We are luckily part of a drug trial at Stanford University, of vasopressin, a possible solution to help kids with autism. We had 4 weeks where we didn't know if TsukiMoon, our son, was taking a placebo or the real medicine. Nothing changed and we correctly thought that he was on a placebo. At the end of the 4 weeks we had the option to continue with the real thing. We left the decision up to TsukiMoon. With visions of legos in his head, he gets $20 a visit, he said yes.
He has been taking Vasopressin for 4 days and the impact on his behavior has been immediate. My husband are careful to be too excited about the impact but we are making jokes about telling the researchers that we lost the bottles of meds at the end of the 4 weeks (we have to give back what is left over at the end). We are also tentative not to have whatever is the opposite to the "placebo effect." Are we over optimistic because we know this is the real thing, but something has changed.
In the past 4 days we have see him do things that we have never seen. TsukiMoon is more animated, connected, better eye contact-- basically happier. He has run up and asked to play with other kids on the playground before school this morning. That's never happened. He eager to move his body, running from place to place. Mostly he has been low energy, again-- new.
He has what now seems like habitualized behavior, like being resistant to change. At bedtime it seems like he pushes back because that's what he has always done, but the level of resistance is different.
I'm careful to overstate anything. The parents with children with autism don't need false hopes. My understanding, but I'm not a doctor, is this medicine won't work for all people with autism. There might be 100 genes that create a person with autism. The causes for one person might not be the reason for another. I'm hopeful.
The effects of this drug makes me see the person my boy might have been.
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