Autism, Epilepsy & the Spectrum: What Our 12-Year Epilepsy Journey Taught Us

In this episode, we talk openly about Alec’s journey with epilepsy over the last 12 years. Alec had his first seizure at 16, and like many individuals on the autism spectrum, epilepsy became an additional and life-changing diagnosis.

According to the Epilepsy Foundation, 20–30% of individuals with autism also have epilepsy, making seizures the most common neurologic complication associated with autism. 

We share the realities of navigating the medical system, the frustration of not always being heard, and the long, difficult process of finding the right medication — one that not only controlled seizures but also minimized side effects. Those years were some of the hardest Alec has faced, and they shaped how we advocate, ask questions, and push for better care.

This episode is for families raising children on the spectrum who are also managing epilepsy or other medical complexities. We hope Alec’s story helps you feel less alone, more informed, and more empowered to advocate for your child. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Peace by Piece Autism Podcast with your hosts, Angie and Christy. They've worked 25 years to help Alec get the most out of life. Let them tell you how they're doing it.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Welcome back to Peace by Piece Autism Podcast. We are so glad you're here. Christy and I talk about our years of experience with her youngest son, Alec. Alec has severe autism, is nonverbal, and lives in Utah in a group home setting. He is the coolest 28-year-old I know and continues to grow and exceed our expectations for him. He's living his best life, and we want to share with you what we have learned along the way. Today we're going to be talking about Alec's journey with epilepsy. According to the Epilepsy Foundation, 20 to 30% of individuals with autism have epilepsy, and seizures are the most common neurologic complication in autism. So we know that this is not anything unique to Alec and his autism, but probably affects many of you who are dealing with these same sorts of experiences. And we'll share with you what we've learned in the last what is that? 12 years.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Yes. He had. He was 16, it was 2013. And he had gone to the dentist to, I think he was a pediatric dentist, and he was going to take Alex's wisdom teeth out. And then while he was while he had him under, he decided to take a couple more teeth out. And so it ended up being, you know, he was under anesthesia. I'm not sure how long, but you know, for wisdom teeth and a couple of other teeth.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

And so he had that earlier in the day. He seemed to do okay with it. And we got him home, and it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but towards the evening, he always, you know, went into the hot tub. And so he went into the hot tub. He was acting normal, everything was fine. And he walked back into the house. I was in a room where there was lots of windows, and like I had been checking on him and stuff. And he walked into the kitchen and he just fell onto me, like collapsing.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

His whole body weight onto me. And I grabbed him and took him down to the ground. And he was just convulsing, like grandma's seizure style. And I had no idea what it was because I had never seen a seizure before in my life. Yeah. And so I had no idea what was happening. I started screaming. Um, my son describes it on his sibling podcast about how, you know, the blood curdling scream that he heard. And we went from there calling 911, being hysterical, seeing him turn blue. And I really thought he was he was dying. And uh it was just the most awful experience. Yeah, that's it. And uh I I will tell you, I I really think that it doesn't ever not be a terrible experience when your child has a seizure. I think that every time it's traumatic, I think I've gotten a lot better at managing it and getting used to, okay. I go into like, you know, I go into this mode where I'm just like, okay, I know the procedure, I know what I'm supposed to do now, and I do that whole procedure. And luckily now, too, he doesn't have as many because they're very well managed now. Yeah. So it's, you know, the last one he had, he was just laying in bed and he started convulsing with a blanket on him. So his body was just kind of his arms were bouncing up, and and it wasn't as frightening as when they turn blue and their things are coming out of their mouth.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

And yeah, those grandma's awful. They are awful to watch. Nothing prepares you for it either.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah, and I had I I guess on a show or something, I don't know where I heard this. I think it's an old wives' tale, maybe even, where oh, you're supposed to they're they'll swallow their tongue, they'll swallow their tongue, you're supposed to grab their tongue, grab their tongue, is that they clamp down on you. And and and my son and I were just like going, uh what are we supposed to do? Grab his tongue? Won't he swallow his tongue? And I I guess that's not really what happens. So um I got quite a bite on my finger um that night, but I never I never did that again. I learned what the procedure was after that, and then we kind of went with that from then on.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

The paramedics came to the house, you guys headed to the hospital. And what happened after that?

