A Powerful Word

At the risk of forfeiting the Pulitzer I expect to win for my ramblings on autism, I shall set aside my writer's ego and overwork an already exhausted analogy. For those of  us with children affected by developmental delays, we often hear the phrase, "Normal is just a setting on the washing machine." In fact, there has been a significant effort to remove the word 'normal' from our educational and therapeutic conversations.

Children without delays are usually referred to as neurotypical or NT. Those with special educational needs are often referred to as exceptional children or EC. I'm sure that someone somewhere with an advanced degree in political correctness has decided that adding lingo with more syllables and initials while frequently changing the terminology will somehow make the rest of us feel better about our predicaments. So, when I am feeling frustrated by the fact that my 6 year old still poops in his pants, I just remember that he is 'exceptional'. Yep, that makes everything better.

Normal has become a dirty word in our society. And, returning to the washing machine analogy, I've been stuck in the 'spin' cycle for the last 3 years. I've watched the dream of 'normal' slip away with each passing year.

Recently, my son had blood work done and our doctor e-mailed the results to me. When I review lab results, I remain guarded in my expectations. Certainly I want to be optimistic, but I also need to minimize disappointment or even outright fear for my son's health. I took a deep breath (okay, maybe more than one) and opened the message.

Of all the words on my computer screen, one stood out: NORMAL. Normal? Is that possible? Are we allowed to say that? In fact, that dirty little word appeared in 3 different areas of the lab work and I was stunned.

An earlier round of lab work had brought to light a long list of problem areas for my son. There were more issues than I could have imagined going on in his body. I set to work on repairing as much damage as possible and I'm ecstatic to report that a few things have normalized:

• He was deficient in Vitamin D and is now within the normal range.
• The metabolic acidosis has normalized.
• All inflammation markers are now within the normal range.

Normal. Normal. Normal. If normal is a bad word, then I guess I talk like a sailor on shore leave. It's back in my vocabulary now. Get used to it!

We still have some serious issues to work on. The leak in the blood brain barrier is still there, but it has decreased slightly. His immune system is in very bad shape and the mitochondrial dysfunction is still a significant problem. I'm changing his supplement protocol to address these issues and maybe, just maybe, they'll become normal too.