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Craziest fucking thing happened today.
Okay, so, you may recall a bajillion posts ago I talked about how Minifobette couldn't seem to tolerate calcium supplements? Didn't really understand what to do with that information, other than not give her the calcium supplements, so I just sort of shelved it and moved on. Well a couple weeks ago I got hooked up with a series of research papers on the apparent subgroup of autistic kids who can't process calcium, the biological mechanics behind it and the typical symptoms and all that jazz. Long story short, the treatment is high-dose vitamin K, plus a few other things you're supposed to do alongside the K to mitigate some side effects.
So we started her on the K, and saw big improvements in both speech and awareness. Speech therapist was very impressed with the change. Hooray! But I was waffling on the necessity of the supporting supplements. They're just supporting, right? But two people on the K treatment discussion board stressed that if nothing else, you absolutely need to be doing this electrolyte drink (made from salt and potassium chloride; basically homemade Gatorade without the colors and sugars) alongside the K, because otherwise it will dehydrate the shit out of you and/or cause weird water retention problems. But Minifobette is really, really picky about her drinks, and I was unconvinced I could get her to drink it anyway. She was drinking plenty of plain water, I rationalized, and I just never got around to ordering the container of potassium chloride.
So today, we went to our local pool, and while we've been several times already this summer, this time the kids got into this whole drinking/spitting game with the pool water. Both of them had to have swallowed at least a quart, despite me telling them repeatedly to cut it out. And as we're leaving, Minifobette is just talking up a storm, doing fucking fantastic. They're always happy after a couple hours of water exhaustion, but this was different.
After we got home she peed a ton, like 3 or 4 diapers bursting at the seams. And still more talking. Curiouser and curiouser. This continued to nag at me, until tiny hints of memories and seemingly useless facts started to coagulate. It couldn't possibly be! But it is:
Last year, the district converted all our pools to saltwater. A search of our MUD website confirms that our saltwater pools are salinated with the more expensive, but higher-quality chemical combination of... magnesium and potassium chloride. My daughter guzzled therapeutic pool water.
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