The previous May a friend told me about the Neuro Clinic. The doctor there assisted her son in overcoming a concussion after a car accident, enabling him to get out on his mission on time. In answer to Chris' question, I researched their website and wrote an email to the doctor telling him about Addie to see if he had anything "her size" to offer. I pushed send and then sent a prayer heavenward: "Please let him have something to help us. This is my last hope." With apprehension, I opened my email later that day--not really expecting an answer--but hoping. (I'd learned from working with the Primary's Neurology Department that these things take time. . . I shouldn't expect to hear back until I'd called a couple times and a week had gone by.) So imagine my delight to get a return email the very day I sent mine: "Yes! I would love to meet your daughter Addie. Most of the therapies I use are sensory. There is always something we can do." I scheduled an appointment right away.
That first appointment? AMAZING! Dr. Oliver spent two hours consulting with us. He found out all about Addie by just letting us talk and asking us questions. He actually examined my baby!! He watched her eye movements, her lip movements, the way her limbs stiffen during a seizure. He looked at her posture and her skin. He assessed her reflexes, her abilities, her cognitive and nutritional status. Then, he went to work. He educated us about seizures (oh, how we wished we'd known that a year ago!). He told us what to worry about and what not to. He told us what area of her brain is impacted as indicated by the the different movements of her body. He gave us homework to help stimulate the troubled areas of her brain, which would help Addie create new brain pathways to cope with stress and raise the seizure threshold. Next he prescribed a protocol of nutritional supplements and in-office treatments for the next six weeks--12 treatments of the RPPS (Repetitive Somatosensory Peripheral Stimulator) and 6 visits with him.
He answered my questions as well. I showed him some of the things I do to try to help Addie through seizures and asked, "Does this have any effect . . . am I just fooling myself by trying?"
"You know," Dr. Oliver began, "there is something to the placebo effect. Whether it scientifically works or not doesn't matter. You are her mother and you love her. Therefore, whatever you do with the intention of healing your baby is going to help her. You keep doing whatever you think to do." I about wept right there in his office. (How many times at Primary's had I asked similar questions only to be shot down with a placating smile behind the verbal, "No--that will not help.")
Lastly before we left, Dr. Oliver asked, "Does Addie always lean to the left?" Her little body, for months, contorted stiffly to one side, nearly in the shape of a C, which pushed her left rib outward. With a simple adjustment in her neck area, and before our eyes, she moved her head from the left to the center and then, with another tweak of her neck, to the right. Dr. Oliver taught us how important it is to exercise the nerves that run up and down the right side of her neck. He emphasized that without stimulation, the nerves would lose their ability to communicate with the brain. He tweaked her a few more times as her head turned back to the left, and he taught us how to do the adjustment as well. By the time we left, Addie looked more relaxed and naturally posed than we'd seen her in months. She slept peacefully all the way home.
We've been going twice a week for the RPSS treatments. Dr. Oliver always pops in to see how Addie is doing. Whether or not we're scheduled to meet with him that day, he will ALWAYS take time to answer any questions we have. In our weekly visits with him, he continues to assess Addie's progress, assign us more homework therapy for her and educate us. He's so full of knowledge that I marvel that any brain can hold that much information about the brain. Dr. Oliver is also full of hope and his optimism is contagious.
What a difference--to go from Primary's where we are told, "We don't know a lot about the brain, but Addie's seizures are intractable . She'll die within 2-5 years when her brain just burns out. Just keep her comfortable on the drugs--there is nothing you can do" to Dr. Oliver, "We don't know a lot about the brain, but we do know that there is plasticity there. You can always do something to help the brain work better. There's always hope."
And boy does it show! Prior to seeing Dr. Oliver, Addie's heart rate beat above 140 bpm. After the RPSS treatments, her heart beats in the 120s or lower. She's sleeping better and her seizures are decreasing dramatically as she learns to use her "rest & digest" (parasympathetic) system instead of her "flight and fight" (sympathetic) nervous system.
Last time, I wrote about Heaven's silence. As I look back, I stand in awe because I now see that we were led. Weaning Addie from her seizure meds was scary--a true step down an unknown path. We acted against the medical advice we'd received from her neurologist, and it took much courage to push through the self-doubt and her attendant increasing seizures. Holding our ground and walking that road of weaning, however, brought us to an exquisite vista--The Neuro Clinic. Addie would never have benefited from The Neuro Clinic if she'd still been sedated by drugs. Only by choosing "the road less traveled" could this new view open to us. I'm exceedingly humbled and feel to praise my Maker all day long for His tremendous guidance, even when I felt like I walked alone. Truly He guides our steps. It takes risk and courage on our part, but to move, to act--it's the only way to get new paths to open to us. Don't be discouraged if you feel you walk in the dark. Wait and continue onward--the light will come!I leave you with two favorites to summarize:
Josuah 1:9
Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
*I've learned in my studies that after your body adjusts to a mind-altering drug, like Addie's seizure meds, it evolves to a new state of living with the drug. Even after you've weaned from a drug and it has all worked out of your body, you will still see residual stress for a short period. The intensity will make you think, "Oh no--I'm broken! I must need this drug to be normal. I better go back on it." Just hold on. Give your body time to adapt to a new state of living without the drug. Addie's seizures intensified after the drug was out of her body. I cried, "Oh--she really did need the drugs." It took about three weeks for her to adapt to her new state; but she did learn to cope. We would NOT go back to her drugged state.
