Wednesday, January 23, 2008

A case of regression reversed

Abstract: The subject, though less than a year old, had a vocabulary of more than 100 words. He was reported as able to speak complete sentences and answer a few simple questions. He experienced a sudden regression in which he went from speaking normally to repeating a single word, then a single syllable over and over. Within minutes, he stopped producing speech, and began making a clicking sound with his mouth. Less than an hour later, he was unable to do even that.

The subject was referred to a DUDE! (Docs Unapologetically Devoid of Ethics) doctor. The subject was chosen to receive an experimental lithium treatment. As oral and transdermal applications had failed to produce results in similar cases, four lithium devices were inserted surgically into the patients back. “It’s a miracle,” stated the subject’s guardian, “a full recovery from regressive autism in just minutes!” She plans to make a series of YouTube videos promoting the revolutionary biomedical treatment, and sharing the news of the subject's recovery. "Sure, he's still echolalic, he moves a little robotically, but he's clearly no longer autistic."

The subject was asked to comment on the procedure. “Squawk,” he said, “I love me, too!”

9 comments:

  1. Once I stop laughing, I'll have a witty comment for you on this post (which is just classic)!

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  2. Wow, so was the regression caused by high levels of nickle and cadmium?

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  3. We believe that to be the case, Ms. Clark. It was the...uh... vaccines that did it. For sure. The subject has suggested that the "regression" was caused by too many demands for speech, but of course, how would he know?

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  4. I am so glad that they are selling the Gluten Free Crackers! But, wow....so expensive.

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  5. BWAHAHA! Great parody of their so-called science!

    If you get cease and desist letters from any lawyers unapologetically devoid of ethics (I guess that would be LUDES), make sure to post 'em for our amusement.

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  6. And for a moment there I thought you were in deadly earnest:) What a hoot!

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  7. ...Order a dozen for only $175, only from DUDE!

    One dozen didn't work for me, I'd better order two!

    Joe

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  8. I laughed out loud (actually I had to suppress that laughter because my poor, exhausted partner is trying to sleep in the next room) at just the title of your publication! So perfect for you! And I like that it's on page 8!

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  9. Hmmm... Very very interesting. I did try lithium for a little while, and it did help with speech, but no, it did not "cure" me from autism. I'll try to explain what I think is going on here.

    Back to the preconceived notions of NTs regarding what it is to be square. So many NTs, due to the prevailing propaganda, feel that if speech is regained, then autism is licked.

    Lick lick lick lick

    Sorry, I just had to.

    Anyhow, lithium helps when some of us feel overwhelmed, with racing thoughts and mental processes that are going into overtime and being maxed out. Going from pressured speech to a condition wherein one knows what one wants to say but there are so many things to be spoken and the delivery mechanism is overwhelmed. Almost as if ones thoughts went faster than one's ability to orally deliver them. It's like a bandwidth congestive state. Think of the garble that you might hear when there isn't enough of a cellphone signal. The person at one end is speaking clearly, but the medium is not fast enough to support it and the person at the otherness gets garble or nothing.

    In this congestive state it gets s little more complicated: the medium is not fast enough to carry the rich content or high fidelity of the original transmission, so it's like buffering and buffering and buffering.

    What lithium does is it slows the brain down so that the thought-to-speech portion is not overwhelmed. And suddenly, there's speech!!

    But the person is still autistic! But an unaware NT might yell: "Cure! Cure! Cure!"

    In my experience it wasn't worth it. Why? Though I no longer spoke in short bursts with short moments of silence and no longer saying the wrong word, I also could no longer perform calculus and I couldn't match patterns as well, which was something very important for me as a research engineer at the time. This was a no-can-do if I was to keep my job as an engineer. After all, I hadn't been hired as an orator. lol

    Ultimately, I found other things that did the job without dulling my faculties. For example: Tegretol, but after a few months I had to switch to a low dose of Risperidone because it turns out I had an adverse reaction to Tegretol. It seems to regulate the thought-process so that it's more coordinated and less frustratingly confusingly jumbled up.

    Still enjoyed echolalia and stimming, but with a supplement called Noopept I am better able to know when and where my echolalia and stimming are socially "appropriate". I equate it to a diplomatic skill of knowing what and what not to do when visiting the land of NTs.

    But I'm still autistic at the core, and I wouldn't want it any other way, because without some of the kewl stuff that my autism brings to me I wouldn't be able to do some of the stuff that I do in my field of Space Technology.

    So, I attempt to address my known shortcomings while taking advantage of the positive attributes of autism which is why I'm so grateful my autism was not "eradicated", "cured" or "wiped out". xD

    Because, long live autism super-powers!! That's what I call my positive attributes. xD

    And I can't eat wheat or cow's milk. But I sure as heck am not going to pay so much for that muffler!! DUDE's are crazy!!!

    Sometimes I think this autism thing has become an industry with a bunch of opportunists seeking to cash in on our needs, and even where we don't have needs needs are created by the industry to market to parents or overcharge us.

    In reality, it should not cost $12 to buy a box of matzoh crackers just because they're "gluten-free". That's highway robbery!! Saw that at the store right before Passover. The other boxes were $3 each. I guess we're a captive market.
    :-/

    Thanks for your blog Bev :-)

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