SPEAKER_01 5:43

We we got um the EEG, they did the EEG, they did, they processed him through the ER and checked everything, and he was stable. I mean, he was coming down off the seizure, he was passed out basically, he was so tired from it, and it was quite a long seizure, and it was uh when the paramedics came, they said, How long has the seizure been going on? Both Todd and I are like 10 minutes. Of course, it hadn't been 10 minutes, but it felt like that. Yeah, it felt like 30. It felt like 30, so we were like going, ah, probably 10. And I guess they knew how to kind of wedge that down to what the reality was, which was probably four minutes. Because that is, and that is what his typical seizures ended up being, around four minutes. The longest one, I don't think was ever more than six minutes, would you say?

SPEAKER_02 6:36

It's hard to know because now that we had medication for it, it was we rarely ever waited the four or five minutes to administer medication.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

So yeah, and we've had different doctors say, Oh, you don't wait for four or five minutes. You give the medication the second it happens. And then we've had other doctors that say, Why did you give that to him? You didn't have to give it to him until after four or five minutes. And it's like, well, okay, make up your mind. I don't, you know. So yeah, he was in the hospital. We had the sleeping EEG, so they put on the electrodes, which, okay, can you imagine an autistic guy who's got sensitivities to the head? It's just, oh my gosh, the nightmare that was. But but but not a painful thing because it's just you know, putting little jelly in your hair all over your head and then strapping a big gauze bandage on your head. Um, he looked like he'd had brain surgery but hadn't. And and then just trying to capture a seizure happening, right? You know, is is what they were trying to do, but they were not able to uh replicate it. Just like taking your car to the mechanic, it never makes a squeaky noise. That's exactly the way we've done on every sleep study we've done with him. He'll have a seizure after, yeah, right after he or the day after. And you're like, no, he really does have this. Um, so anyway, that was an interesting like five days in the hospital. Uh, we learned things about how we would manage the hospital stays, for example, that he didn't tolerate well the um IV, as we've talked about before. Um, and that he did not tolerate things like getting an MRI. They needed to take him in for a CTE scan and an MRI and whatever all else they did. Um, and they gave him that drug that Michael Jackson had taken, propola. Was that is that what it is?

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Mike has had the versette, and it just uh Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

He's had the Verset uh since then. But that one they were giving him, and I was like, isn't I that's a drug I've heard of before that kind of scares me, but they were like, no, no, no, this is this is fine. You're in a controlled setting, he'll be fine. And he was. I think it's a quick acting, like out of reality, and then to be able to bring him back out of the anesthesia quickly. Whatever they gave him. It was good they were doing it was good, and it worked for him, and it got him calm enough to be able to get the MRI, which he needed to be absolutely still for, of course. So that was that, and then we ended up just meeting a neurologist there in the hospital who was on rounds, and so he became our neurologist for better or worse. And that was that. So we started, you know, on the first medication, so that whole thing was kind of rough.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

Yeah, that's quite the traumatic experience to just be. I talk about baptism by fire, especially having no idea what it was, what it looked like, or what the outcome was going to be is awful.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, and they they they didn't officially label him epileptic, of course, at that point. So yeah, we started the journey with with this doctor, and I think he just gave us like Valium to give him if he had a seizure, waited to see if he had seizure, and he did. He had follow-up seizures, and then they officially declared him epileptic. So that's when we started the nightmare of trying to figure out what medications would work for him. And of course, he was in puberty still. It was it was probably, I would call it some of the worst times that I've had uh raising him and just getting through a day and helping him live a meaningful life was was really difficult, very challenging.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Then well, the medication needs precede some of the other day-to-day life and experiences that he could have, you know. It's like, no, we've got to make sure you're safe and make sure we're getting the medication. But oh my gosh, ramping up and onto a medication to see if it covered seizures and protected him, only to find he had adverse effects to ramp down to then expose seizures, like that cycle happened. I I don't even know how many times, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:19

I mean, we have such a long list of medications he's allergic to that we discovered uh during the journey that he couldn't tolerate. Um yeah, some that he got the lamictal, that's one of the ones they love to give. It I think it's very effective most of the time, but but he got the rash in the middle of his chest, and the minute you get the rash in the middle of the chest, they're like, no, no, no, discontinue that. Um, because it's extremely dangerous to continue taking that. Yeah, just oh what I think back on those times, I I just go how it had to do that. I can't I can't believe he's the same guy. Because I mean, of course, we got to talk about the nightmare that Capra was. Oh my gosh. Just remind a reminder here. We are not doctors, and we're not trying to be your doctor here. I think one medication that works for one person does not mean it won't.

