STX 209 - Our Journey So Far [Update 5]

I haven't done an official update in quite some time.  We have been on open label now since January 18 (a little over two months).  To say we're happy with his progress may be an understatement!  We don't really notice a lot of the behavior changes being around him all the time, but when I look back through videos it's very noticeable so I wanted to share here.

We first started seeing Ayden's speech emerge in September of 2012, he was a little over 5 at the time.   If you watch him here, you can see he's spinning and doing a lot of gaze avoidance.  He also is having a very difficult time "accessing" the right sounds for what he is trying to say.

The next video is about a month later on 10/10/2012.  The same type of social problems with gaze avoidance and such are present.  He's not spinning because I put him on a stool that he does not like to get down from. You can see how difficult it is for him to focus on what was happening.  He is saying more words than he was previously though is still having a difficult time accessing the correct sounds.

These two videos were before we entered the blind portion of the STX 209 trial.  I wanted to share them as the difference in how he is even acting improves.  These two videos were also taken under optimal conditions for Ayden, something I did not do later on.

This next video was taken one month into the blind portion of the trial.  You can see improvements in almost all areas.  He was eating at the time, but you can see his focus is much better than in the last two videos.  You also can see his is looking directly at me when he says most of the words (though not between words much).  More importantly he is actually accessing sound without many issues and even isolating certain sounds.

The next video was taken at the end of the STX 209 blind trial / beginning of the open label portion.  We were actually a week into the open label when this was taken, so he was somewhat improved from how bad he actually got at the end of the blind trial.  He essentially lost all speech and became very dis-regulated  no focus etc.  Notice his eye contact is gone, focus is pretty much not there, and he is having such a difficult time accessing sounds -- he isn't even trying on some.  This was the most heartbreaking video to make, but I wanted to document it as well.

As I said earlier, we are now two months into the open label portion of the trial. Ayden is currently on 20mg of Arbacolfen (STX 209) taken 10mg 2x per day.   At school, they are seeing improvements across the board.  Socially, academically etc.  He has at least doubled where he was at in all areas since he started on STX 209.  He has been able to isolate every letter of the alphabet and is currently working on combining vowels in speech therapy.  His overall vocabulary is somewhere around 50 spoken words; some of which are beginning to be heard spontaneously in small sentences.  He is beginning to try to read words from books as well.   Most importantly he is playing and socializing with his peers.  At school, we've seen a huge decrease in stim behaviors (though at home we're seeing more in some cases).  Just in case it's difficult to trust a mom who of course sees the best in her child, let me end with this before I share one last video.  We are at 40-60% inclusion for Ayden right now in his IEP.  We were informed by his ASD room teacher at parent/teacher conferences that she is pushing for more inclusion next year.   We're looking at upwards of 60-80% of his days spent in a general education setting with his peers next year.  

The final video I want to share is from last evening.  We were doing our normal bath/bed routine and Mr Awesome was playing a game on his phone.  Ayden came in, requested to sit up on the counter next to Daddy and then began talking.  We don't understand [most of] his words here, but the voice inflections and different sounds are certainly patterns of speech.  His little voice is just the sweetest sound in the world.