Neurological Complications With Autism

Although many people consider autism to be a neurological abnormality, many of us audies do not agree. We say that it is what it is, and we just are the way we are. Still, we could have neurological problems along WITH being autistic. Yes, people on the lower-functioning end of the spectrum will probably always be debilitated. They may never be verbal or never be able to live independently. Yes, there are audies that have Fragile X Syndrome, mental retardation, or even seizure disorders. In this article, I will not be focusing on this group. Instead, I will mention things that people with autism experience that are less obvious at first glance. Recently, I have met fellow audies and parents of autistic children who shared with me the neurological problems they deal with. I identified with their concerns very well because I too have neurological problems which, in and of themselves, I would never have associated with autism at all.

When I was a young child, my physical developmental delays were quite noticeable. Over the years, though, I’ve learned to compensate for them, somewhat. At the age of five months, I had suffered from salmonella food poisoning. The 108° fever and the three weeks I spent in intensive care nearly took my life. Even the doctors told my parents I would not live. Although everyone considered it a miracle that I did live, I point the finger at this illness as the main cause of my neurological problems, and perhaps the autism as well. During the rest of my childhood, I learned that I would need to wear glasses the rest of my life because my eyesight was very poor. Uncorrected, my right eye sees 20/200 and my left eye 20/400. Although I have a 20% hearing loss in my left ear, I suffer from chronic tinnitus in my right ear. This baffled the audiologist I visited recently because she said that tinnitus should happen on the side with hearing loss, not the normal side! My arm and hand strength and leg coordination were noticeably weaker on the left side. Also, I had a chronically weak voice and poor fricative pronunciation. On top of everything, I have always had some sort of sleep disturbance especially from my junior year of high school on to the present day.

I was definitely a funny-looking and certainly odd acting creature when I was a kid. I wore Coke-bottle glasses until I was in 11th grade, which is when my parents finally found a doctor who was willing to prescribe contact lenses for me. I didn’t learn to sit up or walk during the normal times a toddler should be able to do these things. I also wore a brace between my shoes to correct my foot flare. I was the last one in my kindergarten class to learn how to tie his shoes. Because of my coordination problem, I had a habit of tripping and falling whenever I ran or played. Some of those falls resulted in me either breaking my glasses or needing a trip to the emergency room to get stitches. In order to strengthen my left side and improve my coordination, my parents started me in piano lessons when I was four years old. The years of piano training that followed definitely made a difference. They helped mostly because my teacher was quite a demanding, old-school classical pianist. I had seen a speech therapist when I was in third grade, and again when in my senior year of high school, to improve the quality of my voice. As for my hearing and my sleep disturbances, they are today the way they have always been. My brain has become accustomed to ignoring the chronic high-pitched ringing in my right ear, and my circadian rhythm is permanently set for me to be a lifelong night owl.

Because of my developmental delays and stunted growth, my parents would take me to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia every year for evaluations by an endocrinologist. When I was twelve years old, my annual visit yielded the discovery of a heart defect. I had a leaking aortic valve. Now the yearly visits switched gears from monitoring my stunted (but within normal range) growth to checking on the adequacy of the pumping of my heart. At the age of eighteen, the leak in my heart valve finally became so severe that I needed open heart surgery to correct it. As for my lack of coordination, I’ve learned to compensate over the years. Even though all those years of piano lessons as a child made significant improvements, you will still occasionally find me walking into people, furniture, and doorways. Because it’s not so debilitating these days, I just laugh when it happens.

Other health woes have challenged me throughout the years as well. From April 10, 1995 until October 15, 2009, I suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I remember the exact dates because you never forget the day you wake up with a life-changing illness, and the only thing that successfully brought it to an end, once and for all, was the occurrence of a tragic event. On October 15, 2009, I woke up suffering from a stroke. My entire right side was paralyzed from head to toe. The stroke was caused by a brain hemorrhage. Even though I spent four days in intensive care, I surprised everyone, including the neurologist who treated me, by being back to my old self again, with full-strength and energy, just six weeks later. Not only was I back to my pre-stroke self, I was back to my pre-Chronic Fatigue Syndrome self! In addition, all of the voice weakness that I still  had for all these years was also gone! I did battle with bouts of insomnia, which is common for many stroke survivors to have for several months after a stroke. The insomnia was treatable with melatonin, and it eventually disappeared all together on the one-year anniversary of the stroke.

Because I recently found out about other people with autism who have similar neurological problems, I am wondering if there is a direct connection between such neurological conditions and autism. The neuropsychologist who confirmed my autism diagnosis with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale in July of 2008 agreed that my illness as an infant must have damaged my nerve system. One particular child I learned about recently has developmental problems almost identical to mine, yet never had such an illness. In that light, I feel that it would be appropriate to place such developmental problems on a parallel spectrum. On the lower end you have such things as Fragile X Syndrome, while on the higher end you have conditions milder than what I have. This would probably make a great subject for a survey or study.

Compromising, & Other Things That Work

This article was written just for my fellow audies to read. As the sign on the treehouse reads, “No neurotypicals allowed.” However, you are invited to sit and watch from a distance, as you might learn something about the world we audies live in.

Compromising is a fact of life that anybody, audie or neurotypical, must deal with eventually in order to have a happy relationship. Whether it is a relationship between you and your parents, you and a coworker or boss, or you and a spouse, sometimes you just have to do what they ask in order for the team to accomplish its goals. Yes, we do like when things go the way we want them to, regardless of what other people think or feel. It’s not that we are selfish or obstinate, like the neurotypical world thinks we are. It is because of how very strictly we arrange the rules of our routines, the rules we live by. If you’ve read my post entitled “How I Pretend To Be (Somewhat) Normal,” you would see clearly how I sometimes just have to manipulate the rules in my head. When I give my autism seminars, I am always approached by a parent or caretaker about what to do about that loved one of theirs that doesn’t want to budge from their “bad” behaviors or ways of doing things. I guess it comes with age, but eventually you come to the realization that it is better to make the members of your team or family happy so that they can feel and know that you can contribute to this world. You just have to tweak the rules a bit.

So how does this happen? You know how you make rules in your head for every little thing? Your bathroom routine must proceed in a certain way. The way you start up your workplace for the day. The way you drive your car. The way you arrange your piles of papers. Everything follows a set of rules that only you can understand. Well, the key is this: In between each rule you have to insert a space. For example, as a rule I always shave right before I take my shower. Usually, I go right from shaving to taking my shower. Over the years, I’ve learned to insert a “space” between these two tasks, a space where interruptions and a change of plans is ALLOWED to happen. This lets me break away from the bathroom routine momentarily to do some yard work or feed my dog before going back to shower and continuing on with the routine as usual. This works so much better when your wife is adamant that the grass needs to be cut TODAY. Interruptions and change are inevitable. Compromising and doing this differently really are possible. Then you will receive lots of pats on the back for having been able to be more “flexible”. But you know, and so do I, that it was possible only because you were able to rearrange the rules!

I know that many of you have to take certain medications such as Prozac or Adderall. Anxiety and feeling that your mind is all over the place really take a lot out of you. Without these medications, it is hard to function, especially when you are expected to do so around a group of people. I know it’s not something you are proud of, but it’s also not something to be ashamed of either. Look at Temple Grandin. She has to take Prozac before she feels capable of being able to get in front of an audience to give one of her great speeches. But what if there was another way of doing things so that you don’t HAVE to take prescription medicines? In reality, there is. Even though you take only half the normal dose of those medicines because of how sensitive you are to changes, you may be just as responsive to the positive changes that the alternatives have to offer. I know this to be true firsthand. Although I’ve never taken prescription psychoactive medicines, I have taken herbal supplements instead. Did you know that 750 mg of St. John’s Wort is just as effective as 80 mg of Prozac, and has far less side effects? That’s what a study showed that was published in the November 1996 issue of the Journal of Natural Medicine. There are similar herbal alternatives to other types of medications as well, and it is up to you to try them.

But there is something that helped me far more than any herbal supplement. Well, actually a combination of things. First, you really need to go to a chiropractor and to visit him or her on a regular basis. If I go more than two weeks without seeing my chiropractor, my ability to communicate coherently, my concentration, and my hypersensitivities become worse. It is by having my nerve system free from interference, interference that happens when bones shift out of alignment and affect how nerves work, that everything in my body, including my brain’s ability to think, work better. In addition to this, I listen to my instincts, my own intuition. Many of my own successes in life are due to this. For many of us, this is not easy because we tend to doubt ourselves and become anxious very easily. What helped me to “tune in” more is practicing a formal type of meditation. By practicing meditation seriously, I can look past all the waves in the mind that make us feel “less than” and see what’s going on behind the scenes, so to speak. It’s a more insightful, “spiritual” if you will, way of looking at the big picture. These are ways in which I have helped myself to navigate the oftentimes confusing and exhausting neurotypical world. Even when reason and advice from neurotypicals seem to work against me, listening to my intuition ALWAYS produced the better outcomes.

