Our Story – Male, 11 Years

I am a single woman from the Muslim community. During the course of my journey towards supporting a severely autistic(ASD) son, there were many obstacles. As a mother of two (with a mainstream daughter), my courage to persevere is truly due to the DOAST team, to which we are attached for the past 4 years.

My journey began in 2006 when we were blessed with a male child who was very much normal. On a day of administering MMR, he suffered a bout of fits. The fits continued till the next day, but we didn’t think much of that. At around 2 years of his age, we saw a lot of deterioration in many normal behaviours: he displayed little or no name call response. He had a variety of behaviour anomalies – unexplained crying or laughing. In addition, he had little to no sleep, and almost no speech. As we went from doctors to occupational therapists, we didn’t see much for our exhausting efforts. There was nothing that could control his temper tantrums and rude behaviour. As a result, we could not provide adequate care for our elder daughter.

After some more trials, we were helped by psychiatrist who prescribed a set of 8 to 10 medicines per day. The medicines tamed our son, but gave him stomach pain. His lack of sleep and led him to a stage where he was becoming obese, had a blank look, and aggression being the only visible activity. We were in a state of constant financial and emotional distress. As one thing led to another, my children and I were separated soon, and had to live by ourselves.

At this point, a relative of ours introduced us to DOAST. We soon joined DOAST, and started following diet, yoga, ayurveda medicine and body massage therapy. The commute to DOAST, the diet, the life style changes, and my son’s tantrums were a challenge. After about 3 months we could see a change – an improvement in his understanding ability and some eye contact!

We were now able to reduce the psychiatric medicines under DOAST directions. My son is currently only on herbal medications. With 3 years of treatment at DOAST, my son is now sleeping with minimal disturbance, takes care of his needs with minimal assistance, shows meaningful emotions, and commutes in society without tantrums. He is interested in swimming and swims well. He plays catch/throw with tennis balls.

He is now 11 old and is being trained to do small errands of Professionals at DOAST during therapeutic procedures. His transformation from a state of stressful angst, to where he is helping treat other children is unbelievable.

I know I have many more miles to go. I have faith that I can lean on DOAST for support. I pray that DOAST keeps growing strong to cater to families like me for generations!