SPEAKER_02 12:10

In fact, doesn't work for another person. I was talking to a gal who her doctor was in Utah, and I think this was around the time we were talking about maybe finding Alec, a neurologist, there in Utah. And I I was asking her all these questions because those that have epilepsy, a few people that I've spoken to talk about this aura that they have prior to having an episode. Yeah, yeah, which I find really interesting. So she was saying when she first was diagnosed, she could feel that something was off. She was driving her car, decided to pull over, had a seizure, anyways. She's telling me this whole story. So I was asking about her doctor, and she's like, I love my doctor, and my medication is my favorite thing. And I said, Do you mind me asking what you're on? She said, I'm on Kepra, it's the best. And I was like, Oh my gosh. Alec took that and it was the worst for him. We just had the he just had the highest behavior reactions to it, and it was awful. But again, just to your point, we are not doctors, and our experience obviously will be different from one that you have had with your own children or yourself.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

So I have a feeling an experience will be relatable, though, as it relates to trying to find the right medication, the right doctor. And that was just the fact that I kept contacting the doctor and saying, my son is extremely violent, and this guy is not. That would some people would call violent. Um, but for the most part, his by the time he was 16, his behavior was very well managed. And he was able to take part in a lot of things in the community at that point. And so for me to have to keep him home most of the day and have him chew through, he would he needed to bite something so badly, and so I got this idea to hand him a towel that had just a little bit of moisture in it, like a kitchen flower sack towel. And he would bite that until it had it looked like a snowflake when you opened it up. He just would shred it, he shredded so many shirts, the front part of his shirt was just shredded. He would just pick it up and just start biting it. And he just had that really big need to bite things when he was on kepra. And my doctor would just keep saying, No, no, it's not, it's not the kepra. No, it's not the medication, it's a behavioral issue. And I said, Well, if that were true though, he would have had this problem before this. And we've not seen him uh exhibit behavior to this magnitude, it was just so beyond. And that was really difficult for me because I wanted to be able to call my doctor and have him believe me. And he says, Oh, we don't, we have not known Kepra to cause this reaction. So then I got online, which you know, getting online, Dr. Google is really not the I'm not promoting that at all. But it was helpful for me because I went on forums, not Reddit, you know, like reliable forums, where people were talking, or that not that some Reddit forums are not reliable. That's not what I'm saying. You know, I'm just saying a reliable source, reading about Kepler and people's experience with it. And of course, people are reporting good things and the bad things, though, were oh, this person got really violent, or and these are people who don't have autism that you know, as another complication. So I was like, see, you know, I wanted to tell the doctor I'm bringing in my computer, read this. And I said, Well, you know, I kept telling the doctor, I've, you know, I'm sorry, but I don't know if you ever get online. But if you read this for and then I'm reading, you would see that people do suffer. So it anyway, I'm just saying, advocate for your child. If your doctor is not listening to you, I'm telling you what I did, and that's find a new doctor.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Yeah, I was gonna say we've we switched doctors, found somebody that we really liked, and who seemed to not only listen, but have a different approach in how she stacked medications and and got us in a really good place.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Yeah, she was doing research at the time, and I think that was really helpful too. Uh, she had asked if he could be in a study, and he was up for it, but then um didn't get selected for it for some reason. But um it was, I don't know if it was cutting edge at the time. I would have no way of knowing, but that you would just take like three different medications for seizures. And so she started him with that kind of a I guess they call them drug cocktails. That kind of freaks me out to say that, but um, this combination of these three drugs that really caused him to have long periods of time with no seizures. Oh my gosh, that was such a change in life because number one, she was listening when I was saying this drug makes him eat everything in sight. And then he gets really sad because he's gained weight or doesn't have energy. Or this one makes him sleep way too much, or this one doesn't let him sleep at all. Yeah, we saw it all, and then this one made him Angie was remembering whenever he was just drinking everything in sight, like he was so thirsty. Um, so drugs can have these adverse effects, especially on our children, where they sometimes do the opposite of what the little list of things that can happen as a side effect. Sometimes they'll be or heightened sensitivity, yeah. And that's what doctors, it's it's been hard for some doctors to grasp that just because Benadryl makes most people kind of pass out or get really sleepy, it might do the opposite, the very opposite for Alec. Yeah, we've seen that a lot.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

