From Bedridden to Playing Outside: A Child's Recovery from Complex Chronic Illness

My name is Tony and before coming to work with Lauren we worked with another provider who just didn't take as much time or do as much testing weren't working on the core of the problem, we were using band-aids like steroids and ibuprofen and so when we came to Lauren, she really uncovered what was really going on with our son and since working with her he has made so many gains, he can function like a little boy, he can have fun again, I mean he seriously couldn't even enjoy life, he was on the couch with his hands above his head with a mask on and that was about all he could do so we are still working and we still have things to work on but just our day to day lives. He can sleep, he can eat, he can go outside and play and we're just so thankful that we found her. My son's illness is very complicated, there's so many factors, so many things you need to address to heal and the class really brought it all together for me, we've been working with someone else for about 6 months before we came to Lauren and a lot of things get recommended and you don't get a lot of time with other doctors and so you don't really know why you're doing what you're doing so it really gave me all the background information that I needed to know why I needed to make these changes in his life and our whole family's lives and it just really helps you strengthen your commitment to the changes when you know why you're doing them. I think the most valuable thing that I learned is that it's easy to want to just think that a lot of the things in our environment aren't your child but when you see all the research and the data you realize that a lot of our lifestyle is really making our kids sick and that you just have to do these things whether it seems really hard to go against the grain and make huge changes compared to what is considered typical but when you see the facts then you know that this is not extremism or anything really what's going on. The modules were really helpful, they contained a ton of information and the handouts were great because there was so much information that try to implement the changes would be really difficult from memory or just from watching the modules and then the live calls were so good because brought it all together and you got to hear other parents ideas which sometimes can be really, really helpful because it's the practical how to's of how to actually do these things in your life and then the guest speakers were great, they all were very informative and some of them I'd heard of before so it was really exciting to actually get to speak to them live. Lauren is amazing, she is so knowledgeable. All of this stuff is so complicated and you can go and start to read about these things and you listen to other experts and you have just like this little inkling in your head of how this all comes together and then she just understands it all and if you bring up something she knows exactly you're talking about and then she also is just so kind and caring because she's a mom herself of kids who have struggled with some of these issues but she is so amazing in terms of wanting to empower people that she works with instead of just handing you a list of recommendations or protocol, she really wants you to learn what she knows so that you will be able to advocate for your child on your own and teaching us how to read lab values and test results that we get so that we can really understand what's going on and also really participate in the care as opposed to just being told what to do. Her approach is much more comprehensive and we started with one provider and then we went around and with some others and Lauren was the only one that I met who really looked at the whole child, you were going to dive into nutrition, dive into the infectious diseases. I think you could drive yourself crazy trying to learn all of this information online in books and you can learn a lot but it's so much and it's so complicated and she really boils it down and gets you to a point where you have a good understanding of what's going on and what needs to be done and why you're doing what you're doing and I think for anyone whose child has a complex chronic condition, I would highly recommend it.