Above all else, remember that everybody really DOES want the best for you. People aren’t out to “get” you. It may seem that way, more often than not. I know because I lived with this feeling for so many years. I had to see past this belief, and to see past my own feelings of inadequacy, before life really started handing me some great moments. There may be a troublemaker or two you encounter along the way. But on the whole, NOBODY is out to get you! There really is greatness within you and around you, even if it doesn’t seem like it. Sometimes you just have to sit there with pen and paper and start writing things down before you recognize them. Sometimes you just need to have a counselor or a mentor who points these things out for you. I myself see a very caring social worker who helps me to see things in a better light. It’s all a matter of perception, and we audies tend to feel like we are the bad guys in a good world; we are the cause of others’ misery. Everyone is indeed responsible for his or her own behavior, from the neurotypical who is a less-than-understanding crab to the person with an Autism Spectrum Disorder that points the finger at the fact that he is autistic when he makes a social blunder. If you want more insight into any of the topics I briefly discussed in this article, let’s get together and chat. All of these things that work that I mentioned here can certainly be topics in themselves for future articles and conversations. I’m an audie just like you, and I’m here to help!

Adverse Behaviors In Autism

Every time I teach my autism seminar, I have at least one parent approach me with questions regarding adverse behaviors in their child, wondering how to deal with them while frustration mounts. The answer is always the same: “Be understanding, and be very patient.” By “adverse” behaviors, I am not saying that the autistic child or adult is being purposefully bad. “Adverse” simply means that the behavior is not congruent with the neurotypical (normal) ways of doing things. Stimming, outbursts, lack of eye contact, “headbanging” routines, defiance, anxiety, hypersensitivity, and panic attacks are all examples of adverse behavior. I like to explain that adverse behaviors happen only when the autistic person is expected to act like a neurotypical. In other words, they’re just part of the daily life of a person with an Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Most autistic people will have only one or two adverse behaviors. I believe my two are hypersensitivity and “headbanging”. These behaviors are only made worse when people such as my dad, when I was a child, and now my wife try to correct them. It’s just not going to happen! Headbanging is not to be confused with stimming, and I will explain the difference later. Stimming is the repetitive flapping of hands, hitting oneself, rocking, making annoying sounds, and so on. Stimming was a very common behavior in me when I was a child. I would bang my head against the headboard of my crib and constantly want to go full-speed in a rocking chair or rocking horse. I would also sing, horribly, at the top of my lungs while rocking. Stimming was how I found comfort in the world since everything and everyone around me seemed so intimidating. During my late teens and early 20s, there was defiance. I had no motivation to follow any path, to make any friends, to get anywhere in life. This is what I call my period of “shutdown”. I knew I was different. I felt that nobody cared because nobody understood. So I just wanted out. Thank goodness for one or two adult friends, I never did self-destruct. But it was definitely a sad and lonely time.

One thing that seemed so unusual to many people was the fact that I felt right at home when in front of a crowd. Maybe it was because I had been playing the piano in recitals ever since I was four years old? Whatever the reason, I displayed practically no anxiety at all. I loved assignments in college where I had to prepare a presentation to give in front of the class. I felt right at home playing the role of “teacher”. On the contrary, though, I do experience some level of nervousness when giving instructions on performing a particular skill, such as CPR. I feel most comfortable when I am disseminating knowledge. Because anxiety is very common in people on the spectrum, it is usually dealt with by taking psychoactive medicines such as Prozac and Zoloft. Even though people on the spectrum need only half the typical dosage, I must, as a doctor of natural healing, blow the horn of advocacy for safer ways of dealing with anxiety such as herbal alternatives (such as St. John’s Wort), meditation, yoga, energy medicine, and chiropractic care (particularly upper cervical specific).

Hypersensitivity is also extremely common among people on the spectrum. Hypersensitivity doesn’t just mean being more affected by the things people say and do, oftentimes taking too many things personally or the wrong way. It also has to do with sensory input and how it is processed, such as the lighting and sounds in a room, the feel of certain textures, fragrances, etc. If there are too many hypersensitivities at one time, sensory overload occurs. For me, this would cause me to go into “shutdown” mode. When I was a trainee on the ambulance squad, I was definitely hypersensitive to all the activities going on around me during an emergency situation. Therefore, I would always shut down and freeze up as if I didn’t know what to do. I certainly did know what to do. I just couldn’t multitask until I forced myself to learn how. That’s what overload can do to an autistic person, usually causing them to either have a panic attack or an outburst. My hypersensitivities are much more pronounced and devastating when I am unrested or unbathed for a whole day. Lack of sleep can make me fidgety toward things that normally wouldn’t bother me, such as listening to music or the TV, or even having my wife hover around me. Also, I could never ever leave the house for the day unless I’ve had a shower first. Otherwise, I feel as though I have swamp scum covering me from head to toe, and even letting my wife touch my hair freaks me out. Normally, though, I handle sensory overload by turning things off, such as the radio, TV, lights, or by ignoring the (unintentional) aggressor. Unfortunately, though, when I was working in the busy hospital setting during my days as a Respiratory Therapist, this meant that I would shut off my pager without even realizing it if I was concentrating too much on another task, such as taking a patient’s vital signs.

As for the “headbanging” routines, I define these as any task that is repeated over and over again without any purpose or without any results. While stimming equals repetitive actions, “headbanging” means actual tasks. Since making social and business-related contact with people is perhaps my weakest area in life, I figured that I would certainly get somewhere as an entrepreneur if I write a great brochure and send it out by direct mail to prospective clients. In the eight-plus years I’ve been making brochures, mailing lists, spending hundreds of dollars on postage, rearranging my website, and making poor attempts at cold calling, I never received a single client through these efforts. This unproductive dead-end of doing the same thing over and over again with absolutely no results was THE final straw that caused Bianca and I to start drifting apart. It was my sincere wish to pursue marriage counseling that finally brought me to the discovery that I was autistic, thereby forming a strong loving bond between Bianca and me.

So, in the end, how are parents and caretakers supposed to deal with adverse behaviors? How does Bianca deal with mine? She just does. There is no “right” or “wrong” to correct. Adverse behaviors are just part of being autistic. Such mannerisms add color to the world, as they are part of the autistic person’s nature. It would certainly benefit the autistic person to receive counseling from a psychologist or a social worker. I myself see a social worker simply to have somebody to talk to who can help me see things from a neurotypical perspective in a nonjudgmental way while accepting myself, autism and all, as I am. As I stated earlier, adverse behaviors happen only when an autistic person is expected to act like a neurotypical. It is necessary for the parent and caretaker to take away this notion of changing the person with autism. The autistic person needs to be accepted as they are. They may never be exactly the person you want them to be. But they will certainly be comfortable being themselves.

Living By The Rules

There are different ways in which the autistic mind thinks and processes information. These different types are discussed in detail in the video "It Takes All Kinds of Minds" by Dr. Temple Grandin. No matter which kind of mind you are talking about, there is one thing that is common to all of them: all actions, reactions, and interactions are based on rules. Rules are made over time as things are categorized and differentiated. For example, Temple had to learn that not every piece of furniture that had four legs was a dining table. There are coffee tables, end tables, chair with four legs, flower stands, etc. As for me, living by the rules had to do more with how to do my job and interact with people rather than categorizing objects and animals. This led to a rather debilitating amount of cluelessness. This cluelessness could eventually be overcome only by observing results on the job and the reactions and feedback I would get from people. When the outcomes were negative, I'd think of how little my presence and my input was worth. When they were positive, I'd feel motivated to keep going.

A good example of how I learned something by forming rules was the job I had when I worked as a data trip record clerk for Penske Truck Leasing. One of my tasks was to enter paper reports that the drivers of the leased vehicles would fill out into the mainframe computer. On a daily basis, I would type between 150 and 300 reports, logging departure cities, destinations, mileages, fuel purchases, etc. To look at the piles and piles of reports left me feeling exhausted and disoriented before I even began. For the first few months I worked there, I was the slowest in a department of sixteen people. It wasn't because I didn't know how to type. I certainly could, and I knew computers well. I just moved very slowly, as I usually do before I develop a knack. Then one day I discovered something. As I was typing along, I could modify the way I typed to form certain musical patterns. I could form arpeggios when typing in the mileage column. I could bang out a quick tap-tap to enter in a state abbreviation. I would create similar genres for each column on the page. After forming these rules by which each bit of information could be easily and playfully typed, I went from being the slowest person in the department to the fastest! But it came with a price. The better I got at typing, the louder I hit the keys. Hearing the same mosaic banging over and over again all day long caused everyone around me to have headaches.

They say that one thing an autistic person cannot do is function in any job that requires a lot of distraction and multitasking. This is one reason why I am glad that I did not find out I was on the autism spectrum until I was in my late 40s, well after having become a successful ambulance attendant, fire police officer, and respiratory therapist. I would have surely been told that I could never accomplish any of these things because of how demanding they are had I been diagnosed early on. As a result, I pursued these interests and eventually learned how to excel at them, even moreso than many people of the people I worked with. I did it by forming procedural rules within my own head. It is one thing to practice and master being able to put a sling on somebody's broken arm in a classroom. It is a completely different situation when you are performing the same action when you also have three other victims of an accident to tend to, monitor their vital signs, take their health history, write a report, and then eventually regurgitate all this information to the emergency room staff. I could do all this only after months and months of making mistakes, eventually figuring out a set of rules that would "categorize" each action until they became second-nature. If a distraction would come along, as it always did, I would form a picture in my head of whatever task I was being pulled away from, thereby putting this task on "hold", so that I knew what I had to return to. For example, when assessing a patient with a collapsed lung, and then suddenly being asked to set up an IV elsewhere, I would envision myself with half a lung on one side in order to remind myself what task I had to go back to when I was finished.

