Preparation for the Autism Consultation
Getting in the right frame of mind for the initial consult with Dr. Bogner is essential. Today’s podcast talks about what the process before the consultation looks like, what you’ll need to provide, and the “frame of mind” that is best to get the most out of the consultation.
The comprehensive initial consult is key for us to learn about the environment your loved one is emerged in, so we can properly gauge a plan to support the affected systems in the best possible way.
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EP3 – The Autism Consult Prep – Dr. Bogner Health Podcast
Dwight:
Dr. Bogner Health Podcast. This is episode three, and today it’s going to be a little bit more about when you’re approaching Dr. Bogner, one of the common questions he gets a lot when I see a lot of the consults and the contact us questions is, “I have a child. I have a loved one. We have this going on. I’m at this point in my journey,” the first thing is everybody asks about insurance and what are your costs to do a consultation, but then also can insurance pay for a lot of these things. You can talk about consultation and steps to getting there after you give a little bit more about what testings people can do on their own and prep.
But insurance, that’s something I want to talk about because I understand and know that pretty damn well. Everybody’s situation’s going to be different. I know Dr. Bogner does not take insurance. Not yet. However, there are lots of opportunities with public and private pay insurance, and there’s an opportunity for you to do your own insurance of choice and whatnot, but to get HSA accounts, so health savings accounts.
What that allows you to do is to make deposits from your paycheck pre-tax into an account up to so many thousands of dollars per year, and then that can be utilized to pay for medical-related needs of your family, whoever is under your coverage policy, prescription drugs, or you needed to go and get… Oh geez, use one for a wheelchair and use the money for that. I had a script that was written to get my son a wheelchair that was smaller for pediatrics after surgery and there was a deductible that was against my insurance and also for delivery because I couldn’t make it out to the place. I used my FSA to go ahead and pay for those costs.
Alot of the tests I may have to pay for them out of pocket, but then I reimburse myself. Those give you a lot of opportunities to find ways to do that or ways that you can pay yourself back after you make it as long as you’re keeping good documentation. Of course, talk to your financial advisor, or your CPA. The more note-taking you can put down and staple together and file away somewhere, you’re just creating a big file of your life with your child or your loved one anyways. But those are going to be good things to try to do. There are always ways to get those things done. But if you can participate in an FSA, that’s pre-tax, so that goes against your gross wages.
If you made $50,000 a year and you’re able to put $3,000, your adjusted gross is going to be $47,000. That’s what you’re getting taxed on for your income. And that $3,000 is going to be able to be used for medical related procedures, which I would believe being that Dr. Bogner is board certified and licensed and, he is a medical doctor and he is providing a service, you could then utilize, I would, whatever his consult fee or whatever his fees are to order tests or other things to go ahead and pay yourself back and use those things. A lot of people ask about consultations. Where do I start?
They’re all on different parts of the journey. Why don’t you go a little bit into that in regards to what you see coming in and what people can do to be prepped and be ready and when they should actually look into doing a consultation with you?
Dr. Bogner:
Very good. I work with a registered nurse, Maggie. She’s also certified in functional medicine like I am. We first have basically the first email that comes in inquiring about the services and how to process works, and Maggie has a free 15-minute call with that patient to answer any questions. And then we have an online portal. It’s an electronic charting system where you will have an account as a patient, from which you can book appointments, you can upload previous labs, you can communicate with us on that portal.
And then we usually schedule an initial consultation. Prior to that consultation, there are going to be intake forms that you have to fill out, questions about the history of your child, your concerns, the current regimen, and what has worked prior.
Dwight:
Let’s go over some of those questions that are in there so people can be prepped and ready to know that.
Dr. Bogner:
Yeah, it’s pretty extensive. We start basically with a history. How did the pregnancy go? Did mom have problems with iron? Did she have a C-section? Did she have a natural birth? Did she breastfeed? If so, for how long? How did your child develop? Were the milestones reached? Were there vaccinations? Were there ear infections, or antibiotics? A lot of detail in regard to the early development of the child, and then we start getting into the current situation. What are your concerns?
What time does your child get up? How long does he sleep? Does he poop? If so, how does the poop look? We have poop charts in regard to consistency, frequency, and color. Go over the current supplements, go over previous supplements, what has worked, what has not, a lot of symptoms. Does your child stem? Is he aggressive? Is he hallucinating? After that intake, I review labs that were uploaded by the patient that was done previously.
Dwight:
What if they didn’t have any labs? What labs are you looking for? I know you’re at least looking like, hey, you’re new. You have a child. You have a family member. You have this situation that’s going on. Obviously, you’re going to say, give me all your labs. What specifically are you looking for and what’s that starting point? I think that what people are looking is I’m at this point in the journey and where do we pick up from here? Because I’m feeling a little helpless. I’m not feeling good with my current practitioner. I don’t like what they’re explaining to me. Something’s changed, et cetera, et cetera.
