First, let me say I am sorry that it took me so long to do the first installment. It seems that the economy has picked up a bit and I have been working some huge hours getting re-started.

OK, here goes. Matt was picked upon July 30th, 2006, by the Police in the city where he was living in a group home. He was allowed to go out into the neighborhood for unsupervised walks. He would normally go a few blocks to the local gas station and use their soda pop machine and slushie machine. Sometimes he would take a walk in a nearby newly built subdivision. On one occasion his group home got a complaint about him standing in the middle of the street looking in the window of a day care.  That was something new and not very understandable so no one told me about it and things went on from there.

A couple months later he was arrested for touching an 11 year old girl a couple doors from her house. She got scared and went home and complained to her dad who called the police. The police showed up and cuffed Matt and tried to throw him into the back seat of the squad car. He went into rage and faught  back by wrecking the car. He did quite a bit of damage to the sheet metal.

They charged him with four felonies. One for wrecking the police car and three were sex crime related. They took him over to the Macomb County jail.  They made him sign a confession. He confessed to nearly everything under the sun. Then he signed the confession. Now keep in mind that he is retarded and autistic and addicted to “Cops” the TV show. Thats where he learned to kick the squad car and the confession was all part of his fantasy. His obsession of cops on TV and in real life was out of control at that time.

At one point he was with a trainer and they went to Burger King and he called the cops and reported that he told the Sterling Heights cops that he was being held hostage. So they sent out a huge task force including the police canine department. They cornered Matt in the parking lot.  The trainer was surprised by all this. He thought Matt went to the rest room but instead he went to the pay phone and made the call. The police realised this was just a nut job and they called me up to see what to do with him. I went down there and said to take him to St. Joseph East a local mental hospital. He spent 6 months in there that time.

Then there was the other time when Matt’s mom took him shopping with her and he slipped away and walked over to the police station and said that “His Mom was abusing him” to the desk Sargent. They called that time too and Pat picked him up after they questioned her. Needless to say she was a bit upset.

One of these problems led us to abandon him in the hospital so that the County would pick up his care and housing. We had to get rid of him.  It was getting to be too much. At home he was getting out of control. Most of the walls had to be fixed and repainted. The same with the inside doors. Also we had to replace several windows.

This is all background stuff. The arrest for the 4 felonies was the big deal and the climax to the whole thing. So they arrested Matt and took him to the county jail where they were thinking what to do. They kept Matt there for about five weeks.  I went and applied for a second mortgage to get some money for his defense. What a nightmare!

OK that is 650 words and I have to go the work. I have to make a living too.

Bob

As you know I have been dancing around an issue with Matt. I have been eluding to something in the recent past. He is in a fairly new Group Home. But why? What happened? What happened to make me and Pat so damned mad. We are mad as hell and were not going to take it any more. Finally something broke this week. Actually the end of last week but I now have permission to talk about it.

I have decided to talk about it. As you know Matt is 30 years old. He is one of the first of a new crowd of kids with Autism. He does a lot of the things Autistic Kids do. He has a lot of the symptoms a lot of Autistic kids have. Not all kids have the Autistic Beta Rage that Matt has. On the other hand the Beta Rage is not all that uncommon.

The place he is at is real nice. I trust the people that run it very much. The actual people that work there have a lot of compassion. We have very little complaint.  So what is going on? I have decided to write about this story over a period of time. I will probably write 4 different articles. So that you an pick it up fast I will give them similar title lines. This article would be the preamble, the start. I had to start someplace.

Bob

It has been several weeks since I posted on Matt and his beta rage or some call it Autism Rage.  He is still doing good. I can’t believe it. It is still like a miracle. He gets up and is mostly good all day long. We had reported to us that he smacked one of the staff at the group home in the face the other day. I wasn’t there so I can’t say exactly what happened. I heard from Matt that he was in a bad mood and the worker got in his face and he smacked the worker. I guess there was no rage attack because if it were a rage attack he would have went on a screaming, swearing, throwing and pushing attack that would end him in the hospital for a cooling off period. The county sherriff gets called and they throw him in the back for a ride the Henry Ford Medical Center in Clinton Township. They couldn’t really do anything for him there because he is already on maximum anti-psychotics. So sometimes he would come home right away sometimes he would do an overnighter. He would come home and be good for a couple days then back at it. With this  Imdural, this behavior has all gone away. So I have no choice but to believe there was no beta rage attack going on this time.  Otherwise he would have ended up in the hospital.

