Autism Hope Alliance Lectures, Interviews and Educational Events

• Event: MAPS
• Media: Video Interview
• Host: Kristin S Gonzalez
• Guest: Shannon Kenitz
• Theme: A Mothers Journey with Hope and Grace –
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/EQvy2JD8VKQ

Kristin: I’m excited to introduce our next guest Shannon Kenitz. She is the executive director of International Hyperbaric Association. More importantly she is the mother of two beautiful daughters named Grace and Lily.

Thank you so much for being here.

Shannon Kenitz: Oh, thank you for having me. I’m so excited.

Kristin: I have known you for goodness well over a decade.

Shannon Kenitz:  YES!

Kristin: Your story has inspired thousands upon thousands upon thousands of families! So for those of you that have not seen and, I don’t know who hasn’t seen your story. But for those of them have that haven’t, can we talk about you know your story it’s so remarkable?

Shannon Kenitz: Yeah, Grace she-she certainly is amazing.

Kristin: What a perfect name for her!

Shannon Kenitz: Right, and we didn’t even know it when we named her that we were gonna have the complications that we did.

Kristin: So let’s back up let’s talk about she was born.

Shannon Kenitz: She was born, didn’t know anything was wrong. Took her home in the normal amount of time. Without having her home within like a couple weeks, I noticed that she wasn’t doing a lot of tracking. When I would look at her, it was like she was looking through me instead of at me. Was not doing much, wasn’t latching on when I was trying to breastfeed.

Kristin: She was your second child.

Shannon Kenitz: She was my second my second daughter. I was older mom, didn’t have my first daughter till I was 30, my second at 32. So I knew, I knew things, I knew something was wrong. It took me almost six months before the doctors were finally like listening to me that something was wrong.

I took her to a ophthalmologist first because I was saying that she wasn’t tracky. They sent me to an ophthalmologist and a neurologist in the same day. But I ended up going to the ophthalmologist first. Grace did this eye rolling that she normally does with her eyes backwards. He asked me is that what you see all the time? I said yeah and he said well, I think that those are seizures and so instead of it letting us drive to the hospital they called an ambulance. They took us by ambulance to the hospital. We get there she gets into the emergency room and like within an hour we were rushed up to the ICU. The physicians came out and said your daughter is having seizures and she’s having about two to three hundred seizures every twenty to thirty minutes. That whole time I had her home and she had the rolling, they were seizures and they were gone untreated.

So we got into the hospital what I thought was gonna be a simple case of case that she has epilepsy. I’m not saying epilepsy is simple but, it’s something that is treatable with seizure medicine and people live normal lives with epilepsy. I’m like okay, but none of the seizure medicine was working. Next thing I know they’re wanting to put her on a ventilator. They heard her heart rate started going all over the place, she was not gaining weight.

What we felt was gonna be like three weeks in the hospital getting her seizure medicines regulated to her body turned into three years of being in the hospital.

We finally got a diagnosis when she was a year and a half, we were at Mayo Clinic having a brain biopsy done on her…

SEE YouTube video above: https://youtu.be/EQvy2JD8VKQ

What Is Autism Series: Lectures, Interviews and Educational Events
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Shannon Kenitz | Robyn O’Brien | Dr. James Neuenschwande | Scott Smith | Dr. James Nuebrander |Alex Dolman | Natasha Trenev | Dr. Anju Usman Singh | Bob Doman | Dr. Darin Ingles | Lisa Ackerman | Dr. Tom O’Bryan| Dr. Jo Feingold| Dr.’s Jason & Melissa Sonners | Dr Sonia McGowin | Dr. Bob Sears | Lisa Ackerman | Jacquline & Chris Laurita | Ocean Robbins | Dr Raphael Kellman | Stacey Littlefield | Tom Bohager | Dr Pedram Shojai | James Neubrander Part 2 | James Neubrander Part 1 | Liz Lipski Ph.D | Gay Hendricks | Choose Hope | Let’s Go Shopping | Katherine Woodward Thomas | Dr Dan Rossignol | Dr Jerry Kartzinel | Dr Dave Dornfeld | Raun Kaufman | Celeste King | Dr Anju Usman  | Donna Gates | Dr Dan Rossignol | Dr Joseph Mercola