What would you do if a doctor insisted on hospitalizing your child, even though you had simply wanted some out-patient tests done? What would you say when you realized that the medical community is blaming YOU for their problems just because you took your child to see a “Functional Medicine” doctor? What would you do when your child is being subjected to painful “treatment” that is doing the exact opposite of what you really need? What choices would you have if you realized that going against the doctor’s orders could result in having your children taken away from you?
That scenario actually happened to me, and it was the reason I chose to go back to school to learn how to help others. I didn’t want anyone to have to suffer like my family had suffered. That suffering sadly came at the hands of a medical community operating out of ignorance and bias. Tragically, I do not believe that our situation was a rare occurrence.
Before I tell my story, I want to go on record by saying that I am truly thankful for doctors and nurses that serve us! These frontline heroes have a heart to help hurting people and are critically important when we need surgery, have broken bones that need to be set, and other tangible medical interventions. However, I fear that there are many health challenges going on today that do not fall within the clear paradigms of medical diagnoses. Sadly, this is where we found ourselves years ago at the medical nightmare that changed my life.
I am a mom of six sons. Four of them are now married, and I am still raising our last two teenagers. Four years ago, our fifth son began having a lot of stomach and digestive issues. We spent years trying to diagnose what was wrong with him. His symptoms were very unpredictable and it was hard to find a pattern in what he was going through. Every time he was seen by doctors, we were told that he was fine.
In 2014, things had really escalated and his condition was deteriorating. Not only was he having pain on a daily basis, but it was really affecting our lives. Social events revolved around how he felt. He began turning down invitations to hang out with his friends for fear that he would be sick and end up spending hours in the bathroom in pain. Trips needed to be carefully planned with multiple bathroom stops along the way.
I began more aggressively seeking out medical attention for him. Once again, all tests came back fine and we were told that nothing was wrong with him. One doctor even told me that he was depressed and that this was all “in his head.” We took our son to see a counselor, who confirmed that he was very emotionally healthy. This was NOT in his head! On one doctor’s visit, I told him that our son not only had severe abdominal pain, but he now had eczema all over his legs, he had perpetual allergies year-round, and he was having headaches. Our doctor told me to take him to a gastroenterologist for the digestive issue, a dermatologist for his eczema, an allergist for his allergies, AND a neurologist for his headaches! REALLY? Instead of sending him to FOUR different specialists, wasn’t it possible that these were all symptoms of ONE main root issue?
Since we had been finding no answers in the mainstream medical community, I had begun doing my own research to try and figure out what was wrong with him. By this time, I had read dozens of books by Functional Medicine doctors, researched online about different medical issues, and attended numerous online summits on alternative medical care. I was convinced that the root of his issues began with a condition called Intestinal Permeability or “Leaky Gut.” I knew what we needed to do for him, but I decided that it would be better to work officially under the care of a Functional Medicine doctor.
We spent over $4,000 to take him to a Functional Medicine doctor. Of course, our insurance didn’t cover this cost. Over the next 6 months, our son willingly followed a grain-free and dairy-free diet. He enjoyed eating “the rainbow” in a wonderful variety of fruits and vegetables, along with good quality protein and lots of healthy fats. He especially enjoyed the grain-free brownies and chocolate energy balls that I made with whole food ingredients. I scoured dozens of cookbooks, as well as the Internet, and became quite proficient at cooking wonderful meals that he could enjoy that were healthy, anti-inflammatory, and good for healing the gut. Over that time, without any drugs or medications, my son’s allergies disappeared, his eczema completely cleared up, and his headaches went away. However, his abdominal pain was still present.
At the time, our son was “pudgy” and overweight for his age before we started this new eating protocol under our doctor’s guidance. We were supplementing him with good quality vitamins, protein and vegetable powders, and probiotics. He lost a good amount of weight and was looking very healthy. Because he was still experiencing some pain, we, along with our Functional Medical doctor, decided that it would be wise to have him seen by a gastroenterologist and tested to make sure that he didn’t have something serious like Crohn’s Disease. We made an appointment to have him seen by a doctor at an excellent, world-renowned Children’s Hospital.
A few weeks before his appointment, a vicious intestinal virus hit our household one weekend and knocked almost everyone out for a few days with severe vomiting. This son was the first to get the virus, and long after we were all better, he was still sick. He lost ten pounds in a week with this virus. I had him to our doctor three times, but there was little he could do. The virus needed to take its course.
When we had our appointment with the Children’s Hospital doctor, our life took an unexpected turn. Instead of trying to help us deal with his abdominal pain, this doctor became very alarmed at his weight loss. I had explained that he had extra weight to lose and was actually at a very healthy weight before getting the virus. Instead of listening to me, this doctor immediately insisted that our son be admitted to the hospital. She called ahead to the hospital admissions to alert them to our imminent arrival. Even though we didn’t feel like he needed to be admitted, we were actually relieved that all the testing would be done at once and we would finally have answers. Little did we realize just how WRONG we were!
I had my first warning that things were not going well when we arrived at the hospital. When I was giving the Intake Nurse the medical history, upon learning that we had been going to a Functional Medicine doctor, she immediately deleted all of that information from his medical record. I was informed that he wasn’t a “real” doctor and that there was no place in the record for that. In their eyes, I was a homeschool mom who kept my child home from school and put him on a “restrictive” diet. I would learn over the following days that I had been marked in a horrifying way in the eyes of the medical community.
