My colleague and friend Xenia, by the age of 40, was already an experienced doctor, enjoyed a well-deserved authority among colleagues and patients. When she was offered to move to Moscow to head one of the healthcare departments, she did not hesitate long.
As soon as she settled at a new job, her colleague from her previous job telephoned her and asked to consult a relative of one of her patients who lived in the capital. Due to her colleague, there was a difficult case there: a child was already eight years old, but development was going very badly – even the parents could not arrange their daughter for a school for developmental delays children.
Xenia agreed to a home consultation and told the colleague to give her phone number to her patient.
They agreed the time of meeting over the phone.
Xenia found the address quickly. The door was opened to her by a very tired woman with red eyes from lack of sleep, who looked about 45 years old. The apartment was in twilight.
As it turned out later, the child reacted very violently to both bright light and complete darkness, so it was gloomy in the apartment around the clock. The girl's mother said that the birth was not very difficult for herself, but, nevertheless, everything was difficult – the girl was born with a double entanglement of the umbilical cord around her neck, and plus doctors' mistakes. This #difficultbirth led to the fact that the girl, barely surviving, was born very weak. After eating, she always vomited, the muscles of her legs had an increased tone – the child always stood on tiptoe – the #hyperactivitysyndrome was obvious.
In addition, there was a #tongueprolapse. The stool was slimy, bright green in color with streaks of blood. The skin was very dry. She drank a lot of pills in courses from the first month of her life: Cerebralysin, Cavinton. Drops, enemas, droppers, injections. There were no visible improvements. And so it went on for more than seven years. The child did not sleep well, practically did not speak (#speechdifficulties), was very excitable (#hyperexcitability) – both for visible reasons and without them – from loud sounds, from bright lights, from darkness, from silence. From everything it turned out that in addition to the fact that the girl clearly had #autism, her condition was approaching the brink, after which it would be impossible to do anything – irreversible processes would begin. Xenia listened to the stories of the girl's mother and could not believe her ears – this was her story from the first sound to the last point. Almost ten years ago, when she gave birth to her youngest daughter, her baby girl was born with exactly the same diagnosis, and the first four months of her daughter's life, all the events of her life, without suspecting it, were now described by the exhausted mother of a sick little patient. The same symptoms and conditions, the same drugs with the same names and dosages, the same droppers, injections and enemas.
Everything was literally written off from her life with one giant – the size of Everest – exception ...
Hardly coping with the feelings and memories that flooded over her, Xenia diligently said everything that she thought on this issue, gave recommendations to the sick girl’s mother, heard “we will think about it” in response, almost stormed out of the house. She literally collapsed on the first free bench in the center of the yard and quietly – in order not to frighten people around her – silently sobbed. Her tears were both tears of happiness and unhappiness at the same time – she was tormented by mixed feelings: on the one hand, an almost hopeless alien child, and on the other, the story of her own daughter. When Xenia's daughter was four months old, two nutritionists came to visit them on the recommendation of her friend. After listening to these people, Xenia, as if grasping at the last opportunity, decided to follow their advices. Mentally returning to that fateful meeting, Xenia many times thought that she was already an experienced doctor then but for some reason she not just listened to them, but also followed the advices of these people, whom doctors like her, to put it mildly, do not consider so much experienced in health care at all. And it brought results. But how significant and meaningful the results were for her, her daughter, and for their entire family in general, she saw and understood only now. That’s what her daughter now has to have been looking like if she would not meet those people. Now her daughter has been out of danger for a long time. Now she goes to school and is no different from her peers, and in some ways even surpasses them, she rarely gets colds, and does not have chronic diseases at all.
Since then, Xenia, being impressed by the results of her daughter, not yet fully understanding what they had avoided, began to study this issue, even took courses at the Institute of Nutrition in the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, and turned into an experienced nutritionist.
The names of the actors have been changed. Matches are random. Only the events described are real.
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