(Phyllis)

Dear Bill,

The little girl in the photo is Alina. She was a twin steal that means she
was one of fraternal twins. Her brother got all the nutrition and she hardly
had any during her gestational period. This little girl was brought to me
when she was twenty-two-months old and weighed only eleven pounds. She was
blind, deaf, had a cleft palate, and was diagnosed with agenesis of the
corpus callosum. Alina was a sweet little floppy mite not much bigger than a
three month old with a very poor prognosis: failure to thrive.

Mom spent all day trying to feed Alina. The doctors wanted to put a gastric
tube in her stomach for mechanical feeding which mother resisted vehemently.
We gave Alina sensory stimulation and patterning, and masking. (Her mask was
the size of a plastic bead bag used in jewelry shops.) She had one of the
smallest faces I have ever seen. Because Alina had huge problems with her
sensory hookup to her motor output we decided to use the EASe Discs to
stimulate her autonomic nervous system through her hearing. We knew that
stimulating the vagus, 8th cranial nerve would enhance her cortical
alertness and we hoped it would also help her digestive tract. This little
girl needed to see, hear, localize her mother’s voice, eat, and be awake,
yesterday! She also had a huge problem controlling her body temperature and
was frequently ill, and hospitalized. Her life was quite fragile, but her
Mother was willing to do anything to help her daughter.

Our major program emphasis was nutrition; feeding Alina all day if
necessary; then visual, tactile and auditory stimulation. She was too young
neurologically to wear headsets. It frightened her too much to have anything
close to her ears. For her first ten months she listened ambiently but with
her head lying on the floor in the middle of the speakers’ range right by
her ears. We combined as many sensory modalities as we could with sound to
alert her to everything we did for and to her.

Alina made enormous changes in six months. She could begin to search and
look around and localize her mother’s voice. She could hear at near point
range. She was still limp as a rag doll but she gained a little weight. Mom
was confident now that she just needed more time working with her and she
would handle her food even better the next time.

At her third visit she could see her mother looking at her without saying
anything to get her attention. She would stare at her for a few seconds and
then smile broadly when she recognized her. Mom was ecstatic after waiting
almost two years for her daughter to smile to her smile. Her Mother was so
thrilled that she often just gazed at Alina smiling back at her. Also, for
the first time Alina could hear when someone called her name. She was much
more alert.

She did Ease one and other EASe discs again ambiently and when she returned
after the next six months she could her herself making sounds. She vocalized
often, but interestingly, the sound of her own voice in her head bothered
her, even when she made happy sounds. She would screw up her face and start
to cry. By this time she was talking with her eyes, charming everyone in the
room and babbling with more control of the sounds. She could sit up now and
hold herself upright. If you put her on the floor she moved her arms and
legs in imitation of the cross pattern but did not quite have the power to
go forward as yet. Her tactility was more defined. She liked certain
textures and dolls.

Now she weighed between 17 to 18 pounds, which for Alina was a lot. She was
eating more variety of food and tolerated slightly different textures. Her
Mother was no longer worried about her eating enough or digesting. Alina was
now a real child, and no longer a tiny waif hanging onto life. She could
point to what she wanted and she clapped her hands with joy. Her body
temperature was more controlled. She understood more short phrases in the
household.

In the picture you have of her, we have had to wrap a bath towel around the
head sets to keep them on and have the ear pieces fit over her ears. She now
tolerates them and loves the auditory program. She relaxes deeply when she
does she listens to her CDs. It has been a major tool to bring her forward
to life.

Her hearing has had wonderful stimulation from the Ease series. The special
random gating effects have supplied Alina with sound frequencies that have
changed her autonomic performance in sleep/wake cycles, hunger/thirst,
breathing, elimination and digestion and her temperature control. All the
basic homeostatic processing that well individuals take for granted, Alina
has had to work hard to attain.

The EASe selections have stimulated her sense of upward and forward movement
at the most primitive levels where she is disorganized. Her interest in
moving forward has increased because her hearing and understanding of sound
and localizing it give her a sound filled world to explore. Alina recognizes
the voices of all the family members. She no longer is so upset with the
sound of her own voice.

As a therapist of many years, I know how difficult the road to developing
normal sensory function can be. For me, the EASe discs cover our efforts to
stimulate like a river of sound that gets into the nooks and crannies of
sensory processing to give a child more substantial performance in a shorter
period of time.

No one knows the severity of Alina’s agenesis of the corpus callosum.
Children like her blossom with intensive early stimulation, and the EASe
discs help them to align their lower brain levels with cortical
communication across that fibrous bundle so critical for human intelligence
through left/ right storage and retrieval in the human brain.

On behalf of Alina’s Mother and her aunt, who do her program daily, and all
the children of Nicaragua who are listening every day to EASe discs, I
extend their gratitude to you, Bill, for engineering a simple tool that has
the power to bring so much healing to profoundly brain-injured children.
Keep up the great work!

All the best!

Phyllis K. L.