I stayed in the hospital with our son while my husband went to work and tried to hold down the fort back home with our other four children. What began with a hopefulness of getting answers quickly declined into a barrage of accusation and blame. Doctors scolded me for having put our son on a restrictive diet. Even though I explained that I was under the care of a medical doctor and that our son had actually improved significantly, I was still accused of being the cause of his problems. One doctor told me that our son was sick and had lost all of that weight because I had withheld “healthy food like hamburgers and cheesesteaks” from him. He insisted that our son needed to eat those “healthy” foods to get better. SO, dutifully following doctor’s orders, I got him a cheesesteak for lunch. Twenty minutes after eating his “healthy” food, he was writhing in agony. I called this doctor in to see for himself what eating certain foods did to our son. After seeing him in pain, he turned to me and said, “This is all your fault. If you had been giving him this healthy food, his body would be used to it.” That statement “this is all your fault” became the mantra that I would hear for days to come.
During that first week, I was repeated “scolded” for having put our son on a gluten-free diet. Doctors told me that there was absolutely NO medical proof that gluten causes any damage to the body. When I asked the doctors if they were aware that gluten had been scientifically proven to be a cause of Celiac Disease, they acknowledged that was correct, yet somehow continued to insist that there was nothing wrong with gluten.
After a week on the GI floor, all the test results came back negative. NOTHING was wrong with our son! As much as we had endured a lot of physical and emotional trauma and stress during this time in the hospital, we were grateful that nothing was seriously wrong with our son. Once the test results showed that he didn’t have the serious conditions we were concerned about, we prepared to go home. However, the hospital had other plans for us.
Because our son had lost so much weight, they decided that he needed to regain a lot of weight before they would release him. We were also told that they needed to put him through a special program to build up his body nutritionally. They proceeded to force us to stay in the hospital for another week! We were both ready to go home, but they wouldn’t allow us to leave. Having a college degree in Social Work and Psychology and having worked as a Child Protective Services worker for years before having children had served me well. I was well aware that if we left the hospital against the doctor’s instructions, we were risking having Children and Youth Services come and take away our children. The nightmare continued!
We proceeded to spend a second week in the hospital where they “tortured” our son on a daily basis by force-feeding him. Their “nutritional protocol to build his body back up with healthy food” consisted of making him eat huge portions of macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, cheesesteaks, hamburgers, pizza, and other things that caused him a tremendous amount of pain. They were treating him like he had an eating disorder, but he clearly did not have that. They told me that they understood that he didn’t have an eating disorder, but that they needed to have him get back to his original weight, even though that was a very unhealthy weight for him at his age and height. I was forced to meet with nutritionists to learn how to “properly care for teenagers.” Even though I had raised four other healthy adults, they treated me like I had no clue how to be a responsible mother. I was curious as to what my “training” would include, but it all came down to tracking calories and forcing him to consume 4,500 calories a day!! I saw the awful diet they were forcing him to eat and I had the audacity to question the nutritionist. During our conversation, I told her that a typical dinner at home had consisted of a delicious homemade grass-fed beef burger loaded with shredded zucchini, chopped onions, garlic, and seasonings (without the bun), homemade sweet potato fries, homemade applesauce, and a salad. She immediately discounted my meal because I had withheld the BUN! Seriously??
As the hospital bills were racking up, we began to insist that we needed to leave. We repeated asked if we could continue their “treatment” at home since this was a stress on the entire family, but we were repeatedly told that if we left the hospital, our insurance would not cover any of our medical bills. Of course, that terrified us at the time, and we later learned that was a complete lie. After TWO WEEKS of a forced hospital stay, torturous experiences for both my son and myself, and hospital bills that were in excess of $100,000 dollars, we were finally allowed to leave. We followed up with our family doctor who was shocked and appalled at what we had experienced. When we were discharged, this hospital told us that we needed to have weekly checkups with the doctors and nutritionists at the hospital indefinitely, but our wonderful family doctor made sure that we never needed to go back there again.
Once we were back home, our son begged me to resume eating healthy. Since we now knew that nothing was seriously wrong with him, we began treating him again. He once again enjoyed eating a very heathy diet and good supplementation. Over time, he healed again and now knows what he needs to do to stay healthy. He chooses how he eats, but he also pays a price when he eats foods that don’t “agree” with him. Essential Oils now play a significant part in his healing, but I tell him repeatedly that “you can’t ‘oil’ your way out of a bad diet!” He has the knowledge to know how to care for his body, even though he went through a great deal of suffering on that journey of understanding.
After this experience, I admit that I was extremely angry. Not only had I been forced to watch my son suffer at the hands of the people who were supposed to be helping him, but I had been vilified as an abusive and neglectful parent. The medical community had a very narrow paradigm that they used in this situation where there were no clear medical answers, and sadly, using common sense and good nutrition was not part of that paradigm. It astonished me that there was so little knowledge about good nutrition in the hospital. When I questioned one of the “healthy” meals (consisting of a huge mound of macaroni and cheese, chocolate milk, cranberry juice, and a tiny bowl of overcooked green beans), I was told that “FRUITS AND VEGETABLES DO NOT COUNT IN NUTRITION.” We lived for two weeks in a Twilight Zone that I still cannot begin to comprehend.
Over time, that anger turned to a firm resolve that NO ONE ELSE would needlessly suffer due to this kind of extreme ignorance! I truly hope that our experience was extremely rare, but I fear that it might not be! I chose to forgive everyone that mistreated us in the hospital and am truly thankful for doctors who are there to help people in time of need. I resumed my studies in Functional Medicine, and continued my own learning journey in the hopes that I would be able to help others.
Education is the key to knowing how to care for our bodies! As much as medical intervention is sometimes absolutely necessary, there are MANY things that can be done proactively and preventively in a natural way to avoid the need for drugs and medication. I invite you to check out more information on my website about natural healing for gut health, natural supplements to strengthen our bodies on a cellular level, and ways to reduce the toxic load in our bodies! My passion is in educating people with NATURAL SOLUTIONS for all their health care needs to live the vibrant life they were created to live!