Pat and I have noticed some subtle but powerful changes in Matt since he has been on Imdural.  He now has the ability to carry on a normal and enjoyable conversation. He can actually get into an argument and argue a point with you during a conversation without blowing up or hanging up on you or just agreeing with everything you say just to avoid an argument.

We think what is going on with Matt is that he is more able to control his actions and emotions he is getting some self confidence back. This is really cool to watch going on. Pat and I are real grateful to Dr. Leopard for coming up with this wacky treatment that works.

When Matt was 26 he was hospitalized by the State of Michigan at Mt. Pleasant Center. Before that he would never hit any one. Now he finds it a fairly easy thing to do. There is a lots of stuff going on in background about all that. Right now I can’t talk about it. When I can you will get all the details. For now I wish the thank all the readers of the posts.

Bob

Hi, I’m Pat, Bob’s wife and mother of Matthew.

Bob showed me a post at Operation Rescue re: a study of vaccinated and unvaccinated monkeys.  Monkeys are not people.  Why don’t these scientists go to places like the outback in Australia, the steppes of Russia, the bush in Africa, etc., places where there are unvaccinated humans, and look for autism there?

I like animals so I will say first that I feel real bad for these monkeys. On the other hand if the world were an honest place maybe we would not have to do tests like this. I am not a speech writer so this will be short.

I guess what happened is someone gave injections of vaccines on the same exact schedule that humans get them from day one in the hospital including hepatitis B  .  Things on the monkeys did the exact same thing as they did on people. Things like birth weight and their ability to normal monkey things.  Dr. Wakefield and his gang of scientists are reporting on the early results of this test. So if you are interested in reading the actual test results and you are involved with autism, this may make you sick. Anyway you can click on the link here Vaccine Monkey Study .

10 Billion over the next 10 years to do research on vaccines.  What’s wrong with this picture? I am sure there are hundreds of people who check into this blog who can not fathom why anyone would want to do that. I am sure there are a lot of people that hate the word vaccine.  More and more items are coming up in the news almost daily about vaccines being the actual cause of Autism.  Someone has to talk to this guy. It would be something nice if he donated another 10 billion towards making vaccines safe to use.

This guy Dana explains it better.  http://www.smartplanet.com/

Like I said before my son Matt is 30 and Autistic and so I have had a lot of time to see things the way they were and the way they are now.  They have had these shots since the 1950s and back then I got my first shot when I was in grade school. It was a polio shot. Back then there I remember there was a lot talk about the possible problems with kids getting these polio shots. I personally got a scar on my arm, but that was all. I can remember back then there were more than enough kids walking around with arm braces and using “Iron Lungs” from getting things like polio.  I can see where the parents would want to get these shots for their kids. There was a kind of helpless feeling when there is no way to protect your kids from these diseases. The health authorities told us back then that the shots were safe and they have not changed their story since.  Since a scar on the arm was better than an “Iron Lung” everyone opted in for the shots. On the other hand no real Autism showed up. It did start showing up however in 1979 when Matt was born but no one back then knew what it was or the symptoms or what they were. I remember there were changes in procedures and strengths back then. Around the time Matt was born they went from the age of around 5 when you get your shots to very early on in life like 1 or 2 years old. I believe that has something to do with Autism. The age kids get these shots. That is what changes around the time Autism popped up. Hell, now they give shots to kids in the hospital when they are 2 days old. When a kid is 2 days old his brain is nothing but mush. Now they give kids shots every few months and end when they get 4 or 5. The shots are much stronger too.

I guess what I am saying is that there was no autism back in the 50s but there was when they moved the time up to very young for injections. I would be an advocate of waiting till the brain has hardened before shots are given. Maybe start at 5.