We've always had to be aware of that. Okay, the next thorn in our side, once we kind of landed on a medication that was working for Alec, he is not a pop a pill, swallow some water, and drink it right down kind of a guy. Still to this day, he cannot take a capsule. So we always have to have everything in a tablet form. Prior to knowing that he would tolerate a tablet, we had medication compounded for him. But then getting him to drink down a teaspoon or two of this compounded liquid was a 30-minute process.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Yeah, because he's not he's not the weight of a little child where you're saying, Oh, let's come over and have five mls of this little yummy cherry. It's things. Do you want bubblegum? Yeah, the kids are saying, Oh, I love the flavor of that. He was going, uh No.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Alec was in Colorado at this time and medication being compounded needed to be shipped. We had this whole process to get it to him. It was so bad. It was so bad. I was there with my two young boys at the time. I had put one of them to bed, and we realized that the medication did not make it in time. It was past the point of delivery time. Right. So I yanked my kids out of bed and we had 30 minutes down the road to go to a pharmacy to try and get medication, knowing that if he at this time, if he did not get his medication in the morning or at night, a breakthrough seizure was almost guaranteed to happen at sometime in that day. So yeah. Anyways, get to the pharmacy and I'm talking to the pharmacist. There's a warning on it saying, You do not chew the tablet. So he's giving me this tablet, and I'm like, Well, what's gonna happen if he chews the tablet?

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Because will it explode in his mouth?

SPEAKER_02 20:56

I will guarantee he is going to put this in between his teeth and chomp it right down. Oh, yeah. And he said, Uh, let me let me look it up. So he's on his computer and he said, It is, it has a bitter warning to it. It is so bitter and so disgusting. It is advised that you do not bite down on this because it's that nasty. So Alec is like, give me 10. Well, we didn't know yet. So I'm like going throughout the store, getting him some snacks and treats and a sprite. I get my kids buckled back in the car, some salt and vinegar chips, and standing out on the curb because I didn't dare do it in the car for fear that he would throw up. I was like just trying to walk him through it. Dude, this is going to be so disgusting. So put this in your mouth. We're gonna drink this down. Here's some snacks. You know, I'm just prepping him and myself standing back. And he pops this pill in, tablet, chews it up, and was completely fine. No big deal. Drink a little bit of a sprite. I'm checking, you know, say, ah, let me see that you swallowed it. And he's just like, What are you making a fuss about? That was not that bad.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Yeah, that is not that big of a deal. So and that changed our world forever.

SPEAKER_02 22:13

It did that X truck just saved the day. Little did they know. Yeah. So he now enjoys chomping down on his medication, and we've we've not looked back.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Yeah, we don't look back.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