Being prudent in social situations, though, took a lot more doing. There was no forming of rules. There was only figuring out what was acceptable and not acceptable by seeing the outcome, sometimes making enemies or losing “friends” along the way. In the book “Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships” by Dr. Temple Grandin and Sean Barron, rule #6 states “Not everyone who is nice to me is my friend.” Because I never had the ability to simply “fit in,” I had no idea what guys talk about or what is appropriate conversation and with whom. I found out the hard ways that it is not okay to assume that a woman is romantically interested in you simply because she talks nicely to you, even if she is married. I found out that it is not okay to repeat gossip in front of the gossip subject’s friends. I also found out that it is not okay to be mean-spirited when directing traffic as a fire police officer because the person you may be yelling at is an off-duty sheriff. It is also not okay to tell a young black female that you talk to all the time, and think that you know well, that she looks “yummy” in a photo shoot. That situation resulted in my losing the best part-time job I ever had. Because rules are people based, as rule #1 of the “Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships” states, and because you really never truly know somebody unless you have already broken an unwritten rule, living by the rules continues to be a major challenge. In that light, it is always safer for me to simply be silent and to be a loner. I have to know somebody very very well nowadays for me to even have a conversation about varying topics with them. I am far from being shy, although I have always been reserved.

The number one reason why forming any rules even happened is the fact that I had a mentor or somebody who gave me a chance. Without my boss Linda who always liked my demeanor at Penske Truck Leasing, I had job security. Because of Larry who was my ambulance driver and mentor with the former Governor Mifflin Area Ambulance Association in Shillington, PA, I learned how to be a darn good Emergency Medical Technician – one who eventually became a trainer of new EMTs for our squad. It is so very important for people on the autism spectrum to be in the company of people who believe in them. Once they have that, they can accomplish anything they set their minds to. Nobody should ever tell a person with some form of autism that they cannot accomplish their goals or fulfill their dreams. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I had accomplished feats and did tasks that people with autism are being told all the time that they cannot handle. I did it all by forming rules. What would have helped me even further was if I had somebody who taught me what the proper rules of social interactions are. Life would have been SO much easier for me! As for now, now that I know I am on the autism spectrum, I don’t worry so much about it. I know that there is a reason (but not an excuse) for the awkwardness.

How I Pretend To Be (Somewhat) Normal

I am a visual thinker. If I need to remember important information, I think of a picture with details drawn in. I am also somebody who, like perhaps all people on the autism spectrum, learns by making rules. These two brain functions are what carried me through much of life when it came to learning new tasks and becoming more flexible in my thinking. If I was expected to change the way I do something and then eventually did, people would say, "See, you CAN be flexible!" In reality, it's not that I was being "flexible" at all. Instead, I was forming a set of sub-rules to a main rule. In the book Unwritten Rules Of Social Relationships, rule #1 states, "Rules are not absolute. They are situation-based and people-based." By making a rule "situation-based," I can appear to be flexible and can therefore pretend to be somewhat normal in society. Thinking in pictures and forming sub-rules are also how I learned very complex tasks, tasks which would seem impossible to tackle for a person with an autism spectrum disorder.

In the book Developing Talents, Dr. Temple Grandin states that one of the most improbable jobs for visual thinkers is to work as a nurse in a busy hospital setting. There is too much sensory input coming at you from all angles, and the multitasking that is required would be unmanageable. Between 1984 and 1986, I was a student at the now-defunct St. Joseph Hospital School of Nursing. I never made it through the program because I was unable to handle being in such an environment. My mind could only focus on one task at a time, and it was very slow at doing that. Even though I was at the top of my class academically, the program administrators said that I needed to drop the program. Back then, I did not know that I was on the autism spectrum, and testing I had done at the local rehab hospital did not pinpoint anything specific. This was before the days of there being any form of protection or accommodation for people with disabilities. Six years later, though, I did become a respiratory therapist. The training itself was slower-paced and specific. Therefore, I was able to get through it. But once I was working in the busy hospital setting, I saw how very very challenging it really was. I didn't spent a great deal of time in that setting before going off to graduate school to become a chiropractor.

Where I DID spend a great deal of time was being an ambulance attendant. Ten good years of being with the same squad, working with the same mentor, was the ideal situation for me. It was where I became quite proficient at being able to handle extremely stressful situations which required multitasking to be able to get anything accomplished. Most people spend about three months being a trainee if they are just starting out on the ambulance squad. I spent at least three years as a trainee. Under normal circumstances, a person like me would have been let go of in a matter of weeks. But this was a volunteer organization, and my mentor Larry was somebody who worked with my mom and knew her very well. Besides, volunteers were always hard to come by. Little did I know that how I learned things was very different from the norm. Learning how to put a splint on a broken leg in a classroom didn't take much brains. But learning how to put a splint on a broken leg while your patient is lying in the middle of a busy highway covered in broken glass in the middle of a thunder storm while there were four other injured people to worry about is a whole different ball game. It took being subject to such situations over and over and over again to be able to form sub-rules for various situations before I was finally able to do such things on my own. A day eventually came when I could just pull out that file in my head and know what to do for what type of situation. Nothing was spontaneous. It all had to be learned, step by step.

Learning how to multitask was a whole experience in itself. How was it that I was eventually able to take a blood pressure while at the same time listening to the paramedic's assessment? This is where thinking in pictures was my best friend. Normally, such a bombardment of input would be handled by shutting everything out and focusing on just the task I was doing at the time. This is how I flunked myself out of nursing school and is also what I did in the hospital as a respiratory therapist. I knew that if I really wanted to be part of the ambulance service, being a great contributor to my community and saving lives, I better get learning! I eventually figured out that I could build my short-term memory by holding an image of what was being said in my mind long enough so that I could retrieve it when I was done with the task at hand, making that the next order of business. If there were more than one orders of business coming up, then each one would be a picture in my head, one right next to the other just like in a comic strip.

While making sub-rules and thinking in pictures were, and still are, my best friends in the work setting, starting up again in a whole new profession would not be possible. On the ambulance crew, I had three comfortable years to be able to go through all the processes and self-discoveries. This is certainly not something any employer has the time for. It is also why I am not currently looking for another career path. To reenter the world of pre-hospital emergency care is also not in the cards. Now that I know what chiropractic can do, and what medicine cannot do, I would be too tempted to educate people to these facts. I truly AM a chiropractor at heart, even if I’m not serving an abundance of patients at this time.

If there was a way to think in pictures and to form rules and sub-rules regarding successful marketing, I’d really have my hands full. This is an area that I still haven’t quite figured out yet, even after ten-and-a-half years of being in practice. Dr. Temple Grandin got to where she is today because she had a nice portfolio put together of all her successes. She did not get where she is because she had good people skills. She does not, and neither do I. While at first glance, people would never guess that I have autism, they would certainly come to know this over a period of time. My next step is to work on a portfolio that shows my accomplishments. Dr. Grandin, like me, developed her skills by having a mentor who believed in her and gave her a chance. The “real world” is not so giving or forgiving. I guess I will forever be in a state of struggle, whether being an entrepreneur or if working for somebody else.

There are other factors that affect my abilities, such as having a cognitive disorder and a circadian rhythm imbalance. The cognitive disorder affects my ability to process information and to remember things offhand. Learning new skills not only requires that I learn things my own way by forming rules. Constant repetition is also necessary. Usually when a person tells me something, such as a memorandum piece of information or their name, I will not remember it, even if I am attentive. I must hear the information a second time, or even a third. As for the circadian rhythm imbalance, ever since my senior year of high school I have had notable sleep disturbances. These disturbances have prevented me from being able to hold a daytime job. The record, though, goes to Penske Truck Leasing, who I worked for as a data entry and report editing clerk for 26 months, thanks to Benadryl and L-tryptophan. There is a reason why my chiropractic office hours begin at 2:00 in the afternoon and go well into the night. That’s what I am capable of. I mention this in my marketing efforts to let people know that it would suit them better to visit a doctor who they can see when their work day is done than to have to miss work during the day. I always find a way to make lemonade out of my batch of lemons.

Over the years, I have certainly been quite the spectacle. Kids on the playground at school would make fun of me. Adults in the workplace would make fun of me too. They knew that I was different, that I didn’t fit it. They knew that I did things in odd ways. Although I may have appeared as a recluse, I still got the job done, somehow. But for those jobs where I lasted only three weeks or less, it was apparent that I wasn’t able to cognize the skills that were required of me in a reasonable amount of time. Perhaps the most notable of these jobs was my short stint at Pearle Vision Center in January of 1988. Lots of lenses were destroyed as I tried to learn how to use the lens grinder. I would have finally “gotten it” if I had been given just a few more days. Whether we are talking about kids in school or adults in the work place, people do not like being around somebody who doesn’t “fit in”. It makes them uncomfortable to have to mesh with somebody like that. It makes them feel burdened as if they cannot be themselves. It brings out the worst in them. This is why schools and employers NEED to have mentors available for people on the autism spectrum. Mentors are truly angels in disguise. They are the ones who can let the individual on the autism spectrum know that they DO belong and that they are an important contributors in this world. The mentor is the one that the autistic person will remember and thank profusely when it comes time to give credit for their marvelous accomplishments. Despite the fact that the audie thinks and reasons very differently, the same goals can be reached, and perhaps with even greater insight. All they need is a chance.

