Max's Life-Changing Surgery

Autism is tough, but Max is tougher.

I am writing to share the story of how my son Max is proving the experts wrong and persevering in the face of BIG challenges.

Max has asked me to help tell his story and to ask for your financial help, your willingness to share this on your social media page(s) and/or your prayers.

My husband Greg and I adopted Max as a baby, and he came home with us 8 days after he was born. Max was a happy baby, but began to show signs of developmental challenges just before turning three. Those challenges manifested as anger, aggression, and defiant behavior. We sought the help of a play therapist when he was three in hopes of getting some answers.

Over the next few years Max went through extensive testing, and was misdiagnosed with “reactive attachment disorder and intermittent explosive disorder,” which are both classified as behavioral disorders.

At age 5, Max was moved from his kindergarten classroom to a class for children with emotional behavior disorders. What we didn’t know at the time was that this classroom placed children with behavioral challenges and children with diagnosed mental and developmental disabilities into one large classroom.

Faculty in this program treated each student with a one size fits all mentality regardless of their diagnosis or lack there of. Sadly, proper interventions for behavior disorders are completely wrong for many developmental or mental disabilities.

Max was unable to function within the militant structure of this program, and was running away from school or being sent home due to his outbursts on a regular basis.

Within months of being in this program, Max was hospitalized, and was in a residential treatment facility for 6 months.

He was eventually discharged against medical advice because the insurance stopped paying due to his lack of improvement in the program.

At this point, we still did not have the correct diagnosis for Max.

He had been seen by multiple psychiatrists, 7 PhD level therapists, had been diagnosed with 7 different disorders, and had been given at least 12 different psychotropic medications. Max suffered unspeakable abuse at the hands of mental health “professionals” and “teachers”, all before turning six.

At the age of 7, after years of testing and incorrect diagnoses, Max was finally correctly diagnosed by an autism specialist with severe Asperger’s which is now called “Autism Spectrum Disorder.”

Children with this diagnosis have a very hard time with social interactions, sensory processing, and regulating their nervous systems.

Due to Max’s other challenges and the severity of his Asperger’s, he was unable do normal kid things like go to birthday parties, summer camps, sleepovers, Disney World, or even “simple” trips to restaurants or the movies.Eventually, I quit my job to homeschool Max at age 8 1/2, which helped with his sensory overload, but made normal socialization even harder.

Although there was NO stone left unturned in our efforts to find Max help for his challenges, sadly, when Max was young there weren’t many avenues of support for children with Autism. It’s still a problem for many families to this day.

What interventions there are usually are not covered by insurance, and so our family, like so many others, paid tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket.

Max has been medicated since he was five and has gone through over 20 different meds to find what works. Almost all of these medications had adverse effects on his metabolism and he began to gain weight when he was five.

By age 18, Max weighed almost 500 pounds due to these metabolic effects. Some of these meds allowed him relief from his anger and aggression, but made it impossible to lose weight.

When Max turned 20, he made the decision to begin a serious weight loss journey. In 2021 he signed on with a personal trainer at a local boxing gym and made drastic changes to his lifestyle and diet.

I think Max is like a phoenix who has risen from the ashes of a very difficult childhood. Countless mental health professionals told us that Max would never live independently, and would require specialized care for the rest of his life.

Over the last three years, with the help of his psychiatrist, he has stopped taking almost all of his medications and has completely changed his lifestyle.

He is much more independent and is an assistant coach at the boxing gym where he has a real community of peers and supporters. He also teaches the youth at a local church.

AND, he has lost 225 pounds.

Today he is an incredibly capable, kindhearted, outgoing, young man who mentors young people, and prides himself on being especially helpful to kids on the autism spectrum.

All these years of trying to overcome his challenges have been costly in many ways, but certainly financially.

There is a real lack of support for people with autism and other mental health challenges, and we were fortunate to be able to get what help we did.

A lot of the credit for Max’s improvement goes to Max himself. He was determined, committed to success and made a plan that worked for him.

But now that he has lost all this weight, he has a significant amount of loose skin.

He is planning to have surgery to remove the skin, which is a major surgery and yet again, not covered by insurance.

It’s not my nature (or Max’s) to ask for monetary help from people, but the cost for this surgery is in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Max really wants to have it done. Removing this skin will give him body confidence he’s never had. Having this surgery will help him feel like he’s overcome so many of the things that made him feel left out and different throughout his childhood and youth.

If you feel moved to chip in to help him with the cost of surgery and are financially able to, we will be forever grateful.

If you’re not able to, but feel like you can share this post to your page, that would also be appreciated.

Max may have had one of the hardest childhood’s imaginable, but let me just tell you, he is a warrior. He has fought harder than anyone I’ve ever seen to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

He is one of the kindest, most loving and generous people I know, and he deserves all the blessings he can get. Thank you for reading his story and for keeping him in your prayers as he undergoes this surgery.

Blessing to each of you.

This photo shows the excess skin. He will have an abdominoplasty to remove the belly skin, a procedure to remove the excess skin around his breasts and a brachioplasty to remove the skin hanging from his arms. This will all happen at one time in a six hour surgery. Please keep Max in your thoughts and prayers for a successful procedure and a quick recovery so he can get back to the gym.