We don't compound.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

I mean, it's so funny to me because doctors would say, Oh, well, I'm gonna send them the capsule. You'll just put it in a little thing of pudding. I was like, Oh no. That's hilarious. I don't think Alec has ever had any pudding. I cannot imagine that that texture would suit him. I mean, there's no way. Pudding? No. Okay, well, how about a little ice cream? Yeah, he doesn't eat that either. Well, now he does. Sometimes, but he didn't then. Anyways, that's what we do from here on out. But and that and that changed our life because now he just takes all of his pills uh as pills that he chews. And yes, we've tried every kind of program to try to get him to swallow a pill. And for the longest, I thought he was swallowing, and I was so proud. And then lo and behold, he was like cheeking them. And no, he wasn't swallowing them. He totally tricked me, and I was so proud of myself thinking that I had taught him how to swallow pills. Um, okay, can we go ahead and mention what he's on right now? We're not promoting this as what your child should be on, but I think I'm always interested to hear what other people are have have found that works for them. And I'm only saying this works for him, but he takes uh two different doses, morning and night doses of topiramate, also called Topamax. I can't remember which one of those is a generic name. And then morning and night, he takes a drug called Vimpat. And that that other name for that I can never pronounce, lowcosamide or something like that. And then he takes a half of a a half of a half. He takes a half of a half. Well, I always forget what um the dosage is 0.25 of clonazepam every night. And I'm telling you what, okay, I have kind of an aversion to medication. It is something deep-seated in my childhood. We don't need to go into that now, but I I will cover that with my psychologists on my own time. But if I if you do not have to be on a medication, I don't want to be on it. If my child doesn't have to take a medication, I don't want him to be on it. I just I don't know. I just have this aversion. So I was like, okay, I don't like that he's taking clonazepam every night. Okay, I want him to come off of that. I'm just gonna not give it to him one night because it goes into your system and out of your system quickly. I think. I think that's what I've heard. I tried to not give it to him one night. He had a seizure the next day. I said, I'll never do that again. I felt so, so bad. Um, and we've tried taking him off of it and putting him back on it and under the supervision of a doctor, of course. And we have found that that is the combination that works for him that literally keeps seizures away for many months at a time. So that's what we'll we're not we're not saying it's gonna work for you, we're not promoting anything here, but just saying I'm interested in what other people are taking that's successful for them. Absolutely. And so I'm just telling you what my child takes and that he has been he has had really good luck with that for his system.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

It's nice that he does not have them as regular, but with that comes a bit of a sense of false security, I guess, is really what I'm looking to say. Yeah in that yeah, right, oh, we're good. He takes his medication, we've not had a seizure for so long, and so we get a little bit laxed in some of our protocols, but we do have a lot of safeguards in place, and uh obviously Alec is with his team members who we train to make sure that they are aware of what a seizure looks like. Um, we've used videos to train and show examples of you know the severity of it and how rough it is. He carries medication with him and all of that, but just a few of our safeguards that have evolved over the years as as we've needed to make sure that he's covered in all areas. One is he's his shower. He has had a seizure in the shower when he was with you, Christy. I know. And luckily you were right there to catch him. But the the scary part of a seizure is the fall and the you know hit to his head or injury. He's he's luckily had few and nothing serious with um the falls, but we always make sure that he's just not showering alone. He showers independently. We've got a great routine where he he's taking care of business in there, but somebody's got eyes on him. He also sleeps in a king-sized bed, and we try to kind of set him in the middle of that to prevent a fall. We limit the amount of bedding that he sleeps with, and you mentioned that he's got bed rails at home.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Yeah, when he goes to Texas, uh the bed is a little bit far off the ground, and um, I didn't mean for that to happen, but somehow it did. And he's got bed rails that we just ordered off of Amazon and put up. And I just feel safer for him, and he probably feels cozy like that too. Um, but it's really nice because they just come up and down. So if another person needs to sleep in that room, you know, after he's uh come back to Utah, then someone else can sleep in there and just put the rails down, so it's not a big deal.

SPEAKER_02 28:14

Uh, we also have monitors on him at night, we have pretty serious water protocol. And unfortunately, Alec at one point in this whole journey had a seizure in the water. So we always have eyes directly on him. We are in the water with him. We've got our phones are supposed to be close where we can call for backup if needed. And we like going to places like a community water place or pool where lifeguards or others would be there to support in the event of a seizure there. So and then his medication goes with him wherever he goes. That is one of his main items he carries with him in his backpack at all times. And then the backpack also acts as a pillow for his head. When we're getting him down and positioned, we want to make sure that he's got uh safety under under his head so he's not hitting against a hard surface.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Yeah, he had one in our neighborhood once, and he and I were just out on a walk. And that was uh the backpack came in very handy because I had him, I had to get him down to the ground and then he's on the pavement, and I could just pop that thing under his head so that he didn't hurt his head. And he finished his seizure, and luckily our neighbor drove by and helped me get him home. But he is quite difficult to move after the fact, and um, if you listen to my daughter's podcast uh morning, morning, our um our second daughter, she had him have a seizure in the middle of the Nordstrom store. And so back at back in the day it was a suppository, a Valium suppository.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

That's rough. Luckily, now it's a very simple, lightweight, tiny nose spray that goes directly into his brain, and it's easy to haul around and easy to administer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

