A Mother’s Story of Healing

I know why I am fighting and blogging and researching. But the fight is so hard.

The kids just completed their 5th NAET treatment. The “clearings” from these treatments are bringing back old behaviors, and little sleep. 

Today I woke up to read a friends testimony for my Warrior MAMA database. I was so excited because, it’s my first testimony and it’s the current treatment we are doing and HER KIDS ARE HEALED!

Reading it was so encouraging to me and then I thought… Duh, this is exactly why we need the Warrior MAMA database. As moms we can research, go into debt, try everything, etc. But what we need is the ability to read other parent’s testimonies of faith and healing.

Today is a new day. Today is the first day of the Warrior MAMA database and the begining of countless years of encouraging parents to fight for their children’s health. Enjoy my friend Lynn’s story.

In 2006, when my son Noah was 16 months old, he had a regressive Autism crash.  He had a handful of basic words at 12 months (Ma, Da, Daw (for Dog); by 16 months, he lost all of his developing language skills. He didn’t communicate in any way.  He fell down often, didn’t answer his name, and hid in tight spots.  It often seemed that he didn’t recognize me.

Almost immediately, I started a gluten and casein free diet. Unknowingly, I started it a bit too quickly.  Noah’s withdrawal from these foods was no less than a heroin addict would experience coming off their drug…night sweats, fevers, tantrums, and vomiting.   I am actually very grateful for this experience because it was an “Ah ha” moment…there is some connection between food and his condition –a type of allergy.  

Noah improved after this purge, but subsequent evaluations diagnosed him with a moderate to severe language delay and Sensory Integration Disorder.  At the time, you couldn’t be diagnosed with Autism before age 2, so this was a hefty diagnosis for a 17-month old.  The highest evaluation score Noah received was the bottom 3^rd percentile, but most of his evaluation scores were not even on the chart.    

In the next two and half years, I would put Noah through a combination of 48 therapies and very limiting diets.  With every intervention, I expected a major-lasting breakthrough.  Never did I get that.  The therapists would notice improvement sometimes at the immediate removal of a food, but it never lasted for more than a few days or weeks before an additional allergy would emerge…bringing up its own set of issues.  If I didn’t remove the suspect food, Noah would regress, so I continued on a very narrow path and considered it “brain preservation” until something better came along.     

Among all of the therapies I tried…the best was Noah’s little brother Nathan, born when Noah was two.   It was Nathan that would eventually lead me to Dr. Pitman because Nathan had even worse allergies, including a severe allergy to soy.  Soy- arghh (I still hate the word).  Soy is in or on everything!  It is in printing, in clothing, in every restaurant and on everyone’s hands.  By the time Nathan was mobile, 18 months old, I couldn’t keep him out of contact with soy and even when I did – he still would have a reaction to something else that would result in horrendous gut pain, aggression and sleepless nights 

Initially, the allergies didn’t seem to cause Nathan the brain fog that Noah experienced, but it did give him horrendous gut pain and it sparked aggression.  In addition to causing these symptoms, it was a typical IgE allergy with breathing issues and the whole life threatening thing.

I brought Nathaniel to one of the top allergists in the world.  Besides giving me an Epi pin, there was nothing they could do.  Based on the severity of the allergy, “he wouldn’t grow out of it”.   The allergist also noted, “Based upon his moods, you should have him tested for Autism after he turns two.”  They were telling me to just sit and wait.

In June 2008, I had a really bad month.  Noah’s school called me in to tell me that there was “clearly something wrong developmentally and he needed to be retested for Autism”.  In addition, some seasonal allergy kicked in for Nathaniel that amplified his allergies, and he was in a critical state.  We were in the emergency room three times in the next five weeks.

In Noah’s case, I looked at the school’s director and said “what more can I do”?  Noah was in or had been in every possible therapy, and both of my sons were on a casein free, gluten free, soy free, tomato free hypoglycemic, no artificial sweeteners, yeast free, anticandida, cooking  100% from scratch diet.  As you can imagine, I was exhausted.  I gave permission for them to start their evaluations on Noah, but I had to focus on Nathan.  He was always sick; he never was without a green gunky nose, and still had that terrible gut pain. Neither Nathan or I had slept more than a few hours in months as he cried through the night in agonizing pain

To make matters worse, Nathan now had cyclical allergies…where his body couldn’t stop reacting without steroids. This, with a hungry kid, that couldn’t go through the smallest toddler tunnel on a playground and come out without a chip in his hand.  I isolated myself and my family, and still feared I would never see his second birthday. 

I was broke and broken.  I had already spent my life savings.  More importantly, I was losing the war.  I didn’t know to keep Nathan safe or help Noah any more.       

I only had God to turn too.  I was raised to be person of faith, but I had been struggling to maintain that faith.  I engaged everyone around me, asking for prayers for Nathan.  I even called the TV evangelists.  I asked my Mother and my sisters to “carry me in faith”, to have faith without doubt!

Within two weeks, Dr.Pitman’s name came to me from two very unlikely sources. I decided to enage in NAET (www.naet.com).  It seemed to be an “unlikely” therapy, but I was determined to leave “no stone unturned”.

I took Nathan first, and he must have been very allergic to egg or chicken (the first treatment) because we had significant and almost immediate results.  Within the first ten hours, he didn’t have a runny nose…for the first time in the past 15 months.  Every night Nathan would wake up around 2 am having difficulty breathing, but after the first treatment, he slept through the night. It was nothing more than a miracle.  Family and friends alike watched as Nathaniel transformed into a healthy little boy without a green gunky nose, aggressive tantrums and  healthier looking skin. 

Little by little, layer by layer, with every treatment, Nathan was being healed.  When we treated him with soy, he was actually writhing around in pain for the first few minutes and broke out with a rash.  It took two treatments for him to “clear” soy, but Nathan- the little boy that couldn’t even touch something printed with soy, can actually it eat today.   I am attempting to hold onto some of the healthy habits we had before NAET, but I I don’t limit Nathaniel’s soy intake at parties or other social events AT ALL.   

After Nathan had two treatments, I enrolled Noah.  It was Noah’s  49^th therapy.  It was the most effective and noninvasive while also being the least expensive.  The first 15 treatments was the exact same amount we paid at our last visit – that is one visit-to an out of town DAN doctor.  In Dan’s defense, it wasn’t the Doc as much as the blood, poop and Urine tests that always accompanied an appointment and showed very little. 

 After his second visit, Noah engaged in group play with the other neighborhood kids…that was a wow moment.  And yes, we finally had that breakthrough…his OT and speech and vision therapist had not just good, but truly outstanding progress reports.  Two of the three have since contacted me for Dr. Pitman’s name. 

After three months, we were saving significant dollars because we graduated from two therapies, and we were no longer on extremely restrictive diets.  We also engaged in Dr. Pitman’s nutritional program using Electro Dermal Screening.  Through a series of herbs and baths, Noah gently detoxified.  I had tried chelation before and found it to be destructive to Noah, causing him to regress.  Dr.Pitman’s nutritional program had no side effects – except for greasy hair and skin for a few weeks.  Noah’s obsessive behaviors vanished on this program, and he began to function as an everyday normal child.  Both Noah and Nathan reached complete recovery!

Today, almost two years from our first Dr.Pitman visit, Noah and Nathan are still healthy and well.  Our journey in the world of Autism and horrendous allergies is simply a distant memory.  My husband and I are also changed individuals.  We now cherish every healthy day!