(WGHP) — When your life is about as stressful as it can get and you find a way to manage it, it can be tough to let that system go.
Chris and Jennifer Little struggled for four years to deal with their second child (of four) having developed anterograde amnesia after getting hit in the head. When they finally found answers and Caitlin began to recover, going back to how things were before the accident wasn’t easy.
“It was so hard the first four weeks to let my girl … go, and I couldn’t me be more proud of her,” Jennifer said.
“I was very apprehensive of how much she took on,” Jennifer said as Caitlin got her drivers license and a job.
“Caitlin obviously doesn’t need us as much (now),” Jennifer said. “And that’s been a huge adjustment for me to let go … My entire life was living for her, being her memory and making sure she was cared for … I’m wondering, ‘what am I supposed to do? What is next in this journey?'”
One thing they could do was tell others the path they took to recover Caitlin’s ability to form long-term memories.
It was an amalgam of things, but it appears nothing played a bigger role than the protocols Dr. Charles Simkovich has developed over 35 years of working in Pittsburgh.
Simkovich calls his work a combination of neurology, chiropractic and physical therapy. He works with former NHL players and boxers with success at his concussion clinic, and the Littles are referring others to him who contact them with similar stories if the Littles think Dr. Simkovich might be right for their situation.
“Just two weeks ago, we were helping a young man in Virginia,” Jennifer said. “He got hit by a baseball in the high school game. His aunt had seen (Caitlin’s) story … and they immediately got him to Simkovich because she said, all the doctors were saying, ‘Oh, there’s nothing wrong. There’s nothing we can do.’
But he has no memory. He has light sensitivity, noise sensitivity. And he’s already been to Simovich twice now and is seeing improvement.
Meanwhile, Caitlin is simply trying to make up for lost time and, in classic Caitlin form, is worried as much about those around her as she is about herself.
“I wasn’t the only one who lost time and experiences. They lost so much, too. That’s probably the hardest part for me,” Caitlin said. “I was always a very private person, and I’d like to suffer in silence and seeing what all was out there … scary to me.”
See the Littles take on how the medical establishment treated them and how when he was first developing his protocol for treatment, other doctors wanted to shut Dr. Simkovich’s clinic down in this Caitlin Can Remember edition of The Buckley Report.