Hi, About 8:15 PM Seth came on American Idol. He was a great big Teddy Bear. I figured he won because they did a highlight of him and his family. they showed some takes of his family and he mentioned his autistic son. Then they let us see his son in action. There was definitely something wrong but he was pretty high functioning. I immediately felt bad for him.  I said “Oh Hell”!  That was hard to listen to.

It is clear to me that a lot of people that have kids with problems hang out here on this blog. So all I can say is send Seth a letter via American Idol, Send a letter of support. I hope he lasts a good while.   bob

Desiree-
My name is Hopie Jackson and just want you to know what an inspiration you are to me. I was always extremely healthy and athletic, an honors student with great grades, and had just started a modeling career. I had just returned from New York City where I competed and had everything to live for, and absolutely loved my life. However, three and a half years ago when I was 14, I was started on Yasmin, a birth control pill, to hopefully help my menstrual pain and irregular periods. The first night that I started taking this medication, I started feeling ill. Within two weeks I went to my doctor three different times and they thought I just had back to back viruses. The last time I had an appt., I had a fever but they gave me a flu shot anyway. Three weeks after I first noticed any sign of illness, I began having twitches which within a few hours landed me in the ER with what they called motor seizures. Because it was such a shock to my body, although conscious, I felt like I was in and out of what was going on around me. My head would jerk to the left side and I couldn’t control the movement to get it to turn back to the center. My hands and feet were jerking also and I would have twitches in my muscles all over my body. I would also jerk if someone touched me. It felt like an electric shock. They could give me ativan or vallium to stop the attacks. But during the hospitalization, they later found out IV benedryl would work. I had very general blood work done and a CT scan and MRI of my brain and after nothing showed abnormalities, that is when they sent in the psychologist and after he spent a half an hour with me, he determined I must be stressed as an overachiever and immediately diagnosed me as having conversion disorder. Although two other psychologists spent time with me on three other occasions and didn’t agree with his diagnosis, the head psychologist still demanded that I should be treated psychologically in the inpatient or outpatient unit. My mother refused to believe that I needed psychological treatment, because both she and I knew it was something physcially wrong. I had three different hospitalizations until I was diagnosed by three different doctors who all agreed that it was cervical dystonia. During the dystonia, my body gradually became sicker and sicker with two other illnesses also. Those are fibromyalgia and central sensitization. My life had completely fallen apart and I didnt think I could take it. I lost friends, family, who thought I was trying to get attention and thought I was causing the cervical dystonia to happen myself. I would have a cervical dystonia attack and my head would lock to the left side for up to periods of 12-13 hours before doctors would give me the IV medication I needed to stop it. They were denying me the medication for so long because they just thought I would stop it after a while when I got tired of it. It never stopped without medication, and I had no control over it. The benedryl that we used at home when I wasn’t in the hospital, quit working, which we later found out was because my body was producing so many histamines that my body wouldn’t react to it because I had become tolerant of the benedryl. I was so stressed and didn’t think it would ever stop. I was in so much pain due to the fibromyalgia and central sensitization, and I lost half my hair, i had and still have headaches every day and severe pain in every part of my body. Almost a year and a half ago, I tried to commit suicide just because I couldn’t handle it anymore and I didnt have a life. My life was saved by my mother, who I owe everything to, and I find now that life is such a gift. Finally, my dad had done some research and found out that vallium under the tounge dissolving would get 80% of the medication to my muscles instead of the 20% that would if I had just swallowed the pill. Also, we found a doctor who injected my neck in about 7 different areas on each side of my neck with Botox, which relieved the cervical dystonia attacks. Currently, my cervical dystonia is under control with the Botox, and I am still struggling with my fibromyalgia and central sensitization pain, but I am trying to start getting my life back. It will be a long road ahead but I find that I am a better person because I went through so much. This happened when I was almost halfway through 9th grade, and although I am supposed to be a senior now, I’ve never been able to go back to school full time and have to take online classes, so it’s pretty unlikely that I will be able to graduate this spring which is pretty disappointing. Are there medications that you could recommend to me that I can ask my pain doctor about? I am on Lyrica and Savella, however I have gained a lot of weight from it. I need to try something else. What treatment are you getting? And again, you are such an inspiration and I wish you the best luck. Thank you for sharing your story with all of us. Unfortunately there are people who criticize us because we are different from them, but I just have to keep reminding myself that they have no clue what it is like to be in our situations. It is sad that some people are so ignorant and cruel. But keep your head up, and know that you are in mine and my family’s thoughts.

