Kitty Grant’s son Jonathan was diagnosed with autism this spring. Jonathan was not yet three, a thick-cheeked boy from southwest Florida with the long, blond hair of a Southern rocker. It wasn’t long before his mom, searching for information online, found the biomedical treatments discussed on Internet message boards — and found out how expensive they would be. Her husband, who delivers high-end appliances, started taking all the overtime he could. They made plans to sell 
their car to pay for a visit to a DAN! doctor, after months of waiting for an appointment.
By June, she was the first mom to ask for help on the micro-loan blog Lend 4 Health. Strangers lent her $266 for her son’s food-sensitivity tests.
“We knew it was going to be expensive” to go the DAN! route, Kitty said. (What is DAN?) “They called us and went over the fees and I almost fell out of my chair. But we have no choice. I’d sell my kidney.”
Her regular pediatrician, she said, told her that he couldn’t perform chelation for Jonathan because it was prohibited by his malpractice insurance. While Kitty wanted to switch to a gluten-free/casein-free diet for her son’s gastrointestinal issues, her pediatrician wanted to give him laxatives.
“I’m not going to say I’m disenchanted with my regular pediatricians, it’s just their scope of knowledge, their understanding. I can kind of understand it, but it’s frustrating. … They don’t believe there is enough scientific information to back up what we’re pursuing. We need the guidance of a DAN! doctor. You can do a lot as a parent, but there’s not a lot you can do to be completely current on all new studies and treatments.”
Her DAN! doctor doesn’t take health insurance, she says. So when Lend 4 Health creator Tori Tuncan told her loans might be available, she saw her only chance to get her son’s treatment going immediately.
“I was a little trepidacious at first. You have to be skeptical anytime someone is willing to say ‘yes, we’re going to try to help you.’ Because, honestly, that’s not frequently coming these days. Mostly, it’s ‘we’re going to try to screw you and see what we can’t give your kid.’ But I’m willing to be open to anything to try to help him.”
She’s waiting for the results of the food-sensitivity tests. Per the terms of the loan, she’ll repay the lenders in a lump sum in February, when she and her husband get their tax rebate. By then, she’ll be living in Maryland — she heard the treatment options are better there.
“Honestly, after we pay everyone back, we’re thinking about putting some money back into (Lend 4 Health) to help somebody else. It’s a karma thing.”
Previously:
There are so many families that would love to explore biomedical treatment for their children with developmental disabilities. They read about all the alternative interventions including food sensitivity testing, neurofeedback, HBOT, and supplements, but they know they can’t afford to do any of that and they feel trapped and guilty that they can’t provide treatment for their kids. Lending money for these families is great, but how in the world will they ever be able to pay it back seeing how expensive everything is and it only keeps going up, Maybe ‘grants’ for health should be something to look into as well as micro loans for health.
Nagla
Biomedial treatments are useless for treating autism. They are a waste of money and make the kids feel like lab animals. The ley is early intervention, parent training, and acceptance. Chelation is dangerous and does nothing. Lupron chemically castrates kids and does nothing. Diets deprive kids of foods they may enjoy, and does nothing.
Quacks abound, and they are preying on desperate parents.
I would suggest disregarding TheProbe’s comment. He/She/It obviously hasn’t done the necessary research on this issue and has no (or very minimal) personal experience with biomedical treatment to be able to give an informed opinion.
Yes, early diagnosis and intervention are definitely crucial keys to changing the course of autism in most all children who have been diagnosed as being on the spectrum. Parent acceptance? Well, what exactally does that mean? Should I have just accepted it when the State developmental specialist told me that my son would never be able to talk over 3-1/2 years ago? Or maybe I should have accepted it when my son’s autism pre-school teacher, 2 years ago, told me that his IEP goals were really “a wish list” when I expressed concern that my son was not hitting any of his goals or benchmarks. Well, I chose not to accept the arbitrary boundaries and restrictions that the naysayers were imposing on my son and I thank God everyday that I did. My son is 5-1/2 years old now, is talking and communicating and is doing very well on achieving nearly each and every IEP goal now that he is receiving the right treatment.
As for biomedical treatment, we started this for him 6-months ago and are only in the very beginning stages of it but the changes that we have seen for him is nothing short of amazing. ABA really worked to to help shape and mold his behaviors, cognitive and communication skills but the biomed treatment is making every everything so natural. It’s healing his gut, immunity and mitochondrial dysfunction issues and those, I believe, are the underlying causes for the symptoms my son has been exhibiting for the last 4 years that we call “autism”.