Slide 15:
In late 1997 we changed her to Diflucan. Again, what all of this
is really representing is that until we get to the day where we have immune modulators,
until we get to the day where we have something to really beat this process entirely, what
I find myself having to do is help keep her brain, keep her body in a healthy direction so
she continues to improve. It takes a juggling of the medication.
By then, she was going to be in a school play, which she did very
well in by the way. I want to bring this out with this case because here is this girl, and
I have many reports from faxes from parents, where a kid took part in their first baseball
game, performed in their first school play. One of the early children that were written
about in the Advocate stands up and does comedy routines. OK, that’s not something
you’re told to expect out of your children.
But, a very interesting thing happened while I was working, as
usual, one night. My wife has a show on in the background. I want to say ABC News or
20/20. I’m not even sure to this day what it was. But for some reason they had done a
study following two children from birth. One was a very shy, kind of quiet, introverted
child. The other was kind of that normal, gregarious, go and check-the-world-out type of
child. I’m not again sure of what all the background was on this discussion. But, for
some reason, with much hesitation, when this quiet girl was about 4 and-a-half or 5 years
old, the parents decided to put her on Prozac. She went from a kid who couldn’t stand
up in her class, who was afraid to go to school, who couldn’t get up in front of
people, to a child who was taking part in school plays, doing everything her teacher could
ask this child to do in class. Just like any other parent, they were a little hesitant,
especially from where they were coming, should they have this child on Prozac. So they
stopped the Prozac. The child fell right back into that regressive, quiet, almost afraid
child. I’ll try to point this out as we go along that thankfully, there’s a lot
of evidence that says if you don’t help these children have their brains working and
open, then we may be doing a lot more harm than anything else questioned out there.
As we went along with this child, I wound up changing her in the
early part of this year to Zoloft. For the record, even though this child had been doing
very, very well, the parents came in before I left for New York this time and said the
child’s doing better yet. So all of this comes down to keep pushing to get the best
child you can out of all of this.
