I have two kids, Ben, who’s ten and Kate, who’s seven. Ben was diagnosed with ADHD age 7 and Kate has also just been diagnosed. Prior to having children, I was one of those scornful mothers who scoffed at the concept of ADHD and thought that ADHD was just a blanket label for “undisciplined child”. I now know how very wrong I was.
So, getting back to the candida. As mentioned, I suspect I’ve probably had this my whole life, or at the very least for the last decade or so. I tick all the boxes in terms of having a previously candida-causing lifestyle; contraceptive pill for 10 years, bad – I’m talking criminally bad - diet in my 20s, binge drinking, smoking, high-stress job and generally just not looking after myself. Throw in several courses of antibiotics from age 18 to mid thirties and, well, candida city: population ME.
So of course at the tail end of this debaucherous, junk-food filled, pharmaceutically unaware period, we decided to conceive our first child. Enter my firstborn, Ben.
As much as I love this kid, and would walk on hot coals for him, take a bullet, eat a spider… nothing’s been easy. An incorrect diagnosis at the hospital at age three days of galactosemia, severe jaundice in the first weeks, breast feeding problems, colic (whatever that is), sleeping issues, loose stools, rashes, ongoing unsettledness, not reaching milestones on time, more sleeplessness, more feeding problems…I look back on those days as some of the hardest of my life. Can I say at this point I KNOW there are many, many people who have it much harder than we did, and I am grateful for the fact that my child was, generally at least, pretty healthy, but it was still bloody hard. I was very anxious and a total insomniac and constantly sick with viral infections (probably due to my battered immune system), which didn’t help.
Aged three, Ben’s preschool teacher advised me to get Ben assessed for autism as his social skills were lacking, he was obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine and he was not picking things up as quickly as the other kids. To say that I was devastated to even hear that word associated with my child would be an understatement. Long story short, after OT assessments, paediatrician appointments and meetings with child and adolescent authorities, no diagnosis of autism as such, lots of “markers” for it, but not enough to be diagnosed. He is still “quirky” to some extent. Most people I know don’t pick up on this, but as his mother, I know it’s there.
Ben was, and still is in a lot of ways, a difficult kid. He’s not mouthy or ill-mannered or aggressive. He’s just not….easy. Always been hard to entertain, short attention span, passively defiant, and deeply, deeply intolerant of his sister. I know siblings bicker, but this is ridiculous. If all kids were like this, people would stop having them. But he’s a good kid – and I know all mothers say that – but I think I am objective enough to know if my kid was a ratbag. He really is sweet, incredibly affectionate, well mannered, has a good heart and is nice to animals. All prerequisites, as far as I’m concerned, of a nice human being.
We’ve done just about everything in terms of trying to “fix” whatever it is that ails him. I had him on the Failsafe diet (low salicylate/food chemical/amine diet) for 8 months at age 4, as well as dairy and gluten free, we’ve done kinesiology, naturopathy, homeopathy, you name it. I truly believe that both my kids’ problems are food-related…I just can’t seem to get definitive answers as to what that food (or foods) is/are. One of the naturopaths I took him to said he had a leaky gut, so that’s always been in the back of my mind, too. Along with 5,687 other possibilities.
I do still wonder if he (and his sister) are salicylate/amine intolerant. To me this would be the worst outcome because I do not care one bit for the amount of sugar that the Failsafe diet advocates. Plus, in my opinion, the food is incredibly bland and uninteresting. So I pray that this is not the problem. Doing the Failsafe diet back in 2004 did not create any earth-shattering improvements to his behaviour so I suspect this is not the culprit. To me it would almost be easier if they were gluten/diary intolerant. At least we could still have curry.
Ben has been on ADHD medication on and off since age 7.5. This pains me to my core because I am fairly convinced that this stuff is bad. Very, very bad. But I felt I had no choice. Without it, he is mildly disruptive (talkative, distracted by others etc), cannot focus on anything and cannot complete anything. He also struggles socially. With it, he is a different kid. But in a lot of ways I feel like I’m giving him poison when I hand that tablet to him. I really hate it. Two weeks ago I stopped giving it to him…but more on that later.
Getting back to the timeline, when Ben was three, along came Kate. Ben has never quite gotten over the fact that Kate was born. There seems to be this simmering undercurrent of suppressed hatred toward her, which on one hand I know is pretty normal sibling behaviour, but on the other hand, I do wonder if it would be like this if he didn’t have ADHD. He does love her, somewhere deep, deep inside, but we don’t get to feel the love too often, unfortunately. It does my head in, the bickering, the fighting, the complete and utter lack of any sort of tolerance they have for each other.
Kate was/is no walk in the park either. Again, as a baby we had feeding problems, sleeping problems, colic…same as Ben. I was even more anxious with her than I was with Ben. Kate was a very whiney, whingy, hard to please toddler and small child. Both my kids had frequent colds and viruses – it felt like one would just get over one and the other would catch it, get better, then the other one would come down with something else. Then in between that, I’d get sick. She, like Ben, had ear infections which I treated with antibiotics. If only I knew then what I know now.
Aged 6, Kate’s teachers were starting to notice she was unable to focus in class or complete set tasks. It was starting again. How could this be? TWO kids with this horrid ‘disorder’.
So that gets me to now. Four weeks ago we started Kate on medication for her ADHD. Unlike Ben, who responded to the Ritalin quickly, it did nothing for her. In fact I think it made her worse. At our last paediatrician appointment, the doctor wanted to give her dexamphetamine. I told him that I am terribly sorry but I just cannot do that. Just the word sounds horrifying to me. That day, in the lift on the way out of the doctor’s office, I decided that I was going to find a way to treat this naturally. I took both Ben and Kate off medication, ordered some books off the internet, googled some more....and cemented my resolve even further to figure this out.
And I will.
You just watch me.
No comments:
Post a Comment