In the first part of this series, I discussed the way my family was sucked into the world of autism biomedical treatments. Now, I'm going to discuss the more "heavy duty" treatments, as well as sum up the biggest problems I see with autism biomed.
 KosAbility is a Sunday 4pm(Pacific time) community series by volunteer diarists, as a gathering for people living with disabilities, who love someone with a disability, or who want to know more about the issues. Our use of "disability" includes temporary as well as permanent conditions, from small, gnawing problems to major, life-threatening health/medical problems. Our use of "love someone" extends to beloved members of other species.
Our discussions are open threads in the context of this community. Feel free to comment on the diary topic, ask questions of the diarist or generally to everyone, share something you've learned, tell bad jokes, post photos, or rage about your situation. Our only rule is to be kind; trolls will be spayed or neutered. If you are interested in contributing a diary, contact series coordinator postmodernista.
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A caveat, before I start: I'm only going to discuss the treatments I personally experienced. This means I won't be discussing the Lupron protocol or the disgusting "treatments" used at the Judge Rotenburg Center. (MASSIVE trigger warning on both of these, but especially the latter one.) While I may do a diary on these forms of medical abuse later, they're not things I experienced. My experiences were simultaneously more benign and more insidious.
They began with a trip to Florida.
I remember being excited to go to Florida, because I thought we might be going to Disney World, or at least the beach. Since we stayed there for a decent length of time, we had at least one trip to the beach, but the lion's share of the trip was spent in the doctor's office.
We stayed in Florida for two weeks, that being the amount of time it took for one course of therapy, in the care of Doctor Jeff Bradstreet, of the IDCRC. He was the "autism expert" my mother picked to cure me once and for all. I didn't know it then, of course, but this guy had quite the checkered past, having been a Christian preacher and a homeopath before turning his attention to autism cures. He was also a real fan of Andrew Wakefield, having had him at his clinic after Wakefield lost his license to practice in Britain. Basically, if it was dodgy and autism related, Bradstreet was the man to call.
According to Quackwatch, " Bradstreet testified that the recorded diagnoses varied, depending on the nature of the problem being treated at that particular time. It appears to me that Bradstreet decides which of his nonstandard theories to apply and records diagnoses that embody them." Well, I can't speak for any other patients, but the theories Bradstreet applied to me were the "mercury causes autism" theory, the "brain damage causes autism" theory, and the "lack of proper hormones causes autism" theory.
There are three therapies I remember the most, each linked to one of these therapies: chelation, HBOT, and oxytocin/secretin.
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