I helped my son heal through stages of epilepsy, which he is now fully recovered after four years of effort. He’s fine. Totally fine. There is hope. There is absolutely hope.
Serge was about four years old, and he and I went for a walk on the beach and he had a grand mal seizure. And that was really the beginning of this whole program.
The Doctors Didn’t Know How to Help
My mother was told I had autism. My father was told I had Huntington’s chorea, that I wouldn’t live past the age of eight. When I lived past the age of eight, I wouldn’t live past the age of 12.
And really, the only support that my parents were getting from Children’s Hospital in Boston was medication. More medication, more medication, different combinations medications, and no medical cocktail that they were able to come up with was ever able to prevent me from having seizures.
I can remember driving into Boston very often with tears just streaming down my cheeks because I was so upset about the fact that we weren’t making a whole lot of progress. It was a devastating time.
The Turning Point
The turning point I think came after about three and a half or four years. We went to two people, and they treated kids who had neurological issues. We went down there and spent a week living in a motel, and they had Sarge all day long, and they were fabulous. They were not doctors, but they certainly knew what they were doing.
And they watched Sarge for a week constantly. And when we left a week later, they gave us endless instructions.
“The Program”
I went home, and I had a a woodshop and built built a brachiating ladder. This is to teach hand-eye coordination. They would have the kids walk hand-over-hand down this ladder, turn around, and come back. He did that all the time. He did that over and over again during the day. He’d do somersaults over it. He was patterned over and over again. He was suspended and twisted over and over again.
We had a a blackboard, and everything was listed on the blackboard. As we went through this routine, we checked off what we’d done. We called it “the program.”
The Work Paid Off
During this time, we were cutting back on his medications. September came, we felt that that he was fixed and he was fixed. He never had another seizure. He started school in September, and that was the end of the story.
Sarge Describes the Transformation
I went from being the child who was drooling all over his paperwork and severely toxic on all these drugs. My eyes were nearly swollen shut because of the toxicity. My gums overgrew my teeth. So I used to have to go into the dentist, and he would just cut my gums back to expose my teeth again, but unable to give me any medication because he could have slipped me into a coma because of the level of medication I was already on. So that was done without pain medication. It was an incredibly difficult, challenging childhood.
But I went from being that severe kid with severe learning disabilities and just completely uncoordinated to doing really well academically and being the captain of a couple of the teams that I was on and and socially fine in about four years time.
Attitude Made a Difference
I always always felt very proud of how he handled it. He just went at it full speed ahead. That made me very proud of him. He did a terrific job.
I think he knew that he was missing a lot, and I think he just was determined to get himself better. He had the mental attitude: “Damn it. I can do this. And I’m gonna do it.” And he did it.
Now Sarge Helps Others Heal
I’ve been in the really fortunate position for, I believe, it’s 28 years now, to be able to use these same techniques to help lots of other families make similar recoveries for their kids.
I worked with a boy named Alex, who felt very much like a boy, but when he started working with us, was over 30 years old and severe autism, very overweight, no language, and we worked intensively with him, and he was able to go out on runs, he was playing kickball, he was telling jokes, He could discuss what he had done the previous day. So he didn’t make a full recovery, but at at 30, he made massive strides.
I’m working with kids who have institutional trauma and attachment and bonding disorders, who are just making incredible strides. It doesn’t matter what the diagnosis is. You’re looking at a dysfunction in the brain, and you’re looking at how that dysfunction is presenting. And you can change that at any age.
Don’t Give Up
I kept saying he’s gonna get better. He just has to get better. She thought he might end up in an institution. I don’t think I ever thought that. I thought that somehow we’d get him fixed, and we did.
I think it was a combination of really hard work, five years of effort, and it worked for us. So don’t give up. Don’t give up.
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