From Minimal Verbal Skills to Thriving in General Education Classrooms

Hi, my name is Kate. I am a nurse anesthetist in Charlotte, North Carolina. So right shortly after my youngest was born we recognized that my oldest was displaying symptoms consistent with autism and both my husband and I work in traditional healthcare and when we first received the diagnosis we sought it out through traditional western medicine clinics and they told us we didn't have a lot of options. They kind of just said sorry about your luck, try these therapies, that was about it and something deep inside my mama heart roared no there is more that I can do for my child and so I started researching and I had some friends that got me in contact with Integrative Health Carolinas and Dr. Temple to take a different approach to this, to really look at it from a functional medicine standpoint and to try to help my son help to heal some of his symptoms and his issues from the inside out. When I very first met Dr. Temple I really knew she genuinely cared and she wanted to shake up healthcare and do things her way, a good way, a way that was going to really benefit families and kids, that kids could actually thrive and do well and so in that very first initial intake I could just tell she was really invested and she was willing to do whatever it took and that might be alternative stuff, that might be traditional stuff but she was really going to look at the whole picture and what it would take to address all of my son's issues. So since my husband and I both work in traditional healthcare I know originally we had doubts if there was any validity to any of this and so we went in a little bit skeptical, we had made some diet changes and already seen changes in my son and so I knew that there was something to this but I think we went in just a little bit skeptical and kind of wondering. Traditional healthcare models you used insurance and this was going to be like a cash pay situation, what was this going to look like? And in reality this is like the very best investment we could have ever made, I would drain my bank account to do it again because this has made so such improvement in our lives, we have seen such significant improvements my oldest son's life and then also even in my youngest son and seeing him thrive and grow up in a truly healthy environment. I'm just so impressed how in touch Dr. Temple is with all the current information out there in some of these more alternative integrative realms especially specifically to my son and his autism diagnosis she routinely attends these annual autism summits to stay up to date with the most current modalities and she'll come back to me with all the updates say, okay this is out there, Do you want to try this? Do you want to try that? And I'm just so impressed with how on top of things stays and how plugged in she is with the network and how open minded she is and willing she is to try some of these different things knowing there's a potential it could help the kids and it's not going to hurt the kids. So before we started seeing Dr. Temple my oldest son was four years old and his autism was kind of at its peak, he had very minimal verbal skills, he routinely threw tantrums, life was just really, really challenging with him and I just I can't even fathom the changes we've seen in him, the improvements we've seen in him most people now can't even tell that he has autism, he's in a general education setting, we've dropped a lot of our services, he is just thriving so well and happy go lucky kid and he's a little quirky but we embrace that and I mean he's a totally different child. Traditional healthcare is going to tell you this doesn't exist, this isn't real, this is too good to be true and I would just encourage them and say it is absolutely worth a try and helping these kids from the inside out the building blocks of nutrition and gut healing and building on it from there, there's so little to lose and there's so much to gain and I just feel like it has just been such a team effort and a team approach and everybody from the front desk to the nurses, coaches, we've just felt so supported he entire way along our journey. I just love it that they're so willing to listen to my concerns, to address them, to put my fears at ease, really been a team approach like I will come to them with ideas and she will work with me to try to incorporate those ideas into the plan and to try to build a plan that is going to function well for our family and she knows all the cultural norms that are going to try to push against that and she equips you with all the information that you need to know to raise a kid in today's world, today's unhealthy world, she's going to help you with tips and tricks so that you can do it and you can raise kids that are going to thrive and be truly healthy.