Dr. Bogner:
Well, I ask the parents to get me everything they got, the whole chart in regards to labs, any blood work that was done from birth to now, other functional medicine labs, stool tests or OAT testing or genetic testing, anything. Everything will be reviewed prior to my meeting with that parent, so I have a good idea about the information that was given in the intake and the labs. We don’t have to “waste” too much time and dive right into it. That comes at various stages and some parents are fairly new.
We have to go over the diet, for example, a lot, and just the surroundings that the individual is immersed in. As I said, it depends on the level of understanding or the level of previously done work with the child and progress and customizes the discussion around that, depending on the experience of their parents in the autism realm.
Dwight:
You bring up a good point about pre-collecting all of these things. The intake is going to be really important for you as an individual to take your time and to give as much detailed information organized as possible. What’s probably good to upload and include as well is a summary, kind of like a cover letter or a CV. It’s a little bit more of a summarized version of your resume and all the details of all the experience, but a summary highlighting different things and then all the supporting evidence, right? Because you do want to make the best use of time when you’re doing the consult to get down to the nitty-gritty.
As Dr. Bogner has said, he’s already reviewed all of these things. He’s already taken a good amount of time to go through everything that you do currently have to then start to say, “Okay, here is the picture that I see.” Another thing that I have seen in the past, and I’ve been guilty of it myself, is I got someone that wants to listen to me. I think a couple of things you have to remember one is this is not a therapist and you’re paying for it. Let’s keep the focus back on the child and what’s at stake here, what you’re trying to get accomplished.
Let’s also listen more to what he’s asking, and answer those questions so you can make the best use of the time because we’re trying to get to an endpoint and start to find some different paths or some potential solutions to where you’re at, where you’re stating. It’s not a time to really get too emotional, and it’s not a time to try to seek a bunch of validation for how you’re feeling or what’s going on or what’s happening with your spouse and other things. Keep it more specific to the time at hand and what you’re trying to get figured out. Because when you start bringing emotions into it, that’s where you can end up wasting a lot more time. There’s a time and a place to have those conversations.
Dr. Bogner:
As I mentioned previously, I used to have 15 minutes per patient in my previous practice as a busy OBGYN. You just hammer through your day seeing 25, or 30 patients, and there’s not really a lot of time to discuss any issues in on a deeper level. Now, in the initial consultation, there are 60 minutes and I find even that is not enough time. It should be really three hours I think to get down to a basic overview of your life. But we’re trying to do this in an hour and hence, all of this information is very important for me to review prior to the consult.
That’s all included in the consultation fee, which includes after the discussion get a summary and access to us if there are any remaining questions. Everything is recorded. You’ll get a copy of that consultation in video format in case you want to show your spouse that had to work that day or if something wasn’t clear, you forgot something. You can use it as a reference. The other thing that’s really helpful is the parent can upload videos of their child.
Dwight:
Documentation of what’s actually going on.
Dr. Bogner:
Correct. Sometimes you can just look at these videos and within a minute you know, okay, this is what we’re dealing with, this situation in regards to the severity of autism, and that can be really helpful too. But most importantly, with all of this aggregated data of lab values and the intake, including the video, I still want to hear a summary of the parent, describe your child in your words to me. I take a lot of notes, and then we start discussing how to move forward from that point.
Dwight:
Step-by-step deconstruction and what’s the new strategy and how we’re going to get tactical in regards to it, he will, rather. Two things is one is you always want to go slow. As parents or as a loving sibling or a spouse, if it’s not a child, I want to do as much as possible. I want to save this person. I want to make it right, make all the wrongs right. I think it’s important to get through those stages and realize that it’s going to take some time and you don’t want to throw the entire kitchen sink or the entire medicine box or 75 tests at one time to then make a determination that let’s do all these things. I’ve been a victim. I’ve been a participant in those things. It’s really hard to differentiate…
Dr. Bogner:
Differentiate?
Dwight:
Differentiate-
Dr. Bogner:
You’re welcome.
Dwight:
-what potentially is a course and a reaction and what’s causing this to happen. As I did slow down and we do things because I feel like, okay, I’ve been at this for a decade. And if I’m going to start a new protocol, or I feel like he’s got some yeast again and I want to kill off yeast, I know now tactically what other supplements are going to interfere or are going to prolong the cleaning or it’s going to help it along. I am already familiar with some of the side effects that are going to be shown, some of the stemming, some of the audibles, or changes of those. I’ve recently had a really good response.
