As I said in the previous post we have known that something was up with Jaycen for a while, I suspected things (ADHD and Aspergers Syndrome) but couldn't prove anything until we got a new Maternal and Child Health Nurse in July 2012, after Emily was born, who saw what I saw and gave us a recommendation for our GP to refer us to a Paediatrician.
During Easter 2012 we discovered that when Jaycen ate chocolate he became quite violent towards me and his little sister Elise, he would hit us and became rather nasty in general, so we made the decision to cut chocolate out of his life, he never had it on a regular basis anyway as we made an effort to make sure that he ate only healthy foods as Matt and I are both overweight and we didn't want him to end up struggling to lose weight as an adult like us, so it was a simple thing to do.
In February while Matt was home sick with the blood clot in his leg we had 2 and half wonderful weeks where Jaycen was on his best behaviour, being helpful and nice, not getting hyperactive or doing anything naughty and we thought that it would be the end of all the trouble we had had with him, but it wasn't to last, at the end of those 2 and a half weeks he went straight back to his old self and progressively got worse.
In March we decided to try a gluten free diet to see if that helped as we had been told that going gluten free could sometimes help ADHD children reduce their hyperactive behaviour, unfortunately this didn't work.
At the start of April Jaycen attended the birthday party of one of his daycare buddies, and ate lollies (I didn't realise there were lollies there until after he had started eating them) and within 15 minutes he was so hyperactive and into everything that I was starting to stress out and worried that we would be asked to leave (we had walked almost 4km just to get there! and I didn't want to have to walk all that way back home, uphill, with a hyperactive child who wouldn't listen to anything that I said), 30 minutes later Matt arrived and picked us up and we went home because we needed to get Jaycen out of there before he did something really bad.
At home Jaycen ran around like a crazy person, jabbering on about nothing in particular, getting into everything, hitting his sister, touching things that he knows he isn't allowed to touch, hitting the dog (how our dog, Libby, puts up with it I will never understand, she is so patient with him and treats him like he is her own puppy), and he started having jerky movements and twitching. After an hour he finally crashed on his bed and fell into a deep sleep the we couldn't wake him from, he was still twitching and I was a bit worried.
When he woke up 2 hours later he was a very subdued little boy and not his normal self. We made the decision then and there to cut processed sugars completely out of his diet.
It has been a difficult month trying to keep sugar out of his diet, he can no longer have his favourite Apricot Jam on toast and sandwiches and we are limited to giving him Vegemite instead. He cannot have most stir fry sauces, or much sauce (tomato sauce and BBQ sauce) in general, because they contain too much sugar as well so we tend to not give him any at all unless it's a special occasion.
Yesterday we discovered that he cannot have strawberries. At daycare they do a morning tea for the children with fruits, carrots, celery, cheese and berries. Jaycen loves strawberries so of course he ate as many of them as he could get and ignored everything else on the plates.
According to his room teacher, Tony, within minutes of eating the strawberries he became so hyperactive and uncontrollable that they had to let him outside for an hour (in the drizzle that kept on coming and going yesterday) just to run off some of the energy as he was disturbing the other children in his room. Jaycen stayed hyperactive for the rest of the day until he finally fell asleep at 7:30pm.
At least we now know that Strawberries are a trigger, but it is sad that he can no longer eat one of his favourite foods.
I am going to be writing up a list of things that he can't eat tonight to take up to QLD with us so that my mum and stepdad know what he can't eat as well.
To say that I am worried is an understatement. I am scared, frustrated and terrified about the future and what it will mean for Jaycen. All I ever wanted was for him to have a normal life, now I don't know what the future holds. We had planned to send him to school next year, but now he may have to stay back and do kindergarten next year instead and start school the year after - the year that he turns 7! If he starts school the year that he turns 7 I am scared that he will be teased and called dumb because he will be so much older (almost 2 years older) than the majority of the other children in his class. It is a scary thought, and I know firsthand how cruel other children can be to someone who is different to the norm.
So here I am scared, worried and fearful of what is to come.
Until next time.
Jenna.
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