Chiropractic treatment has transformed the life of Max Willson and his parents. Christina Hopkinson reports
Quentin
Willson is not an obvious advocate of alternative medicine. This is the
man, after all, who came to prominence as a presenter on that bastion
of blokes, Top Gear, and named his daughters Mercedes and Mini.
He admits that until two and a half years ago, the most alternative
potion he had ever taken was a vitamin C tablet. But after his taking
his son Max to see a chiropractor, he has become one of the treatment's
most evangelical exponents.
"I'm startled by the difference in Max before and after chiropractic,"
he says. "He has gone from being labeled autistic and needing a
classroom assistant to becoming an active and feisty seven-year-old in
mainstream education."
Max was born in April, 1998 after a very difficult labor. The umbilical
cord was wrapped twice around his neck as well as being knotted and,
due to his heart rate slowing, he had to be delivered quickly. To add
to his wife's distress, Quentin was six hours late for the delivery. "I
was stuck in the floods on the M40 with no mobile reception. Michaela
thought I was dead."
Quentin and Michaela soon noticed that Max was not developing in the
same way that his elder sister Mercedes had done, seven years
previously. His eyes didn't focus, while his hand movements were more
unco-ordinated that those of his contemporaries. But it was when Max
went into education at four that they began to seek help. "You never
want to admit to yourself that you've got a backward child," he says,
"but it was clear that he was very, very behind. He couldn't
concentrate, was hyperactive and demanding." Every childhood hurdle was
twice as difficult as it had been for his sister - he wore nappies
until he was four, was impossible to wean from the bottle and had never
slept through the night. Family outings such as visiting a restaurant
or friends' houses were impossible.
The Wilson’s
consulted both state and private health professionals to try to
discover what was wrong with their son and were given diagnoses
including dyspraxia and dyslexia. They even began to think that Max was
autistic as he demonstrated symptoms that are often associated with the
disorder: he walked on tiptoes, had an obsession with soft clothes and
didn't like labels next to his skin.
They were
at the point of putting Max on Ritalin, the drug that is used to treat
children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, when they had
an "almost surreal" revelation. Quentin went to pick Max up from a
birthday party where "he'd done his usual trick of sitting underneath
the table for two hours". There, he met a mother who had been observing
Max for the previous hour. She said that she thought his skeleton was
out of alignment and that he should see the chiropractor she had used,
Deirdre Edwards, who practices in Stratford Upon Avon, near to the
Willsons' home.
Chiropractic is a form of complementary medicine that uses manual spine
manipulation to correct alignment and improve the function of the
nervous system. Deirdre Edwards practices a type called McTimoney,
which takes a holistic approach in examining not only spinal and
skeletal misalignments, but also the patient's general wellbeing and
quality of life. Though deeply sceptical, the Willsons felt that they
had nothing to lose in crossing yet another treatment off their list.
Deirdre remembers Michaela Willson coming into her practice with an air
of resignation and exhaustion, while Max wreaked havoc in the waiting
room. Deirdre put him through a range of assessments and discovered
that he was delayed in several areas.
A feather touching his skin caused him to say "ouch", and he had no
sense of smell. He couldn't stand on one leg or follow simple
instructions. His eyes twitched involuntarily, he made facial grimaces,
had staccato speech and licked his lips continually. But she did manage
to make eye contact, which suggested to her that he didn't have severe
autism.
Once she had checked that it was safe to give chiropractic help,
Deirdre began to palpate his body. "There are seven bones in the neck,"
she says, "and four of his were severely misaligned, affecting the
natural balance throughout the rest of his body. Even a lay person
would have been able to see that Max had muscular build-up on the left
side of his neck, so that it looked like he'd been lifting weights."
Deirdre believes that this misalignment was strangling his neural cord
so that Max "was twisted in such a way that the cord could not transfer
messages down the body. He was lucky to be walking." This over-firing
of his nervous system was, she says, interfering with his ability to
learn, in turn compromising his immune system and lead to the continual
colds and throat infections that he suffered.
The Willsons remember the treatment not hurting Max at all. "It was
just flicking the bones around his neck and shoulders," says Quentin,
but that night, Max slept continuously until morning for the first time
since his birth, nearly five years before.
Deirdre continued to see Max about once a week for the first month, and
then every 10 to 14 days. His speech, eating and abilities quickly
improved to the point where he now only visits her once a month.
The Willsons are thrilled.
"He sleeps like a log and has lost all that weirdness," says Quentin.
"He no longer has a classroom assistant and we've taken him out of his
second genteel preparatory school with five children in the class and
put him into a little village state school where he's flourishing. He's
still a bit behind because he effectively missed out on a couple of
years of education, but you can reason with him and he's reading and
writing and it's amazing. I can only put this down to the chiropractic."
They are so convinced by the benefits of chiropractic that Quentin is
determined to spread the word. "This is the unimpeachable testimony of
a man who did not believe in it. We have to raise awareness, because it
worked so thoroughly for my son and changed his life and ours. If I can
help just one child that's going through what we went through, then
that's my reward."
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