The Early Years

Kids just go about being themselves. I was no exception. I was not “different” in my eyes. I was just doing the things that interested me very much. Suddenly I found myself being the talk of the adult world around me. Who is this genius who knows how to pronounce the difference parts of the brain, and also knows what they do? Why does he make up his own addition and subtraction problems just to keep himself amused? What kind of strangeness must be in this guy’s head to dress up as Sherlock Holmes in 90-degree weather? While adults were kept entertained, kids my own age were not. They were very mean and spiteful, calling me a nerd or a retard. Not all of them were like that, though. If you wanted to be my friend, the best way to do that was to play word games with me. Otherwise, I was not social with my peers.

Although in third grade I started to cognize that I was very different, it wasn’t until I was eleven years old and in fifth grade that it really hit me. As we entered adolescence, differences between me and the other kids became very obvious. I wasn’t into all the gossip and rough play. Conversations did not revolve around sports, sex, or building friendships. It was as if my eyes suddenly opened one day. That’s when the inferiority complexes started rolling in – feelings that would plague me well into my adult years.

Just before being diagnosed with PDD-NOS in 2008, I read the book “Unwritten Rules Of Social Relationships” by Dr. Temple Grandin and Sean Barron. While reading Sean’s story, I couldn’t believe how much his early years were almost identical to what I experienced. It was as if I were looking into a mirror. That’s when it really started clicking in my own mind that I may have been autistic all these years. I also thought that it would be nice if I WAS diagnosed with autism because then, for the first time in my life, I could finally put my finger on the reason why I was so different.

To add to all my social ineptness, I was constantly suffering from some sort of health problem. The fact that I was small for my age didn’t help matters. Constantly having ear infections and some reason to visit the medical doctor kept me isolated from other kids much of the time. I spent a lot of time in the care of my grandparents or my Aunt Doris and being examined by some doctor for some reason. At the age of 12, during a routine visit to an endocrinologist, I discovered that I had a leaking heart valve. I myself made the discovery before the doctor mentioned it. I even pointed it out to my parents before the endocrinologist called for the cardiologist. It wasn’t until I was 19 years old that the leak in my aortic valve became bad enough to require open heart surgery to fix. While my own health challenges were an influence in my decision to pursue a career in health care, other interests developed during my childhood that are still present today. While spending time at my Aunt Doris’s place, I would walk up the street to the public library where I would spend the day reading books on anatomy & physiology, astronomy, and paranormal phenomena. While it is obvious from my choice of profession that anatomy & physiology is my forte, these other areas are still topics of great intrigue.

On the first day of fourth grade, in September of 1971, I met a new lifelong friend who would be an integral part of my life in many ways. It was the new priest who just took over as pastor of the parish, Father Steve. I remember that the reason why I was excited to meet him was because he had such a calming and accepting energy about him. As Father Steve recalls, his first great memory of me happened on the day we met, when I recited The Lord’s Prayer in Greek. This was just another feat by which I captivated an adult audience. At this period of time, I was teaching myself how to speak Greek because I had neighbors who were from Greece. From that day on, Father Steve would be the main person I would share everything about myself with. He would be there during all those years I was going through my inferiority complexes. He was there with me in the hospital ICU when I first woke up after my open heart surgery. He would also be the person I’d visit on a regular basis when I needed somebody to talk to during my adult years. I last saw Father Steve one Monday morning in February of 2001, when he made a surprise visit to my apartment in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Because of his unconditional acceptance of others, I spent a great deal of time talking to him about anything and everything, even well after I stopped practicing Catholicism.

You might wonder what my parents must have thought as I was going through such difficulties. Among the myriad of doctors and health professionals they ever took me to, there was a child psychologist thrown in the mix. Back in those days, though, the only form of autism that existed was classical autism, where communication and logical action are lacking. Even when I saw a psychologist at the age of twenty-two for an evaluation for possible learning disabilities, autism never came into the picture. While my parents were extremely supportive and responsive to my physical needs, they were completely unaware of my emotional and social concerns. To them, I was an amazingly brilliant, precocious wonder. If I wasn’t following the rules of social conduct, I just needed more discipline to knock some “sense” into me. Needless to say, my relationship with my parents in my teen and young adult years were not always so pleasant. They were doing what they though was best, and they gave me what they thought I needed. But it wasn’t what I needed, and all that that discipline to knock more sense into me really did was frustrate me more and more. While I feel that I am very close to my parents to this day, I still do not mention all the things that are on my mind because of their limited understanding of how my mind really works. My mind works like an autistic mind, not as one that needs more sense knocked into it.

My stimming behaviors have not always been so disruptive. Most autistic people make strange repetitive motions or have undeniable behavioral mannerisms. This is not the case with me. As a child, I was completely addicted to anything that physically moved me, such as rocking chairs, a rocking horse, swings, etc. Throughout my teen years and well into my adult years, I would listen to music, sitting in a room with all the lights out, wearing out rocking chairs. I mostly listened, and still listen to, Elton John. I would daydream about being a hero with the fire department or being in the military. I would also daydream about being part of Elton John’s band, traveling with the band around the U.S. between concerts on motorcycles that could fly. This world of music, darkness, daydreaming, and rocking was so comforting.

An even more peculiar stimming behavior that I still indulge in is making lists. As a child, I made a list of every kind of car I could think of while drawing a picture of the front of the car next to the name. In high school, a circulating joke between three or four friends turned into my creating the fictitious, and now legendary, “Sugi’s Army”. My “recruitment” efforts netted over three hundred people, and I would always carry with me the list I typed up of all the army’s members and their ranks. Before the days of computer word programs, I became quite a good Scrabble player by reading through the Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary, making list after list of strange words. While working for Penske Truck Leasing in the late 80s, I made a list of every city and town in every state and cross-referenced the names to every state that has a city or town by that name. I compiled this list be ticking off town names, one by one, in both the Rand McNally Road Atlas and the AAA Road Atlas. But perhaps my most notorious list was the creation of “Pat’s Picture Book” – the entire National Scrabble Association’s Official Tournament Word List typed, word by word, into a WordPerfect document, and many of the obscure words then being linked to websites that describe those words. Over the course of the past eight years that I’ve lived in Minnesota, I’ve created several lists – lists of all school districts, colleges, hotels, funeral homes, attorneys, trucking companies, etc. in the state and beyond, all being establishments which I advertised my services to. Making lists is what keeps my mind occupied when nothing particularly inspirational is in it. Yet, it is the inspiration to reach a particular goal that propels me to take on such an exhaustive project.

So, as I stated, I was just being me, a kid doing his own thing, following his own interests. Then, when adolescence and the teen years came, along came the eye-opening reality that I was very different than my peers. I really REALLY didn’t fit in. Although there were a couple other kids I did do things with, there was no way I could possibly go out independently into the world to make new friends. It’s not that I was shy or afraid. I was not. I was just clueless as to how to go about initiating conversation. Even when I did finally get the gumption to start talking to other kids, my ignorance of the social rules was quite evident. I didn’t even talk like a “guy”. I talked like that nice kid who was treading lightly as he ventured out of an eggshell. Knowing I was so different was indeed painful. Thanks to the adults I could talk to, though, I never reached such a low as to consider self-destruction. There was always that inner spiritual awareness, yet to a small degree during the teen years, that kept me engaged in the world. But at the same time, the strong need to “fit in” eventually gave rise to some very inappropriate ties.

During my senior year of high school, I would go to parties and do things that I would have never considered doing before. My beer chugging habits became the talk of the school. Taking a few “hits” from a marijuana cigarette seemed cool. Although I never became part of the “in” crowd, I was being more socially daring and was therefore talked to more. Once while I was at a training exercise with the Fire & Rescue Explorers Post, we visited a local fire company. I decided that it would make me look more mature if I spent some time hanging out with a loudmouthed fireman and some of his friends. When I became a fireman, I tried to act like what I thought a “guy” should act like. Having a few too many beers at the local bar with some "friends" became a pastime. In the later 80s, the scene moved from bars to a biker bar with adult entertainment where a few firemen I knew frequented. These scenes were NOT regular events at all. They were occasional activities that I felt would improve my manliness. But in the end, all they did was obviate my awkwardness. These “fitting in” digressions lessened significantly when I left Pennsylvania in 1992 and stopped all together when my fortunate spiritual journey began.

Those who have known me since 1998 know the inner adventures I so diligently wrote about during the years since. Meeting an Indian guru in the summer of ‘98 changed the course of history forever. I briefly touched upon my spiritual experiences and revelations in past blog posts. You can get a good picture of where this path has taken me in such writings as “The Healing Power Of Qi: Lessons From Avatar”. There will be more to come like this in the near future.

What If Your Doctor Had Autism?

What if your doctor had autism? Would that be so hard to believe? I guess if your view of autism is seeing helpless children and adults who can’t speak and can’t care for themselves in any way, then it probably would be. The truth is that such a view of autism describes a limited number of people who have been diagnosed with classical autism, not the entire autism spectrum. The rest of the people with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are very much able take care of themselves and to be great contributors to society in many professional ways. Yes, I am a doctor, and yes, I have autism. So what is it that you should know and expect from a doctor who has autism? First and foremost is to know that the care you receive in such a doctor’s office is done with such empathy for your concerns and with such diligence at giving you the best care possible that you can be grateful for such an individual who can give you such outstanding attention. Secondly, you need to know that people with ASDs will almost always appear socially uneasy. That’s because they just are, and there is no “why” to explain this. It is something that you will need to look past in order to appreciate the gift that such a person brings into your life.

