, new research shows, it's the connections between very specific areas of the brain that determine intelligence and often, by extension, how well someone does in life. "General intelligence actually relies on a specific network inside the brain, and this is the connections between the gray matter, or cell bodies, and the white matter, or connecting fibers between neurons," said Jan Glascher, lead author of a paper appearing in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "General intelligence relies on the connection between the frontal and the parietal [situated behind the frontal] parts of the brain." The results weren't entirely unexpected, said Keith Young, vice chairman of research in psychiatry and behavioral science at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine in Temple, but "it is confirmation of the idea that good communication between various parts of brain are very important for this generalized intelligence." General intelligence is an abstract notion developed in 1904 that has always been somewhat controversial. "People noticed a long time ago that, in general, people who are good test-takers did well in a lot of different subjects," explained Young. "If you're good in mathematics, you're also usually good in English. Researchers came up with this idea that this represented a kind of overall intelligence." "General intelligence is this notion that smart people tend to be smart across all different kinds of domains," added Glascher, who is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of humanities and social sciences at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Hoping to learn more, the authors located 241 patients who had some sort of brain lesion. They then diagrammed the location of their lesions and had them take IQ tests. "We took patients who had damaged parts of their brain, tested them on intelligence to see where they were good and where they were bad, then we correlated those scores across all the patients with the location of the brain lesions," Glascher explained. "That way, you can highlight the areas that are associated with reduced performance on these tests which, by the reverse inference, means these areas are really important for general intelligence." "These studies infer results based on the absence of brain tissue," added Paul Sanberg, distinguished professor of neurosurgery and director of the University of South Florida Center for Aging and Brain Repair in Tampa. "It allows them to systemize and pinpoint areas important to intelligence." Young said the findings echo what's come before. "The map they came up with was what we expected and involves areas of the cortex we thought would be involved -- the parietal and frontal cortex. They're important for language and mathematics," he said. In an earlier study, the same team of investigators found that this brain network was also important for working memory, "the ability to hold a certain number of items [in your mind]," Glascher said. "In the past, people have associated general intelligence very strongly with enhanced working memory capacity so there's a close theoretical connection with that."

MMR doctor proved right in week he was condemned as 'dishonest' In the week that the doctor at the centre of the controversy over the MMR vaccine and autism was called “dishonest, irresponsible and callous” by a medical disciplinary board, a new study has been published that suggests he could be right all along. Researchers in New York have discovered that children with autism spectrum disorder also had inflammation in the ileum, part of the small intestine – the exact same discovery made by Dr Andrew Wakefield, who may now lose his medical license following a 30-month hearing at the General Medical Council. Wakefield noted that the children he saw also had been given the triple MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine, and he speculated that it might be the cause. After the publication of his paper in The Lancet in 1998, vaccination rates dropped dramatically as parents in the UK refused to have their children vaccinated. The new study, from the New York University School of Medicine, discovered that 143 children with autism spectrum disorder also suffered from chronic gastrointestinal symptoms, and inflammation in the small intestine. As the vaccine is compulsory in the US, where the children live, it is reasonable to assume that most, if not all, were vaccinated – although the researchers do not suggest that it was the cause of the inflammation they detected. (Source: Autism Insights, 2010; 2: 1-11). Story from WDDTY: http://www.wddty.com/mmr-doctor-proved-right-in-week-he-was-condemned-as-dishonest.html