Your child is diagnosed with
a serious autoimmune disease and conventional treatments aren't proving to be
effective. Doctors prescribe powerful medications that don't seem to work. Not
only is your child not responding as hoped, he's withering from the side
effects. What do you do? Journalist Susannah Meadows found herself having to
answer this question when her son, Shepherd, was diagnosed at age 3 with
juvenile idiopathic arthritis, joint inflammation that can last a lifetime.
When the drugs didn't work,
Meadows was persuaded to look at his condition through a different prism and to
consider the possibility that medications might not be the only answer. Meadows
began speaking to parents who had sleuthed out alternative theories and tried
things like radically changing their kids' diets and giving them Chinese herbal
medicines. Like many parents of sick children, Meadows grew increasingly
willing to venture outside of the standard treatments.
Her experiences spurred her
to seek other stories of people with illnesses ranging from multiple sclerosis
to epilepsy to ADHD who pursued unproven methods of treating their diseases.
Their stories, as well as an account of her son's case, are compiled in The
Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges
and Refused to Give Up, published Tuesday by Random House.
Shots sat down with Meadows
to discuss her book. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When Shepherd was diagnosed with a case of juvenile idiopathic
arthritis, were you initially uncomfortable with him taking the standard drugs
for the disease?
I was very comfortable when
the first thing he was prescribed was naproxen, because that was familiar as a relative
of ibuprofen. But when that didn't work and he was prescribed an
immunosuppressant [methotrexate], I was troubled by the risks. It's a serious
drug and it comes with an increased risk of lymphoma and liver disease and for
sure, I was very uncomfortable with that.
Read more
on... A Child's Suffering Drives A
Mother To Seek Untested Treatments
Author: HEATHER
WON TESORIERO
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