4.60

5

Feb 09, 2016

When Mary Romaniec’s son Daniel was seven months old he was developmentally delayed: he could not lift his head. He did not roll over.

The doctor recommended a pediatric physical therapist who started coming to their home. She worked wonders with Daniel, who started catching up and hitting milestones.

Then, when he was 12 months old, his health took a nosedive.

As Romaniec, a journalist who lives in Grafton, Massachusetts, describes in a 2004 article in Mothering magazine, Daniel had all the When Mary Romaniec’s son Daniel was seven months old he was developmentally delayed: he could not lift his head. He did not roll over.

The doctor recommended a pediatric physical therapist who started coming to their home. She worked wonders with Daniel, who started catching up and hitting milestones.

Then, when he was 12 months old, his health took a nosedive.

As Romaniec, a journalist who lives in Grafton, Massachusetts, describes in a 2004 article in Mothering magazine, Daniel had all the recommended vaccines at his one-year visit, including the combined vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR). After the visit, he got very sick. He had such terrible green stinky diarrhea that Romaniec called the doctor. When Daniel spiked a fever of 105, she called the doctor again.

And then he started regressing.

He lost the desire to walk.

He was no longer able to play peek-a-boo.

He no longer understood when his mother spoke to him.

As Romaniec describes in her new book, Victory Over Autism: Practical Steps and Wisdom Toward Recovery for the Whole Family (Skyhorse Publishing 2015), Daniel was in visible pain as a toddler. He screamed when he woke from napping. He banged his head against the floor. He was sick and miserable, as was the whole family.

Conventional medical wisdom holds that autism isn’t curable.

Doctors, who are now handing out autism diagnoses to 1 in every 45 American children, often advise parents to get their finances in order and start investigating group homes for when their child with autism gets to be too much to handle or ages out of publicly funded aid.

But Mary Romaniec did not listen to the dire predictions about her son’s condition.

Her reaction wasn’t “this is hopeless, my son’s life is over.” Her reaction was “let’s fix this.”

She wasn’t interested in hearing why nothing would work, why autism was irreversible, or why any given doctor’s suggested treatment was quackery.

She was interested in treating the illnesses that had started just after Daniel’s 12-month vaccines, healing her sick son, and trying everything—no matter how experimental or outside the mainstream—she could to help Daniel get well.

And it worked.

Read the rest of my review of Victory Over Autism at www.JenniferMargulis.net: http://jennifermargulis.net/blog/2016... ...more