Posted on 09/27/2007 11:53:48 PM PDT by L.A.Justice
Jenny McCarthy vividly remembers the harrowing realization three years ago that her son Evan, now 5, had autism.
"It started with hand flapping," McCarthy, 34, told Oprah Winfrey on Tuesday's show. There were other telltale indications in her child's behavior, but as McCarthy said, "You only look for the good signs."
Then came the day when Evan suffered a seizure, which doctors – once she got him to the hospital – blamed on a fever. Three weeks later, however, Evan got "a stoned look on his face" while McCarthy and the boy were visiting her parents.
This was another seizure, she thought, "but this one is different. He's not convulsing." Instead, "foam was coming out of his mouth, (and) and after a few minutes, I felt his heart stop," she said.
When the paramedics arrived, she told them about Evan's heart. "They looked at me like I was crazy. I don't know why," she said. Only, as they discovered for themselves, the child's heart was no longer beating, so they administered CPR.
"Why, God? Why me ... Why? Why? Why?" McCarthy recalled thinking in those desperate moments, but then, she said, an inner voice came over her. "Everything's going to come out okay."
Because there was no pediatric hospital near her parents' home, Evan and McCarthy drove three hours back to Los Angeles, during which time Evan suffered several more seizures.
Initially, neurologists believed Evan had epilepsy, by McCarthy's "mommy instinct," as she called it, thought that not to be the case. Finally, a doctor said to her, "'I'm sorry, but your son has autism.' My mommy instinct said, 'This man is right.' I didn't want to believe him ... but ... this man is right. I felt like death."
McCarthy, however, sprung into action. She researched autism on the Internet and was struck by a message that popped up in a corner of the screen. Autism, it told her, "is reversible and treatable."
She worked diligently with her son, putting him on a wheat-free, dairy-free and artificial-additive-free diet to detox his system, and her mantra – which she says is producing results – is "hope, faith, recovery."
McCarthy, who first revealed Evan's condition last May on The View, has put her experiences down in a just-published book, Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism.
Evan is McCarthy's son with director John Asher. The couple divorced in 2005, after six years of marriage – which, McCarthy told Winfrey, was strained because of their son's condition.
But, McCarthy also said, there's a new man in her life: Jim Carrey. "He's the 'funny, cute guy' in the book," she told Winfrey and the TV audience. And, she stressed, he is there for Evan.
On the Web site for the Oprah show, McCarthy and actress Holly Robinson Peete, who has discussed her own child's autism with PEOPLE, will answer questions related to the condition. Click here.
"Keep going," said McCarthy as final advice to parents of autistic children. "And we're going to be there online."
That's the problem. Many parents would rather hear that their child has Autism rather than what they actually have, so now Autism has become the Autism "spectrum."
Unfortunately autism has become a catch-all term for any and all mental issues.
People, people, people........let’s look at the source for all these ‘facts’......this is ‘People’ Magazine not the New England Journal of Medicine (which has its own agenda problems)....the magazine is the equivalent of day-time TV and an equal IQ level. Even my native Californian sister-in-law social worker is ashamed to admit she actually BUYS and reads this rag.
Thank You!!
The hand flapping is almost a prime indicator for me.
The seizures, while not uncommon among Autistic children, can stem from a wide variety of ailments.
Jenny McCarthy ping.
Autism ping
“The story isn’t true. There is no way that a child whose heart has stopped and has to be revived by paramedics would be released from a hospital so that the mother could drive the kid 3 hours to another hospital. Period. Didn’t happen as described in the article.”
I know a person whose 4 year old boy had a fever, was examined in the ER around midnight, sent home, and was found dead in his bed by his mom at 6 am.
“Every child with autism presents differently than the next.”
There certainly are differences, but there are also “classic” signs of Autism that are found in quite a number of kids.
The hand flapping is quite typical. Some will have seizures but not all. Autistic kids do not follow a specific pattern.
Here we go again. LOL.
Sure doesn’t feel “trendy”.
I didn’t suggest the child doesn’t have autism. I simply note there seems to be other problems such that autism is the lesser problem the child faces. But these other physical or nervous problems are lumped in with the mental disorder of autism in a manner that at least going by WebMD is confusing and misleading.
God bless your dear heart, and be with you, your son, and your whole family.
I saw her on Oprah and she said she noticed a difference in two weeks, gluten and dairy free. Also of interest was her technique in helping her son learn how to throw and catch a ball. Because he had no instincts to tell him what to do, she videotaped a friend and herself and verbally walked him through it. He got it immediately. She also realized this applied to other things, like play, in that he didn’t know what to do with cars, for example. So she became a very hands on teacher.
Sounds like those are seizure related. She was very vocal in Oprah about these changes occuring after his series of immunizations, a common story among parents with autistic children.
Bless you for helping these kids. Without my daughter’s special ed teacher in high school, my daughter would never have made any progress.
Some people are having success with the diet while other see no results at all. Frustrating but she seems to really be on the right track & I think it’s good she’s out in the open trying to help her son & others at the same time.
Video modeling is a very successful tool in teaching autistic children skills. My son does very well with it also.
Thank you so much for your kind words. Be well.
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