GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) — Fall used to be Jennifer Little’s favorite time of year. Now each year as Oct. 12 approaches, she dreads every moment leading up to it. That was the day, four years ago, that her daughter, Caitlin, got hit on the head during cross country practice and developed a rare form of amnesia from the blow. Her memory resets about every 60 seconds now.
As Jennifer looks back on these four years, she says it can be easy to get caught up in both what’s happened and what they haven’t done in their search for healing for Caitlin.
“You just go through everything wondering, ‘What did we miss? Where did we go wrong? What do we do, next?’ You second guess everything that you’ve done and then you push that to the side and see where we can go, now,” Jennifer said.
After years of being in too much pain to run – likely from the Lyme disease they think Caitlin developed around the time of the accident when he got hit in the head – she hasn’t done much moving … rarely leaving the house, outside of her treatments and tending to her garden.
“She runs every day,” Jennifer said.
“I don’t know if it’s blood flow to the brain, endorphins or whatever, but it is very therapeutic for her,” her father Chris said.
And they’re continuing all they can do to heal her body.
“We’re doing supplements that are attacking the Lyme disease. She gets six chiropractic adjustments, most weeks,” Jennifer said.
And those take a three-hour round trip to Holly Springs, south of Raleigh, for the particular type of chiropractic work they want for Caitlin.
“So, her brain is overwhelmed,” said one of the doctors who works with her, Makenzie Schouten. “She’s had to deal with this for four years, now, and so there are layers to that healing process. Our goal is to just help with that communication between the brain and the body and make sure that her body is set up in the best way possible to heal.”
Dr. Jason Day is the lead chiropractor in her care and he believes his work can eventually help her body heal. But first, he needs to find ways to get Caitlin’s nervous system to calm down.
“The nervous system controls the inflammation process, it controls our hormones and adrenals, it controls our digestive system, it controls our energy, our emotions, our sleep – everything,” Day said. “And when the nervous system gets in fight-or-flight, think of a caveman running from a bear: it’s not important to digest breakfast if I’m about to be breakfast. So, has Caitlin had digestive challenges? Absolutely, they were rampant when we first started and she’s been on this journey for four years and it never quite fully was addressed outside of maybe taking a medication to hopefully get things moving. But we care deeply about the most important question when it comes to health: why? Why was her digestive system not working?”
And while Caitlin hasn’t regained her memory, she appears to have some concept of her situation.
“She doesn’t question me about teaching from home,” Jennifer said. “She doesn’t question why her brothers are going to school and she doesn’t throw on a bookbag. She’s at peace, somehow, with what’s going on.”
See what breakthrough the Littles have found in this Buckley Report special edition of Caitlin Can’t Remember.
A GoFundMe has been set up to help the Little family.
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