76 Diet Wise
Long afterwards I used to love getting the scrawly letters Susan
wrote me. Possibly the deepest moment of all between us was when, on her
final visit, she asked if she could work for me and help others in a similar
predicament to hers: “I can answer the phone and write things down!” she said
proudly.
It takes a lot to render me speechless, as friends and family will
confirm, but at that moment the lump in my throat was so big I couldn’t
answer. I just trusted to a hug.
Casebook 5.
A more physically damaged patient was an 18-year-old girl, among my
Scottish patients. Angela had cerebral palsy, as a result of severe trauma at
birth (forceps, I seem to remember). She had never spoken. She could not
move well, due to the stiff spasticity of her limbs. If she slavered and snorted
a little, nobody minded: “She’s brain damaged. What do you expect?” was
what the doctors told her mother.
Then I was called in.
After just ten days on the test diet I have given you in Chapter 11,
Angela spoke. Now I do not mean she started to learn to speak. She just
came out with it. Her very first words (eighteen years of age, remember)
were “I love you Mummy!”
Her forbearing mother nearly collapsed with surprise and delight.
What was so moving here was that Angela clearly had understood
language all along. Inside she had wanted to be part of everything going on
around her and nobody knew she was even at home with the lights on. Too
much by far had been taken for granted. Angela must have felt very isolated
and dismissed as mentally defective as well as crippled.
You may ask how this recovery was even possible. Well, as I said
before, even if there is an incurable problem, there may be some aspect of
it that responds to treatment. In this case there was no question that Angela
had severe brain damage and spastic limbs; she would never walk unaided.
But that did not mean she had zero cognitive function. In fact her brain was
probably being as fazed with incompatible food reactions as Susan’s. Once
that inflammation was settled down, the speech function areas began to
recover, along with the frontal lobe areas where we process our feelings.
You would think this story and its outcome was a matter of universal
delight. Most newspapers regarded it in that light. But one odious Scottish
Sunday newspaper used the story to attack me professionally: “Miracle cure