Beautiful Healer

Today’s Beautiful Girl is special to me and Aubrianah.  She may be special to you, too, if your child is a patient at Rimland Center.  Aubrianah spent many years just being sick.  She saw specialists and had tests and tried medications, but every ‘cure’ was short-lived and she was soon sick again.  I remember the last time I took her to her previous doctor, he told me that if I wasn’t interested in her taking the medication (it had severe side-effects) or allowing more invasive tests, there was just nothing else that could be done.  She’d just have to live with it.  I cried that day. 

  Then someone told me about Dr. Mumper.  “She stays up on the research,” they said.  “She takes a different approach,” they encouraged.  “Couldn’t hurt,” I thought, and made the appointment.  I switched Aubrianah’s records over from her former pediatrician, went for a consultation with Dr. Mumper, held Aubrianah’s hand through one last battery of bloodwork, got the results, did the things Dr. Mumper told us to do, and three months later, after seven years of off-and-on sickness,  Aubrianah was healed.  To top it off, the things Dr. Mumper had us do didn’t have anything to do with strong drugs or invasive tests.  That was about three years ago, and my daughter has not had one relapse.  In fact, we haven’t even SEEN Dr. Mumper in a very long time, until we went to do her Real Beauty photo shoot.  Aubrianah’s former pediatrician got a sick visit from us about once a month!

  Our story about this beautiful doctor is not the most dramatic in town, by far!  Dr. Mumper works a lot in autism research, and Aubrianah’s symptoms had nothing to do with autism.   But my friend Krista, whose son Gideon was on the autism spectrum and now IS NOT on the autism spectrum, has a much more dramatic story.  The plot is the same:  Child is diagnosed with something other doctors say he will just have to live with, mom takes child to Dr. Mumper, child does not have to live with that diagnosis after all.  Krista says, “I used to compare Gideon to Pinnochio and say that Dr. Mumper turned our 'wooden' boy into a real boy. Our boy who didn't make eye contact or understand language, who was afraid of everything and didn't really seem to know that he belonged with his family, was turned into a boy who interacts freely and comfortably with everyone, without irrational fears and who knows how to express affection.” 

I don’t want to tout Dr. Mumper as a miracle-worker, and I know she wouldn’t want me to do that.  But she does what others in her profession don’t often do.  She and her staff are committed to staying up on research.  They are interested in the things that make our children sick, not just the medications that are available to fix them.  She cares for her little patients, she cares for their parents, she listens, and she doesn’t get so proud of herself that she thinks she knows everything!  She is always interested and always learning.  Because of her humility and willingness to discover new things, she is sometimes able to heal children who have previously been left to ‘live with’ their illnesses.  Thank you, Dr. Mumper, you are our Beautiful Healer! 

If you’d like more information about Dr. Mumper’s work with Autism or other conditions, and/or the Rimland Center, you can find it here:   http://www.rimlandcenter.com/RimlandCenter.php