Today we had the intake at The Pediatric Weight Management Program with an Endocrinologist. I was impressed. The 1st thing I noticed was that her office had all kinds of signs that I noticed while waiting about Autism Research Studies. We arrived early, but Honeybunches must have approved of the waiting room because he was very well behaved. They had a show he liked on Disney Channel on the big flat screen television. Ollie I think it was. He sat quietly in the seat until we were called. They took his weight, height and blood pressure. He was 4'8'' and 129.6 lbs. That left his BMI to be 28.9 which is 98.9% the paper says. The Endocrinologist said she has a lot of experience with children who have Pervasive Development Disorders. I explained to her how a lot of his eating is behavior related. She said she understands, knows that from his diagnoses and medications plus that we'll work on it. She blames the antipsychotics. We went over his history with that type of med. I told her how he was on Risperdal from ages 4-6 and gained 65 lbs in those two years going from 35 lbs at age 4 to 99 lbs at age 6. The 1st thing she said we'll do is put him on
Metformin. She said it would work with the brain's insulin response to food or something like that. In her experience 8 out of 10 children who have antipsychotic induced weight gain, lose weight on it. With the other 2 out of 10 she said it just doesn't work for whatever reason. She is calling in a script for that so he'll begin it either tonight or tomorrow. She said we'll know in a couple months if it is going to work or not.
She said with the antipsychotics and his Autism he can't help eating a lot. He's hungry. We went over what he usually eats. She said I'm doing a good job with his diet already and doing lots of what she tells other people to do. The dietitian came in to talk with us too. She gave Honeybunches a cool plate:
He was excited about that, because I made it seem like a big deal to have his own special plate that he'd be the only one in the house to have and he just loved it anyways so that worked out well.
The Dietician also gave me a Food and Activity Journal to fill out daily until we see her again in a month. She had a couple ideas, for example:
- I said how we give him a veggie, grain and protein for dinner. She said that we should add in some fruit and yogurt or cheese too like the plate suggests.
- A good snack he agreed he'd like is fat free butter popcorn, a boiled egg or 1 packet of oatmeal.
She gave us a folder with this magazine in it called
Chop Chop which Honeybunches enjoyed looking at on the way home. It had recipes (None of which I can see him actually eating), snack ideas and a word search he enjoyed doing. The folder also had handouts:
- A "Nutrition at a glance" card.
So his 1st appointment went very well. I was highly impressed by them, how much they know about Autism and how understanding they were. Everyone in the office was awesome, especially the doctor. We go back again in the middle of May. The doc ordered some fasting blood work to check his A1C, liver enzymes, cholesterol and some other stuff. He has 3 blood work slips we have to have done in the next week. Two of them are fasting, so I'll just do them together on the same day. The other one specifically has to be next Monday, but can only be at a certain hospital, so we'll make two lab runs next week. Tomorrow we go for a follow-up with his Pediatrician in regards to today's appointment.
Oh, Honeybunches did absolutely awesome all the way to his appointment, at his appointment and all the way home! :) We had a really nice driver who actually talked to us this time lol. She took the back road instead of the highway so there was more sightseeing to do. I hope we get her again sometime, because she's been the best, most patient, friendly driver we've had yet. I brought a travel style version of the Marvelous Marbles with us, so that might have helped.
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