While many people with ASDs become great scientists, engineers, and computer programmers, those who choose professions where direct, and often personal, contact with people is required, such as being a doctor, do so for a very humanitarian reason. They are not doing what they do just because it was a good choice of profession; they are true healers. They knew from a time early on, perhaps due to having had their own health concerns, that they could make a difference for other people. As for me personally, I had many many health challenges throughout my life. Therefore, I can understand how serious your concerns are to you. I can ESPECIALLY understand the concerns of your loved one who you may be bringing to my office because they have an autism spectrum disorder. Also, it is necessary that you understand that a person with autism will express themselves differently. The social mannerisms of an autistic person may oftentimes be peculiar. This is not always evident to somebody who is not familiar with autistic people. Therefore, in jest, while listening to me speak, you can think of Dr. Gregory House on the TV show House in order to feel more at ease.

Personally, I feel that I can be more at ease when talking about health concerns. The reason is because I have been through so many of my own, and I turned out to be okay. Some of these concerns include having had open heart surgery, and I am also a stroke survivor. When I am talking to you about a condition or situation that worries you, and I know that it is something that I can help you with, then I will convey uplifting, hopeful vibes to you. My goal is to help you feel more comfortable with the care you are receiving, to instill hope, and to help you see that being positive-minded is the best healing power of all. By having appreciation for my good nature that I relay is key to seeing beyond serious “doctor-ness” which is usually expected and realizing that I am a real, down-to-earth person, one that really cares.

So, what is actually going through my autistic mind as I am caring for you? Do not be surprised if it sometimes seems that I am “zoning out”. This is actually how I go through the problem solving routine. I am searching through the “hard drive” in my brain, much like Dr. Temple Grandin, a world-renowned autistic scientist, does when she is trying to solve a problem. I have to think in pictures, to visualize what is going on in the body or in the mind, as the case may be, in order to derive the correct treatment, procedure, or piece of advice to give. This is not to be mistaken for cluelessness. It is just how many autistic minds work. Keep in mind that the answers and advice I come up with may be very different from what another doctor may have told you. One doctor’s response may be based on academia or past experience alone. Mine is ALSO based on the conceptualization of processes and outcomes. It is MORE insightful.

It may surprise you to learn that people with autism may be great contributors to society. It’s just that they are challenged because they do not interact, nor does their mind function, in the ways which are considered “norms” by society. They have to think and do things in alternative ways. Unfortunately, this oftentimes affects how one communicates as well. But once the autistic person finds the way in which he or she can communicate, whether it be through writing, drawing, speaking, or some other way, it is amazing what they can accomplish! Having an ASD does not doom most people who have them. It does give them obstacles they must maneuver around in order to be functional. They are, nonetheless, FUNCTIONAL. The stereotypes of autism being a taboo subject, a curse, or a life sentence need to be thrown out. The autistic child who disrupts the normal schedule of a classroom is not to be disciplined but is instead to be encouraged to think and do what he can in the ways that he can. Many thoughts and feelings about people with autism are actually shadows of Dark Age paradigms. This is NOT a medical condition that can be cured, and people with autism need not be institutionalized, shunned by society, or, worst of all, be made a pin cushion of by the medical establishment. One thing I often contemplate is whether or not there will ever be a cure for “neurotypical-ism”. Now THAT would be nice!

The Coincidental Omen: Ominous Or Auspicous?

The date was Saturday, October 2, 1982. It was 11:30 PM in Ganeshpuri, India. The man who would become my spiritual teacher and guru in due time, Swami Muktananda, took his last breaths before leaving this world. In the meantime, some 7,800 miles away in Reading, Pennsylvania, it was noon. I was standing in the back yard of the house I grew up in. I was talking to my next door neighbor, a man named Anthony. Suddenly, we heard a very loud buzzing noise directly above our heads. We looked up to see a very strange sight.

     “Do you see what I see?” Anthony said.

I shook my head, laughed, and answered,

     “Yeah. That’s a plane flying backwards!”

Well, that was a conversation piece for years to come. We never could figure out what kind of plane could do that. We never saw the plane again.

Fast-forward exactly 28 years to the day, minus about eighteen hours, to Friday, October 1, 2010. I was standing behind the Coyote Moon Grille on the grounds of the Territory Golf Course in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. I was dressed in my ministerial attire, mentally preparing myself for the wedding ceremony I was about to officiate. Suddenly I heard that strange buzzing noise again. I looked up to see that plane flying backwards again! It was the only time I had seen it since the first time. It took no time before I realized the coincidence of the date. Instead of laughing at the irony, a bittersweet feeling came over me. Anthony had since passed away just a few years ago. Muktananda was leaving this world the first time I saw this plane, and now my head and heart are full of his teachings and his presence. I was only twenty years old then, and I am forty-eight years old now. So much of life has been lived in those years. All of these thoughts flooded my mind. As the plane flew over my head, going east toward the Saint Cloud Regional Airport, a tear came to my eye in wonderance of what this could possibly symbolize. I feel that a new era in life is about to begin.

Add to all this strangeness the absolutely bizarre dream I had just before 7:00 this morning. The alarm went off for my wife Bianca to get ready to start her day as a school teacher. Now I’ve had all sorts of very strange dreams over the years of my life. But I never had a dream like this. I was inside a building, and I didn’t know where I was. I was in a room that was deep blue in color. On a big screen TV, there was a very weird program playing. What started off as an adult entertainment film very quickly deteriorated into a horror show. I thought this was definitely not something I wanted to be watching, either way. While purposefully avoiding eye contact with the TV, I walked over to the large windows to see if I could get a clue as to where I was. I found that I was on the ground floor, looking out into a parking lot where a few cars were parked. I then turned to leave the blue room. Instead of pushing open the door, I walked THROUGH the door out into the hallway. I saw in a large meeting room down the hallway that a couple people were gathering. Instead of approaching them to ask where I was, I figured I’d venture through the building myself, using my newfound superhuman power of being able to walk through walls. Besides, maybe I didn’t even BELONG in that building? Next, I walked through a wall and found myself in a dark dressing room with curtained cubicles and hospital gowns. Was I in a clinic of some sort? Then I thought I’d get really adventurous, and I walked through the wall behind the dressing room. That’s when I ended up in a cold place where I couldn’t see a thing. The dream then came to a sudden end as the alarm clock rang. The alarm probably woke me from my dream at just the right time.

This dream left me shaken and wondering. Just the night before, I had performed two Reiki sessions in a row. I equated being able to “walk through walls” with being able to penetrate through, very clearly, the walls within the subconscious mind. The Reiki sessions had more to do with helping people find clarity in their life choices rather that helping them to heal from some kind of ailment. Was I not using the healing gift I was given for what it was intended? Was I going into places where I didn’t belong because I was actually reckless? And what about the horrid show that was playing on TV? Somehow I intuited that it had something to do with the naivete of years gone by, particularly during the period of time when I first lived far from home when I moved to Valparaiso, Indiana n 1993. Was the building I was in my own clinic? Were the people in the meeting room coming to hear me speak? Was I trying to escape from them? Many thoughts and contemplations ran through my mind until I was finally able to fall back to sleep.

One thing that I considered odd is that this all happened on the first day of what I consider the most reflective, bittersweet time of the year – the months of October and November. Last year at this time, I felt such a deep sadness and, I ended up having a stroke. The rest of the months of October and November would be marked by profound sleep disturbances. While I feel happier and much healthier this year, I feel that this time the Universe is bringing about a profound change. Today’s events seemed quite evident of that! But is it a good thing or a bad thing? Muktananda once wrote a book entitled “Where Are You Going?” Perhaps Muktananda wanted to remind me that I need to be contemplating this question right now by sending that airplane flying backwards over my head.

The Doctor Is In: An Audie Journey

Last night I attended the Richfield city council meeting. Ten of us were present to promote a new city ordinance whereby tobacco usage in city parks would be banned. In attendance were four of us from the city’s Advisory Board of Health and two medical doctors who were administrators of HealthPartners. When they passed around a sheet so that we could sign in, the two doctors from HealthPartners signed their names as “Doctor -----“, with the word “doctor” spelled out. Without batting an eye, I did the same. I just never saw that done before, which is what surprised me. In the end, the new ordinance passed, and it will go into effect on January 1, 2011. Tonight’s event put the icing on a day-long contemplation about how and, more importantly, WHY I became a doctor. Also, how and why I became a CHIROPRACTOR. I will share this contemplation with you, which is the most truthful description of the journey there is.

Doctors and health professionals of all kinds have always surrounded me throughout my childhood years. I was either constantly ill with ear infections and other illnesses or being evaluated for my neurological sluggishness, stunted growth, and heart problems. Another interesting point is that I witnessed a lot of tragedies in my lifetime where the emergency responses stuck in my head – Hurricane Agnes, numerous severe fires during the 60s and 70s, numerous severe accidents at the intersection just 200 feet from the house I grew up in. All of this exposure was fascinating. While I could probably make a strong case that all of this influenced my choice to make a career in health care, the truth is that none of this was the primary motivator.