Hopie Jackson posted this as a comment but I have upgraded it to a post.  Desiree is not involved with this blog the autismblog.us. She has her own web site. However this new post shows the trend by doctors to give more and more vaccinations and and flu shots and give them sooner.  Even though this is an autism blog, I believe there are all sorts of problems caused in children by injections and medicines, autism and behavior and these cervical dystonia and Desiree Jennings type problems. Doctors don’t seem to know any better.

I will attempt to contact Hopie and let her know and maybe Desiree too.

The Desiree Jennings post is at This Page

Bob – Webmaster

Hi, and Merry Christmas to all!

I got a question “Should I put my son in a group home?”

That is a big dilemma for a lot of parents. You want to do the right thing. I know when we were contemplating that idea ourselves we thought deep and hard.  Group homes are expensive if you pay for it. The county would not voluntarily do such a thing.  Like I said before, Matt has all the other Autistic traits plus an added rage problem. The Autistic rage is very common in Autistic children. On the other hand lots of Autistic kids don’t have rage. I would suppose that has something to do with what parts of the brain were damaged by what ever caused the Autism.  With Matt he has the rage thing and that is the unbearable part. We couldn’t afford the expense of paying cash for a private group home. We looked into it. Plus the older he got the worse his rage got and it was starting to get scary.  It got to the point that he just couldn’t be trusted. So we finally decided to do something about it. We had to have the county take care of him. The tool we used was to have him taken to the hospital by police car which is something we regularly did. Then as they usually did at the hospital, call me down to fill out the paperwork. This time I refused to agree to take him home afterwards.  That way he became a ward of the county. There was a little bit of work to do in Probate Court with a lawyer. After that he has been in county run homes ever since.  That is how we did it.

Now to answer to should we do it? I know many instances we were advised by Matt’s doctors and our doctors that yes we should do it and we were advised by his therapists that we should do it because we had a sick relationship going. Matt was controlling our life to such a degree and it was aimed in the wrong direction and going down hill.  I would say 10 years went by while we were thinking about all that. It takes a lot of courage to abandon a sick kid like that.  We wanted Matt to expand his life in a more healthy way. Then one day the decision just snapped into place.

I would say that the decision is yours to make. We know you love your kid whether he has problems or not. Actually you are the wrong person to make the decision anyway. You are just like us, all tied up emotionally. Ask his doctors, all of them what to do. Ask your doctors what to do and ask his therapists what to do and write it all down and read it over and over. That is all I can say.  Good luck.  - Bob

My son Matt and his Autistic Rage is nothing short of a miracle. The people at his group home keep him on a pretty short leash and I say that I would run out of patience myself but he is doing great. He calls here every day and carries on a normal conversation like a regular person. He does have a bit of rough days but I do think the Indural Beta Blocker is working on his Autistic Rage or what they call beta rage. 

This started as a problem when he got about 14 and his hormones came in. He went to the mental hospital for a week at that point. They gave him therepy and adjusted his meds and calmed him down and sent him home. After that he was hospitalized many, many times. Usually for a few days then once for 6 months then 3 years that ended in July of 2009 where he got into his group home.

The sad thing is that people have known about this property of beta blockers since 1990. I mean I did a search on the subject on Google and found articles going back that far. I tell you that I wish I had known about this back then. A lot of heart ache and expense could have been saved.  Who knows why we had to wait this long. I do know there are a lot of people are searching for the subject and I don’t think anyone else is writing about it. I hope this helps someone. – Bob