One of the things that we found, which you will as well, is you’re going to find your own path and your own achievements and your own wins. Iron and supplementing my son with iron at a more aggressive level, made a lot of sense because looking back at tests… Again, having tests even if they’re a couple of years old, looking and getting them redone and looking at where you were, where it is now. There could be a new medical paper that comes out. There could be a new strategy. There could be something to do with A, B, or C. And then if I look back at a test from a couple of years ago and be like, wait a minute, this makes sense now.
This is relevant here. I didn’t think about it then. This didn’t make sense, but now this new information coming into play, and being able to recall this older information, let’s try to do this. Iron was a game-changer for us. We know that when he is lacking the iron, now that we’ve had it built up in a system, again, this is not a pill, this is not a gummy where you’re going to get high in an hour, it’s not a pill that it’s going to change everything in an hour, but as it starts to get in the bloodstream and you start to maintain that out, wow, what a difference.
It took us about a week or so to see it, and then we actually kept increasing, increasing and the results got better. And then we start to get to a point of like, all right, let’s not get to a point of giving him too much iron, but we have to also test and determine how well is it stabilizing. Now we know it’s something that he’s going to probably have to take the rest of his life. Because genetically, there are some predispositions that don’t allow him to retain as much. Now, it makes sense that may not have said everything about genetics from way back when.
But now with newer information and trying something out, I think that was the important part too because that was something collectively talking with Dr. Bogner came up for my own son, but it was also through some of the other consults and other patients that he had and the experiences. Not every person is alike. Every child’s going to be different. Every human’s going to be different. Everybody’s going to have their own path and their own things they’re going to be receptive to, or it’s going to work for them or not work for them. Go slow and go low. Be prepared. Document everything as you possibly can.
Figure out your most comfortable way of doing so. That can be an app. That can be audio notes that can get transcribed to be referenced at later times. Take pictures. Take videos. Just go slow and know that you are going to be able to find a team and the right groups of people that are going to support you along the way.
Dr. Bogner:
One of the pitfalls or the traps that I fell into as an early parent with a child with an autism diagnosis is you go in these forums on Facebook, and they have different groups for different areas in the autism realm like chelation or PANDAS or mold groups. Each one claims, oh, this is the root cause. You start reading and then there are parents who are saying, “Oh my God, my child recovered with A, B, and C.” You’re like, “Oh my God, am I doing enough? Maybe I should try this.”
That’s a very unrewarding path that I went to because you want to try this. You feel like you’re missing out. You feel guilty not having tried what has worked for that particular child. But what I’ve found over the years is that it’s not going to work for your child most likely because there are so many variables.
Dwight:
You’ll have a degree of success or failure.
Dr. Bogner:
Correct. Just several years ago, in 2019, there was an East Coast physician, Sid Baker, who recovered a four-year-old child in diapers, nonverbal with a high dose of anti-mold medication. I get all of these emails from parents, “Oh my god, can we try this? Can we try this? I want to recover my child too.” And guess what? The results were not the same at all. Not even close. There’s a lot that needs to be incorporated, especially with genetics. What are your abilities to detoxify? Bind toxins, deal with histamine, break down neurotransmitters. Everyone is different. That’s why it’s a big spectrum and we can’t, unfortunately, take any shortcuts in my opinion.
Dwight:
In closing out this segment, I also want to remind you that your child, if it is your child, well, specifically in this case, it is your child, that they’re going to grow, they are going to change. I would try to keep as normal as a lifestyle as possible. There are resources, especially in public schooling. There are individualized educational plans, and IEPs as they’re referred to. There are resources that you should get them involved in. Someone told me a long time ago and it was, again, you’re going to get mentored up by some other parents, people that have already gone through it, soldiers and generals. One of the things they told me earlier is like, to send them to school.
Let them see how the movie actually plays out. Let them see some of the actors in the movie. And for me, that made a lot of sense. I’ve had a lot of success. We’ve had a lot of challenges in doing so. But as I know in over 10 years, obviously adolescence and now going into puberty and those are changes that happen inside. Maybe your child can’t speak or they can’t communicate. They’re going to find a way to communicate with you in their own way. You’re going to learn that and you’re going to understand it to a certain point.
It’s not going to be clear and specific like we’re talking about right now, but let it run its course and just be observant as you are to your loved one and look at all the clues in different ways. You can’t push it any faster. You can only help things along. Observe, make changes, and just know that you still have time, because it’s all going in the right direction. It may not happen tomorrow, but it’s all going to work toward the right place. And more importantly, you have to be healthy and you have to remain positive so that you can be the best advocate as possible for your loved one.