The other one was just so I think it made the whole process so stressful, more uh like 10 million times beyond how stressful it already was, because you're going, oh my gosh, I gotta get this thing in his rear end, and he's he's like so his body's so stiff that you're like, uh, you know, and they're like, well, get it anywhere near, you know, his rear end so that you can, you know, have the medication go in. But it was it was just very challenging to do that, and especially if you've got a bunch of people, like people had gathered around my daughter, and she was like having to anyway, it was it was so sweet of people to stop by and help her. That and that was really nice. But we've also had situations where like you had one in the middle of the, I won't say the name of the restaurant in Dallas, and people said, Oh, we're not allowed uh legally to help you in any kind of way. And so I had to kind of manage him and figure out how to get his body here and there, and he was totally out of it. And and uh yeah, so it's it's uh it's been an interesting journey. Yes, and we're super, super grateful now that it's very well managed and that we got nose spray instead of those darn suppositories. We love a nose spray. We love to tell our team too, as we're training them. We're like, look, it used to be much worse. Used to be a volume, a value. It used to be it used to be a valuable depository. Um they're probably going, what is a suppository? Do people their age even know what a suppository is?

unknown 31:58

Oh god.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Oh my gosh. And it wasn't like that, it was a big syringe. It wasn't even like a glycerin's positive top thing. It was a big old syringe. Yes, it was it's like it was intense. It just had this clear volume that came out of it. It was amazing. But oh my goodness, we're grateful for the nose spread.

SPEAKER_02 32:22

Yes, grateful that he's in such a good place. We've really been able to manage them well. We know what his triggers are. I think that's another thing that can be difficult to sort out. And it took us a long while to figure out for Alec his seizures are lack of sleep and stress. And so we talked about this even on our holiday podcast about that time of year being extra stressful, and he loses sleep with travel and family and activities and all the things, and so that is one thing that we really try and tailor his life to accommodate um more sleep and remove him from potential stressful situations. And luckily that worked for us this year.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

But Angie, we've we forgot one uh really unique thing that we do to safeguard him. Oh, what is that? That um hook that we put on him, the carabiner thing. Is that what you is?

SPEAKER_02 33:19

He wears a climbing harness. It's a climbing harness.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

A climbing harness.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

Yes, except we've cut it so he's not stepping into it.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

It doesn't go betwixt his legs, it just goes around his waist, kind of like a it kind of like looks like a tool belt now with the so if you ever need to make one of these, this is our makeshift safety harness. Yeah, and yeah, and then we connect a I don't know, what is it?

SPEAKER_02 33:47

It's a carabiner, it's a big old carabiner thing, it's a big one that twists and locks, is what's different, it's not just your average click it on to it.

SPEAKER_01 33:55

Yeah, because I mean it could hold his weight, right?

SPEAKER_02 33:57

Right, it's it's a hefty one. So when he hops on the ski lift with his ski instructor, or if he's doing a scenic lift in the summer because it's so beautiful up there and that's an activity he enjoys doing, we make sure that he he wears this and they are clipped in on the ski lifts.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

You know what? I might do that with a child who is a little bit uh hyper, or maybe who is uh I mean, he's a pretty calm guy nowadays. Yeah, Alec isn't bouncing around on the ski lift or he wouldn't be jumping off the ski lift, but I could see some kid, I don't know, that it might feel more secure to parents if they wanted to have one of these harnesses. But anyway, we just kind of makeshifted one and it has worked wonderfully.

SPEAKER_02 34:41

Yeah, that's been a great, a great ad. So all of those safeguards are just things that have been thought of and implemented with Alex.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

Yeah, and our favorite place for him to have a seizure would be in the car because he's belted in and he's got the child lock on. And it's been very safe for him to have a seizure there. We still pull over and we you know, we assist him. We don't want him to because sometimes if his arms are flailing or something, then you know, we need to still assist. But it's nice to have him just in a place where he's belted in. Safe zones for sure.

SPEAKER_02 35:19

Yeah, it's a safe zone. Thanks for joining us today on our episode of Peace by Piece Autism Podcast. If you're loving these conversations as much as we are, hit the follow button, share the show, and help us spread the word. Because every piece of the story matters. You can find us on Instagram and Facebook at Peace by Piece Autism Podcast. That's P I E C E Peace by Piece Autism Podcast. We'll talk next time. Bye. Bye.