Since April is Autism Awareness month, I thought I’d share my personal story about how I learned about autism, and why I decided to dedicate my career helping others with this condition.
For those of you who are new here, let me introduce myself: I’m Stella Chadwick and the founder of Brainstorm Health, a clinic that specialises in helping children with Autism, ADHD, PANS / PANDAS, and other neurological issues. This is my personal story about how I learned about autism and what inspired me to change careers and start Brainstorm Health.
As with many parents of children with autism, I noticed something was not quite right with my daughter when she started nursery as her behaviour was different from the other children and she looked paler and less robust than the others. She was born prematurely so I knew she’d be a bit ‘behind’ her peers but there was something else that was off. She was also suffering from multiple food sensitivities and allergies, yet numerous specialists and hospital visits gave us no solutions. I became more and more frustrated and desperate for answers so started to do my own research.
When I read Dr McBride’s book, I realised that my daughter fit the profile of a child with autism and all her symptoms started to make sense to me. Her health got even more complicated after she suffered a head injury, scarlet fever, and had to have surgery to close a hole in her heart. This is when we started on the rollercoaster of PANDAS symptoms which was very poorly understood at the time. In fact, no doctors would officially recognise the condition and there was no approved treatment for it. As many of you know, having a child with very distressing symptoms and no way to help them can be traumatising for the whole family.
Instead of accepting our fate, I kept researching and enrolled in a BSc programme to study nutritional therapy so I could have some tools beyond what the medical community was offering. I started to work on my daughter’s health from the ground up: addressing gut health, food sensitivities, yeast and mould issues, and nutritional deficiencies.
I never intended to use these tools beyond our own family, but everyone started to notice how much better my daughter was and one day my mother-in-law asked me why I didn’t do this for a living as I could help others. It hadn’t occurred to me until she mentioned it, but then it seemed the obvious thing to do so I quit my previous job and launched Brainstorm Health in 2014. The rest, as they say, is history and I am so grateful to have meaningful work that makes a real difference to the health of children struggling with autism or other neurological issues.
I’m happy to say that my daughter is doing well in her first year at uni, independent, happy and able to manage her symptoms with the tools we’ve put in place. She has been an incredible teacher and inspiration to me and I’d like to dedicate this newsletter to her. Read below to learn more about our mission, how we work at Brainstorm Health and a testimonial that sums up why we continue to do this important work.
|