Story of Hope for Stellan

Challenge: Plagiocephaly, Torticollis

Stellan’s mom and dad brought him into our office at 7 weeks old. Since birth they noticed that he favored looking to his left and laying his head on the left side. He refused to turn his head to the right side. This resulted in a diagnosis of torticollis. However, favoring his left side didn’t just create a diagnosis of torticollis, it was also causing his cranial bones (bones of his skull) to change shape and flatten on that side. The pediatrician referred them for a consultation to get a helmet created. It was going to take weeks to get into the doctor for the consultation. In the meantime, they wanted to do everything possible to try and make progress for their son’s development. They had read that chiropractic could potentially help, so they started to look further into chiropractic care in an attempt to make progress and potentially avoid a helmet altogether.

Stellan’s mom had been to our office prior to becoming a mom and she wanted to come see us. However, between then and his first appointment at Crossroads Chiropractic, Stellan had been to another chiropractic office under the assumption that most chiropractic offices are the same. At the first chiropractor, they saw very minimal change and decided to keep their initial appointment and consultation here at Crossroads. At Stellan’s very first visit, we completed a thorough consultation and neurological assessment to see how much stress his system was under. During the first visit, our docs took extensive time to explain cranial bone development as well as palate formation, which can all contribute to the issues they were seeing. Stellan’s parents appreciated the thoroughness of our initial consultation, assessments, and knowledge around pediatric care and decided to come back to hear what our recommendations for adjustments would be.

At the second appointment, we reviewed a custom set of recommendations for Stellan so he could get the results his family was looking for. His parents had a crazy schedule. This included: mom going back to work, dad working full time, and a toddler at home (less than 2 years old), but they still made Stellan’s care a priority and stuck diligently to his recommendations. As we started care, one of the first places we saw progress was his ability to look to the right. First, it happened with stimulation to entice him to look towards the right, then he started doing it more on his own. After a little more time, he started sleeping looking to the right 50% of the time (unprompted), then looking to the right freely. On top of helping clear the nervous system and restore neurological balance, we also did a complete evaluation of his cranial bones to include cranial adjustments and palate work as needed.

During his course of recommendations in our office, the date for Stellan’s helmet consultation came up. Since the pediatrician had recommended the visit, we encouraged his parents to go and talk with the doctors to see what their recommendations were and to explore all options. His parents went to the appointment and asked very thorough questions about success rates, rationale behind the helmet, follow up care, etc. When asking their questions, they reported that the doctors were very annoyed with the questions and the answers they were given were not very encouraging. As a family, they decided to forgo the helmet and stick with chiropractic care.

To date, Stellan’s ability to look both directions has reached 100% improvement (meaning he no longer has torticollis) and his plagiocephaly has almost completely resolved. His parents are so excited with his progress and are so thankful they were able to see their child heal without the use of a cranial helmet!