Our family’s life changed the day that our second child was diagnosed with autism at age three, but not nearly so much as it has in the past year.  Just a few weeks before our fourth child was born, our first and third children were also diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder.  Since then, we have discovered that our story is unusual, and so we’ll try to share it as briefly as possible by highlighting each of our children with special needs.
    Ethan is our oldest child, and is seven years old.  He developed normally; meeting all developmental milestones on target.  Ethan has always been such a happy and good natured boy, but we began to notice changes in him as he neared kindergarten.  Shortly before Ethan celebrated his sixth birthday, we had an occupational therapy evaluation performed to address our concerns about fine motor skills.  The therapist’s evaluation determined that Ethan had very weak muscle control as well as many other issues such as vestibular processing, visual motor planning, and ideation.  He began occupational therapy, and a few months later it was recommended by the therapist to have Ethan evaluated by a child psychologist for possible ADD or ADHD.  Upon completion of a full psychological evaluation, a diagnosis of autism was given to our son.  This happened just a few months following his sixth birthday, and we were told that it was very rare for a child to demonstrate regressive autism at a late age such as Ethan had.  Over the past year, Ethan has received intensive occupational, speech, and behavioral therapies.  He will soon be undergoing several neurological tests such as an EEG, MRI, and SPET to check for abnormalities in neurological function and formation.  Various lab tests are soon to be performed as well to check for any impairment in Ethan’s biochemical functions such as malabsorption, impaired methylation pathway, and so on.  Ethan is also scheduled to begin hyperbaric oxygen therapy in October, 2007 to treat inflammation.
    Nathaniel is five years old, and is our second child.  Nathaniel was diagnosed at three years old with classic autism.  Shortly after his diagnosis, we began intensive occupational therapy to treat his hypotonia.  Nathaniel has undergone numerous lab tests that show severe issues with malabsorption of nutrients, impaired methylation pathways, and gastrointestinal permeability and inflammation.  This means that he is very sensitive to the types of food that he consumes, and also cannot absorb and convert the nutrients from his food appropriately which leads to malnutrition concerns.  His impaired methylation means that his body doesn’t rid itself of harmful substances that it is exposed to whether it is chemicals, allergens, bacteria, viruses, and so forth.  This causes risks to disease and illness as well as dangers from environmental contaminants.  Nathaniel is currently undergoing various neurological tests to assess brain function and formation, and will be beginning hyperbaric oxygen therapy in October, 2007.  Our physician also plans to have more specialized lab work done to look at concerns of mitochondrial disorder, neurotransmitter impairments, and so forth.  He also is recommending IV nutritional therapy using glutathione, vitamin C, zinc, and other nutrients to aid Nathaniel’s body in healing.  While intensive behavioral, speech, and occupational therapies as well as so much medical screening and treatment is time consuming and expensive, we have seen such dramatic improvements over the past two years that friends and family are amazed as well.  We are so fortunate to live in an age of medical technology that allows physicians to look so deeply into how our son’s body is functioning, and how they can help him.
    John Mark is our third son, and is three years old.  He was diagnosed at age two with pervasive developmental delay (not otherwise specified).  This is referred to as PDD (NOS).  He has had some preliminary lab work done, and we are told that the results are very similar to Nathaniel’s.  Because we’ve started earlier than we did with Nathaniel in therapies and medical treatments, he is already doing so very well.  John Mark is receiving intensive behavioral, speech, and occupational therapies.  He is also scheduled to begin hyperbaric oxygen therapy in October, 2007.  He will be undergoing most of the very specialized labs that Nathaniel will be having done due to the similarities in their existing lab work.  
    Our sweet, little Christopher is not quite a year old.  While he is developing fairly normally at the moment, our therapists and physicians are closely monitoring him.  He has already begun occupational therapy for severe hypotonia, and has made very good progress with muscle strength.  He is still weak, and we are concerned about a mitochondrial disfunction with Christopher.  He is a very happy baby with good social interest at this time.  He will also receive hyperbaric oxygen therapy with the other children as the concentrated oxygen will aid his cells in development and growth.
    While the reasons why God has given us the task of helping these four wonderful children with very specialized medical needs is unknown to us, we are confident that it is our responsibility to do all that we can for them.  The physical, emotional, mental, and financial toll that one child with special needs takes on a family is great, but we have this difficulty multiple times.  We are so thankful for Bright Steps providing a way for anyone wishing to assist our family with therapy and medical expenses to do so easily, anonymously, and through a tax deductable charitable foundation.  We thank all of you who contribute to our children’s treatments for your prayerful consideration, and your generous donations.  May God bless each of you for your selfless gifts towards His children.