Back in these childhood years, I knew that I was different. I knew that I was a social recluse. I knew that I had very different interests and very different ways of looking at things. I was so different that I didn’t dare try to be social with people my own age. It’s not that I was afraid to. It was just that I didn’t know how to. I derived my greatest joy from receiving compliments from parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, and neighbors who were all astonished by this hyperlexic, awkward runt. Reading Gray’s Anatomy, textbooks on astronomy, and researching paranormal phenomena in the adult section of the Reading Public Library was my favorite pastime when I was only nine years old. I had no social life per se. Therefore, I also felt as though I didn’t belong anywhere. I felt that I had nothing to offer, and all of my interests really wouldn’t take me anywhere in life.

During this time in my life I did have a couple friends that I hung around with. One was the boy next door. The other was a kid named Michael. Michael’s dad and uncle were members of the local fire department. Michael would always talk about really neat emergencies that his dad and uncle were at. When Michael and I were seventeen years old, Michael joined the local fire and rescue explorers post, where people our age could receive basic training in firefighting and rescue techniques. While all of this sounded fascinating, the fascination itself was not the motivator that finally led me in this path. It all boiled down to one thing: if I was ever to be looked at as somebody who could make a difference to other people, I needed to be able to help them during their greatest time of need. Otherwise, I would just be this socially isolated, strange kid without a purpose. THAT was the motivator. And the more I learned over the years, the more potential I discovered within myself.

My social awkwardness did prevent me from becoming “liked”. Whether I was a member of the fire department, working for an ambulance service, or working in a hospital somewhere, I was always that hyperlexic, awkward runt. It’s just that now I had a tendency to bring out the worst in others since I was easy to pick on. But I kept going in what I did because I enjoyed it so much. Also, what I was doing in the health care field did make a difference to me. I really was helping people during their greatest times of need. I finally had a sense of purpose and fulfillment.

My early years of health care were spent in emergency care. I enjoyed the thrills of being a firefighter (until my heart condition prevented me from being able to be a firefighter any longer), an ambulance attendant, and a nurse aid. Eventually I became a Respiratory Therapist. At no point during these early years did I consider going to medical school. I was enjoying the adrenalin rushes more than anything else. Being there in life-and-death situations was where I belonged. This is where I could make that difference in people’s lives. As a result, though, I didn’t focus so much on academics. Even though I was college educated, GPAs and class rankings had no importance to me. A year after graduating from the first-ever Respiratory Care class at Reading Area Community College, I finally saw the potential in me to become – a DOCTOR.

Now working at the Porter Memorial Hospital in Valparaiso, Indiana, I saw a brighter future ahead, a clear vision of moving up the ladder even further. But because of my floundering past academia, I knew that it would be near impossible to get into medical school. This was further quashed by a conversation I had with the dean of the medical school at Indiana University in Gary, Indiana. As he slammed a rubber ball onto his desk, he said to me, “It aggravates the hell out of me to see these nurses and therapists who think that they can do a doctor’s job better than the doctor, and this becomes the reason why they want to go to medical school.” My only thought was, “What a jerk!” I knew that there were many other options to become a physician within the world of health care. So I did some research into various schools and programs, and I did some meditating.

One place I loved visiting after I got done working at the hospital at 11:00 at night was the Indiana Dunes State Park. It was so soothing and inspirational to walk in the sand, looking out over Lake Michigan in the still of the night. While standing there on the beach one night in August of 1993, the water just touching my feet, I meditated on what the right path to follow would be. I imaged myself as a doctor of various professions – dentist, podiatrist, osteopath, etc. The one that felt absolutely right for me was being a chiropractor. The rest was history. After looking into all the chiropractic schools in the U.S., the school I chose was undoubtedly the best one for me: Life University in Marietta, GA. Whereby many schools placed too much emphasis on medical didactics, I figured that if I was going to study chiropractic, I wanted to learn chiropractIC. Life University teaches more hands-on techniques and more anatomy and physiology courses than any other chiropractic school. But being part of the largest chiropractic school in the world at the time would prove to be a social challenge in itself.

I found the academics to be very interesting. My GPA soared to above 3.5 effortlessly. Just six months into the program, on April 11, 1995, I began a 15-1/2 year battle with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The GPA fell and attendance suffered. But I plugged away and made it through. Along the way, the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome would not be my only health challenge. But what was even more of a factor in how I did was the fact that I was still a socially awkward recluse. Now, spending more time with peers, I appeared to be even more awkward and naïve. While it takes most people four years to complete this graduate school program, it took me five and a half years. While part of that was due to my health problems, most of it was due to my social incapacities. Student interns must scrounge for their own patients to care for during their internship. Making meaningful contact with people would prove to be my greatest weakness, as it always had been throughout my life. I made it through, nonetheless.

I’ve been in practice now for 10-1/2 years. Looking back at all I have done throughout the years, I can truly say that I accomplished my #1 goal: I became somebody who could help people during their greatest times of need, health-wise. And yes, this does give me a great feeling, to be able to rise above the perpetual social awkwardness. We know now that I have an Autism Spectrum Disorder, which explains everything regarding my lifelong social struggles. I feel better knowing this. But because the social awkwardness is still there, the attempts at building a practice over the years produced mere drops in the bucket. Now I turn my primary goal toward accomplishing another great feat: finding a way to be successful at what I do or at anything whereby I can financially sustain my household and my family. All along I thought that everything would just fall into place just by being what I am professionally. It has not. The doctor is in, but nobody notices.

How To Choose The WRONG Chiropractor

This past week my wife Bianca had a terrible episode with her lower back. She had been sore for a couple days, and then she went to her massage therapist. After her session, she was in such severe pain that she couldn’t get dressed, go out the door, or get into her car without assistance. She called me to ask what she should do. I told her to take her time and come home. Since she had the massage therapist to help her there, I would take it the rest of the way once she arrived home. After taking forever to get out of the car, I took her right into the breezeway of our house, which is where my chiropractic office is set up. Although I knew quite well what the problem was, the possibility of her needing to have x-rays or even an MRI done were coming to the forefront of my mind. I worked on her in my office, doing what I could by hand alone, wondering if it would be enough. Just a few minutes later, she was significantly better. Over the course of the next four days, both chiropractic care and a full Reiki session brought her back to almost 100% health. No x-rays, no MRIs, no electric stimulation, no ultrasound machines, no mechanical traction, and no gimmicks were used. My intuition, knowledge, and my hands were all that were needed.

Then, I thought back in time to a couple similar situations that happened back in 2001 when I was still practicing in Pennsylvania. Patients with similar problems came to me where other chiropractors and even medical providers have failed them, only to be completely healed. How did these things happen? It’s not magic. Not even close. It’s just that I do what I do using the basics and using my heart. I really care about the people that walk into my office. My primary focus is on getting them BETTER. When they are better is the time that I turn my attention toward talking to them about maintenance care, chiropractic philosophy, and bringing their family in for care. Also, I do it all without any gimmicks, just as I took care of my wife this time around.

A question that arises now and then is how do you tell the difference between a “good” chiropractor and a “bad” one. Speaking generally, this formula applies to doctors and health care providers of ANY kind. Not just chiropractors. First I should point out that the American Medical Association has succeeded to a great extent at brainwashing the people of the U.S. into thinking that chiropractors are uneducated quacks. They did so by forming a committee in 1963 called the Committee Against Chiropractic. It was later renamed to the Committee Against Quackery to include professionals of other non-medical healing arts as well. It took a group of seven chiropractors in the state of Illinois a federal lawsuit against the AMA, which the Chicago Seven so valiantly won in 1989, for the organized slander to come to an end. But the damage was done, and organized medicine continues its nonsense in underground and backhanded ways. How did the AMA lose this antitrust lawsuit? It was pretty much a no-brainer when study after study was presented in court showing how amazingly beneficial and effective chiropractic care is for a variety of reasons. The evidence spoke for itself.

Speaking of chiropractors in particular, the REAL one will talk to you like a person. That’s first and foremost. They will greet you by name, ask you what your concerns are, and will then proceed with care. From there, the answers are all very different because not all chiropractors have the same philosophies about what they do. It is helpful to steer clear of the ones who say, “We’ll adjust you three times, and if that doesn’t work we’ll try muscle stim, ultrasound, reverse traction, or (insert your nonsense here) instead.” This chiropractor has no faith in what he does. Likewise, the one who starts by telling you that this nerve controls that organ and that correcting the subluxations in your spine is going to help you function better and has you all confused with big anatomy and physiology terms and hardly breathes between words just like this sentence is going is likewise somebody to be avoided. This person is an idealist and really doesn’t care about the pain you are in.

Physiotherapy equipment such as electrical modalities, cold lasers, and roller tables do not belong in a chiropractor’s office. Most of the people I’ve ever seen in my office say that those things either never did a thing for them or actually made them worse. These things are awesome ways for the chiropractor to pad the bill that he’s going to send off to your insurance company. Another question I often get is if x-rays are really necessary. The answer, in general, is “no”. However, there are certain chiropractic techniques that are entirely dependent on x-rays for specific analysis of your skeletal structure. And, if you were just involved in a vehicle accident and hit your head against the windshield right before walking into my office, you better believe that the first thing I’m going to do before doing any kind of adjusting or manipulating (there is a difference!) is have you get x-rays! The chiropractor who does x-rays on everyone that walks through his door is afraid he might make a mistake. He has no intuition, and he has been told that people are sue-happy. Then there’s the chiropractor who wants you to sign up for a year’s worth of care up front, or he pressures you to buy his line of products. This to me is unethical.

In the end, you are a consumer looking to purchase a service. It would be wise to shop around until you have found the person that you feel most comfortable being with. Go with your instincts! When I was still practicing in Pennsylvania in 2001, I had worked as an associate doctor to a well-liked chiropractic speaker. It became evident, though, that this person missed the mark when it came to actually caring for patients when I was the one receiving complaints about her! After that point in time, I realized that I had a unique gift – a piece of myself that I could offer, with sincerity, to people in need. I could especially understand people because there have been so many times in my life when I was the patient, lying in a hospital bed, not knowing if I was going to live or die. I feel that people who can actually EXPERIENCE such an event, let alone more than once, make more intuitive healers. All in all, I certainly know enough that I can be confident to speak up and write this article!

A New Money Paradigm

It has been said that money is the root of all evil. Some new age healers believe that one shouldn't charge for their healing services, probably because they see money as an obstacle. Over the years, I've come across people who avoid conversations about money because it brings up a lot of bad feelings. Obviously it does bring up bad feelings between married couples because it's the number one reason why divorce exists. Even homeless, and hopeless, people see money as an obstacle, something unobtainable. Oftentimes people will say, "If only I made more money, I'd be happier." But, when you've been in a state of lack for a very long time, how you think of money does tend to change. It has to.

Some people may say that I was homeless for a period of time. To me, being "homeless" means that your bed was the most comfortable patch of weeds you could find under a bridge somewhere, or maybe even an obscure park bench. Although I was never in this situation, I was in a state of pretty extreme hardship during a ten-month period between 2001 and 2002. For two years before then, it was the generosity of my family that pulled me through the rough times. But from October 1, 2001 until June 30th, 2002, I lived off of whatever money I could put into my pocket from having my office located at a truck stop in Bartonsville, PA. I wasn't making enough money to support both a place to live AND the office. So I lived in the office, sleeping on an air mattress every night, and hoping that I had at least one customer the next day so that I could buy lunch.

Now we know, all these years later, that being an audie was the main reason why I had so many difficulties, and still do to a large degree. As I was driving toward my Scrabble club get-together yesterday afternoon, an interesting thought about money hit me from out of the blue. Lately I had been so busy with making lists of places to contact about my autism seminar, trying to come up with article ideas, looking for work, and taking care of the house while my wife is away on vacation. Then today, the director of a local college's continuing education department asked me if I could help her put together and promote an autism awareness program. I thought that what she wanted to do was a fantastic idea. But it would just be another big project added to my list. Therefore, it hit me, out of the blue, to charge for my services. The thought didn't arise out of greed nor of a sense of need -- it was borne out of the necessity to PRIORITIZE. Thus, a new paradigm was created.

Since being self-supportive, monetarily speaking, has always been an area of desolation in my life thusfar, perhaps seeing the whole money thing in a different way will make the difference. Instead of seeing money as something elusive yet necessary, or drowning in a state of extreme lack thereof, I will see it as a way to prioritize the tasks and services that I provide to others. The more effort something will take, the more its cost for me to do it. It is more than just giving to receive as in making a purchase. It is adding VALUE to what is given, and it puts things into a hierarchy on a priority scale.

Now I am not talking about receiving a paycheck for a job. I am talking about prioritizing the things I do as a self-promoting freelancer and entrepreneur. I am also not talking about egoistically embellishing my self-worth. Lord knows that money is NOT something that is needed to live. If you can't afford a place to live, there are always homeless shelters and food banks to carry you through. I say that because I was THIS close to being there. Being in such a situation does tend to destroy a person's ego and make them more appreciative of what they DO have (if they don't lose all hope in the process). It's about knowing that you have a lot to do and a lot to offer in this world, and about knowing that the only way any of it will lead anywhere is if you prioritize. The measure by which priorities are set is MONEY.

Just a thought.

Audie Communication

It may be strange to see me writing another blog post so soon after the last one. I typically average three to four weeks between posts. I guess you can say that I made a self-discovery in the past day. If somebody asks me a question that deserves an answer, then I can come up with something to write about. Otherwise, my communication is pretty sparse. I recently started a fan page on Facebook, which as of the writing of this blog post has 109 fans. Thanks to Facebook Adwords, I am getting the word out about me and what I do as a Holistic Physician, minister, and educator. But the Adwords advertising campaign will not last very long because money is not a commodity for me right now. And, like for most audies, it never had been. Thanks to that most intriguing and baffling art form called “communication”, I, like many audies, have a terrible time making ends meet in this world.

There was once an essay written by Emily Perl Kingsley entitled “Welcome To Holland”. This writing has been adopted by many autism activist parents to describe their struggles with raising an autistic child. I recently told my wife that the neurotypical world really seems like Holland to the autistic person (the audie). She wondered how that translated. I explained that it is JUST as hard for an audie to figure out what the neurotypical (“normal”) world wants as it is for the neurotypical person to figure out how to relate to the audie. This is largely because of miscommunication and misinterpretation. Audies are very capable of communicating, but they do so in their own way. Communication is not always verbal, and when it is it is often misunderstood or done inappropriately (according to the rules of the neurotypical world, that is). What an audie is communicating, however, may make perfect sense to another audie. Figure that one out! Such is the nature of living in Holland.

Just as there are all types of audies ranging from the brilliant scientists to the totally incapacitated, there are also all levels of communication. Dr. Temple Grandin is an excellent example of an outstanding communicator, even though she has classical autism. As for me, my best form of communication is writing. This is true for most nonverbal audies, and also for those who are socially awkward with their verbalism. For nonverbal children, perhaps the best way to get them to communicate is to use picture cards. One of the followers of my Facebook fan page invented her own picture card system that helps her to communicate, quite effectively, with her autistic daughter. I have seen other such systems being used as well to help in communicating with the nonverbal audie.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that with the audie, communication has to develop and occur at its own pace and in its own way. It may never be the way the neurotypical wants it to be. Also, for the audie to learn his/her own way around Holland, I strongly urge him/her, and the neurotypical caretaker, to read the book “Unwritten Rules Of Social Relationships” by Dr. Temple Grandin and Sean Barron. Just by reading this book, the caretaker will FINALLY get a very good glimpse at what is going on in the audie’s mind. Also, the audie will learn what is expected of him/her by the neurotypical world in order to fit in, to some degree anyway.

One reason why audies, especially as children, may have tantrums or may become short-tempered is because they are TRYING their darnedest to communicate, in the way that they can, and are still often misunderstood. This is all the more reason for discovering proper communication abilities and channels early on in life. This trying and being misunderstood is still incredibly frustrating for me when I know that I didn’t exactly say what I wanted to say, and people thought I was actually meaning something completely different. Jobs have been lost because of this, and my current practice goes unbuilt for this same reason. Just because I have what some people call an “impressive” resume doesn’t mean I’ve been successful with making a living at it. I have not. Goodness knows what bridge I’d be living under if it wasn’t for the unhuman amount of patience that my wife has.

One thing that I strongly encourage, for communication building, is for the audie and their caregiver to become involved in their local chapter of the Autism Society of America. With attending their support groups and classes, each person can learn some very helpful techniques to help build and discover an effective line of communication. Not only that, but you will find that you are not alone in your plight, and you will have others that you can count on. I feel that the lack of proper communication between audie and caregiver/the neurotypical world is the most frustrating part of having an Autism Spectrum Disorder. If we all knew what the other meant and was expecting, the rest of it would be easy. How to communicate effectively is something that can only be found out by trial and error.

The Prediction

It was the summer of 1994. I had just moved into my new apartment in Smyrna, Georgia. I was about to begin my final quarter of undergraduate prerequisite studies. In just another three months I was to begin chiropractic school. I sat down to write a letter to an old friend of mine, a Catholic priest that I had known since I was nine years old. Father Stephen Halabura was a part of my growing years, and he and I spent a lot of time together. He was always my go-to person when I was feeling out of place around my peers during junior high school and high school. In the letter, I told him how excited I was about studying to become a chiropractor. Much to my own surprise, I had written to him, “Becoming a chiropractor is merely the next step toward my real calling in life.” I had no idea what the next step was. In that moment, I knew that there would be something beyond. I have been a chiropractor now for over ten years. I feel that by the end of 2010 I will finally discover what the real calling is.


Almost nine months after writing that letter, my struggle with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome began. Three years after that, my most amazing Spiritual journey began. In April of 1998 I joined a meditation group hosted by one of my teachers. In July I learned Reiki, and in August I was introduced to my Guruji, Swami Chidvilasananda, more lovingly known as Gurumayi. On October 3, at about 8:00 PM, I received the gift of Shaktipat, the awakening of the Kundalini energy. That firmly grounded me in the knowledge and the experience of the entire universe, manifest and unmanifest, being God. This event, along with all the healing arts I have learned, are key to what my real calling will be. The pain and suffering I endured, and continue to endure of sorts, from my own health challenges are also key to whatever my real calling is. Something amazing lurks in the not-too-distant future.

This past weekend, my wife Bianca and I spent a weekend in Chicago at the Celebrate Your Life conference which is hosted by Mishka Productions. It was a life-enhancing event. It was good to be around so many people who held the Spiritual path in high esteem. Not since visiting the Siddha Yoga ashram in South Fallsburg, New York (which I last did in 2002) did I feel so fulfilled. Although there were many famous speakers there, the three that I got the most from were Caroline Myss, Neale Donald Walsh, and Deepak Chopra. What these three people had to say pretty much summed up what I have been experiencing on the spiritual path for the past twelve years. Caroline Myss said, “Imagine that…” and she went on to describe EXACTLY what I had experienced the moment I received Shaktipat in 1998. Neale Donald Walsh explained in a very practical way not only how we can have our own conversation with God but also the fact that everything that is IS God. And Deepak Chopra really reeled me in with a scientific look at how everything that appears to “exist” is actually a waveform, God’s Consciousness, or, as Swami Muktananda would say, a “Play Of Consciousness”. None of these things were new to me. It was all profound because everything I had contemplated, meditated on, and read about in the words of Muktananda during the past twelve years was re-divulged in a most awe-inspiring way.

So, what is the “next step”? What is my real calling? Many people over the years have said that my greatest strength is my gift of writing. My Reiki Master just reminded me of that again today. In a recent blog post, I wrote that I can only write well, if at all, when inspired, and that this doesn’t happen more than about once a month. I am feeling, though, that this past weekend put a charge into my motivation to write more. That’s a good thing. Professionally, things are being rearranged. Today is the day I will be closing my office in St. Louis Park, MN. It doesn’t mean that I will no longer practice as a chiropractor. Instead, I will see people in my own home and will focus even more on holistic practice. I am also working more on bringing my ministerial work to the forefront. I think that if I contemplate things long and hard enough, I could find a way to be an avid writer. Making a living at it would certainly be a challenge, just as everything else I ever tried had been. One nice note to make is that I’m being invited more to speak about living with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. I received three invites just in the past week! Only one of them will be a paid gig though, and it’s not even for sure that it will take place. Perhaps I can challenge myself a bit more and advertise again for The Wellness Interfaith Church and for doing health talks in my “new” home office setting? Yes, I have so much to say and so much to offer in the realm of healing. I don’t want to give myself false hope, as I’ve done so often, but I do feel that some positive changes are about to take place. The real calling, whatever it is, is near.

The Rocket Without An Engine

A couple months ago I met with the General Manager of Oak Ridge Convention Center in Chaska, Minnesota. I wrote a several-page proposal about how Dolce, Oak Ridge's parent company, could improve upon its facilities and services, catering to the health and wellness goals of both employees and clients, as part of its new branding vision. I guess I should tell you that I know all about it because I work there (here, the place where I am as I am writing this) part time as a night security guard. Mr. Carl Blanz, our General Manager, responded by saying to me, "You built a fantastic rocket ship. But now you just have to figure out how to get it off the ground." Well, being an audie I knew one thing intimately well: that this has always been, and continues to be, the story of my life! It's like a perfectly written book that never gets read because nobody ever heard of it. Well, it's not "like"; it IS. And so the headbanging routine continues.


My attention has now turned to a different project, another rocket without an engine. Back in December I designed a class for community education entitled "Living With An Autism Spectrum Disorder." I taught the class four times so far, once in Ellsworth, Wisconsin and three times in Hastings, Minnesota. The last class I taught was made up mostly of caregivers of adults with autism from a group home in Apple Valley, Minnesota. One of them said to me, "You should offer this as a continuing education class." That's all I needed to hear to set me on a new venture. I developed the class into a three-hour seminar, complete with PowerPoints and videos. Now I am self-promoting this seminar to every school and facility I can think of that might have anything even remotely to do with dealing with people with Autism Spectrum Disorders. But self-promoting is basically tiring and unproductive. Once again, I have created an amazing rocket ship with no way to get it off the ground.

My wife Bianca is so amazing -- to have seen me create so many rocket ships in the eight years that we've been married so far only to have them end up as scrap metal. She certainly knows better by now not to get hopes up and not to pay much attention to the hours I spend at the drawing board coming up with new ideas. But she's been riding this wave for only eight years. I've been riding it for forty-seven. I've never given up though, and I never intend to. I know that what I need is a collaborator -- not one who tells me what I should do differently, but one who knows how to attach engines to rocket ships and make them work. Finding such a person to work with is actually part of the headbanging routine. It just doesn't happen.

My headbanging routine began when I was a toddler. I LITERALLY used to bang my head into the headboard of my crib. With the crib sitting on a hardwood floor, it would wander around the room as I rocked back and forth, banging my head over and over again. I don't know if this particular behavior could be considered "stimming." I don't know what kind of stress I could have been under as a toddler! My parents would strap a pillow to the headboard so I didn't hurt myself. Nonetheless, I kept banging away. If my memory serves me well, I actually became upset when they put the pillow there because banging my head was so much more enjoyable when I had something very hard to hit against. Maybe this routine was a sign of things to come -- living a life full of creativeness that severely lacks implementation.

And so the art of building rockets without engines continues. Forty-seven years and counting.

A Three-Tiered Approach to Health

When I was a kid growing up, I was captivated by watching emergency scenes. All the firemen, ambulance personnel, and policemen rushing about, putting out fires and saving lives. When I was eighteen, I joined the local volunteer fire department. It was quite a thrill! Only six months later, the fire chief told me to hang it up because he discovered that I had a pretty bad heart condition. I had no idea who told him. I certainly didn’t! I just wanted to be a part of the action. Shortly after leaving the fire state for the last time, my cardiologist told me I needed to have open heart surgery to replace my failing aortic valve. Although the operation put an end to my short-lived passion for being a fireman, I was allowed to work with the ambulance crew instead. That is what opened the door for my lifelong career in health care and to where I am today.

Starting out as a Respiratory Therapist, I enjoyed caring for people in the hospital setting, particularly in lifesaving situations. At the same time, my eyes and my interests were being opened to natural healing practices. Even though I went on to study to be a chiropractor, all this time I was focused on one dimension of healing: the physical. During the latter half of my days as a chiropractic student, I learned about the other dimension of healing, the nonphysical, which involves both the mind and the Spirit.

Thus, today in my practice I address both the physical and the nonphysical realms of existence using a three-tiered approach. Using chiropractic, medical, and “alternative” methods of evaluating one’s health situation, I embrace a truly integrative system to help my patients achieve their optimum potential.

First, I ask, “Is there nerve tone imbalance?” The nerve system controls every organ and action of the body. When bones become misaligned, stress can be placed on nerves causing them to become too taut or too lax. This imbalance results in abnormal function of one or more of the body systems. How exactly this happens was studied in depth by D.D. Palmer, the founder of the chiropractic profession, during a ten year period from 1885 - 1895. D.D.’s findings were later confirmed in a study done by Henry Windsor, M.D. in 1921. Chiropractic care corrects nerve tone imbalance, thereby restoring proper function to body systems.

If a person’s condition is fairly complicated and affects multiple organ systems, I ask, “Is this a problem that is due to some type of toxic exposure or intrinsic dysfunction?” If this is suspect, then I proceed to the physical examination/functional medicine testing tier of care. If abnormalities with a particular system are identified, I refer my patients to the appropriate medical specialist for further evaluation and treatment while still retaining them as a client.

The third tier of care is what transcends the physical, and I promote this avenue sparingly. Not everyone is open to energy medicine practices. I’ve even had people say to me, “I am a devout Christian, and what you are doing is the devil’s work.” Therefore I now discern more closely who I propose this avenue of healing to. If it is rather obvious to me that this person is under a great deal of mental/emotional stress, or if I feel that their cause of anguish has an etheric source, then I will let them know that there are nonphysical issues that need to be dealt with. If I get a good sense that they are openminded, I explain the concept of chi. I explain that life force energy fills this universe. It is that power that keeps your heart beating, your lungs breathing, your blood circulating, your mind thinking. Because of physical and nonphysical forms of stress, life force energy may not flow in the manner that it should, resulting in physical, psychological, or even spiritual distress. The method of energy medicine that I use is The Usui System Of Natural Healing According To Hawayo Takata, which is the oldest and most potent form of Reiki there is.

When a person comes into my office, I am well prepared to evaluate and treat that person on any level. I usually do not announce right away that I am a chiropractor. Instead, I say that I am a Holistic Physician. Not everyone that comes to my office is there for chiropractic care. By taking an integrative approach, I can address the needs of my patients on multiple levels without having to refer them somewhere else. And, if I feel that they are openminded enough, I tell them to be prepared for anything (hinting to the third tier of care). But I don’t view each tier as taking care of a separate physical, mental, or spiritual entity. Each of these realms of existence is woven into one inseparable manifestation of the person as a whole. Each realm affects the other in some way. If I am giving somebody a chiropractic adjustment, I am allowing for a fuller expression of chi energy to take place. If I am taking somebody’s vital signs, I am measuring the flow of life force energy. If I am performing a Reiki session on someone, I am helping the body, mind, and spirit to balance each other in a state of harmony.

It is important to keep in mind that one who comes to us for help is not just a physical person who feels things, thinks, and performs actions. This person is a manifestation of the Universal Intelligence. It is what that person, because of a thing called ego, puts into their thoughts and into their body that creates illness. Our job is not to see if we can rid this person of a disease. Our job, as integrative, HOLISTIC practitioners, is to bring this great manifestation before us to a higher understanding of themself. By helping him or her to be self-sufficient, proactive and preventive, we empower them to take charge of their own destiny. In retrospect, we are truly facilitators of healing. As Thomas Edison once said, “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.” He said that in the past, so the NOW must be the “future” he was referring to.