BOY Couldn’t Speak A Word, Dentist Found This…

A six-year-old boy couldn’t speak a word, then his dentist makes a startling discovery. We all get it wrong; it is a universal truth that to err is human, and to be honest, if failure didn’t exist, it would be impossible for us to improve and learn new ways of doing things. However, there are mistakes that are more serious than others, where one bad decision can change a person’s destiny forever.

Mason was only 6 years old, and throughout his life, he had been largely non-verbal, that is, he had no ability to speak, a fact that, according to the doctors treating him, was due in part to a brain aneurysm he suffered at 10 days of age and to Sotos syndrome, which they also suspected he had. Sotos syndrome is a rare genetic disorder that affects facial structure and causes learning disabilities, preventing sufferers from being able to communicate fluently. Mason worked weekly with different specialists to try to improve his speech and find new ways to communicate with his environment, although the truth is that he hadn’t made much progress and his ability to communicate was practically nil.
His illness caused Mason to grow up very conditioned, and he was unable to develop like other children his age. He was able to read and understand what the words said, but he couldn’t pronounce them, which condemned him to live in an internal silence that ended up isolating him completely from the outside world. He couldn’t go to school or to any center for children with special abilities, since Mason did not have any mental or physical disability; he understood everything like other children, and his learning capacity was the same as that of any other person his age. In fact, he loved to read and spent long hours locked in his room devouring all kinds of adventure novels. Jules Verne and his fantasy and adventure novels were his favorite. Through it, Mason forgot his problems and felt he could be someone else. In books, any problem, no matter how big, had a solution; dreams came true and magic existed. It was all a kid like Mason could need to forget about his bad luck.
Unfortunately, the dream turned into a nightmare as soon as he closed the book and tried to verbalize a word. Nothing. He never said anything, and he would never get around to it. The reality is that despite his efforts and those of his family, Mason was only able to articulate the first part of a word, and the rest was unintelligible, making it impossible to understand him. Only his parents had managed to understand him through a complicated code of sounds and gestures, although even for them it was difficult, and they were often unable to decipher what their son wanted to tell them.
“My husband and I were the only ones who could understand him. My son couldn’t talk to anyone else. The other children his age wouldn’t even go near him because they were afraid of him or because they just didn’t understand what was happening to him. It was really heartbreaking to see him all alone and to see how he struggled to speak and couldn’t make a sound,” said Meredith, recalling with sadness the hard times his family had to live through.
His parents were very worried about him; they didn’t want Mason to grow up that way and feared that he might fall into a deep depression that would complicate things even more. So they decided to seek help and go in search of a good therapist and speech therapist to help him express himself in his own way and make him feel understood. Mason at first refused to see anyone; he was too embarrassed and didn’t like to meet strangers to avoid having to watch their reaction to see him stammer out words.
“Honey, I assure you, the person who comes will not laugh at you. On the contrary, it’ll help you and make you feel better. Let us help you, Mason. Your father and I, we only want what’s best for you,” his mother pleaded, concerned to see her son so depressed and isolated.
Mason continued to refuse, although he really had no choice but to accept what his parents were telling him. He was only 6 years old, and even if he didn’t like it, they were the ones making decisions for him. It wasn’t easy, but after a long search and after trying three different professionals, Mason seemed to feel comfortable and made progress with a famous therapist in Texas, Stella Clark. Stella was a famous American speech therapist who had achieved great miracles in cases of children with great difficulty communicating, so Mason’s parents saw her as their last chance to work a miracle and make their son talk.
But it didn’t happen. During the first few weeks of treatment, Mason seemed to begin to feel more confident and to pronounce a few words better, but nothing that he hadn’t been able to do before. The only noticeable breakthrough from his meetings was getting Mason to start writing down everything he was feeling and thinking in a journal so he could communicate better with his parents and be able to release everything he was feeling.
“Writing is the best tool we have to express everything we’re unable to say out loud. I know you’re a great reader, so I trust you’re also a great writer. All good readers end up being good writers. Writing will make you feel liberated and calmer, Mason, and you’ll also create a stronger bond with your parents and those you allow reading to you,” Stella calmly explained to Mason during one of their sessions.
Mason felt much better when he started writing in his journal, but nothing could make him forget that his big problem remained unsolved. Writing became his greatest ally, and since he began to write down everything he was thinking, his parents were able to communicate more with him and get to know him better. However, nothing was ever enough, and after a while, Mason became frustrated again and was in no mood to write or read; he would lock himself in his room for hours in silence, bemoaning his fate.
“Nothing was really working,” his mother Meredith explained in an interview she gave to Inside Edition. “He had probably a five-word vocabulary, and we were looking for alternative means of communication so others could understand him and have more or less fluency in conversation with him, but nothing was working,” the boy’s mother confessed with great sadness.
The poor boy’s life didn’t seem to be moving forward, and the more time he spent trying to get better, the sadder he felt. His parents had already given up hope of ever getting their son to talk until finally, one day, his luck changed, and it did so in the most unexpected way. It happened when, after several days complaining of severe pain in a tooth, Mason decided to agree to go to the dentist. Mason hated going to the dentist and always complained about how painful it was to have any treatment. Trying to make it easier for him and to prevent their son from refusing to go to the dentist, his mother decided to make an appointment at another dental clinic. She did so at the prestigious dental clinic of Dr. Amy Ludman Lazar, an eminence in the field; if anyone could keep Mason from complaining while getting a filling, it was her.
However, as the doctor examined Mason’s oral cavity for the source of his pain, she found something else, something that would change little Mason’s life forever and make him feel like a normal kid again. Upon examination, Dr. Amy Ludman Lazar noticed that Mason’s tongue was stuck to the base of his mouth, known as ankyloglossia. Upon realizing this and carefully reading the child’s entire medical file, Dr. Amy returned to her office for a few minutes for a couple of consultations to make sure of her diagnosis and what the next step was. After confirming it, the doctor ran to find Meredith and her husband, Dale, in the waiting room and asked them if she could use the laser to perform the 10-second procedure that would correct his ankyloglossia. After listening carefully and doing a quick Google search, they agreed.
“When you’re in your mom’s womb, you have webbed fingers and webbed toes, and when you’re developing, your tongue’s on the floor of your mouth. It separates in a similar way through the same process, and an ankyloglossia is simply an incomplete separation. There’s no time to waste. I’m sure that with this small intervention, your son will be able to speak, and he’ll do so without any problems. Your son is healthy; I assure you, he has none of the disorders that appear in his file. It’s much simpler. He always was. I’m sorry you had to wait this long to find out,” Ludman Lazar hastily explained to Mason’s parents.
“Do what you have to do, doctor. If you give me your word that my son will speak again and will be a normal child, I believe you. There’s nothing we want more than to see our son healthy and happy,” the child’s mother hurried to say excitedly when she heard the surprising news that the dentist had given them.
When they got home, in only a few hours after the procedure, Mason started talking; it was a true miracle. That night, after he came home from the clinic, he started talking.
“I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, can we watch a movie?”
“He blew us away with his first full sentences within 5 hours of coming home. We didn’t expect to have results so quickly,” Meredith says. “It was shocking to hear him speak for the first time. It was a miracle.”
After the intervention, Mason continued to work with a speech therapist to advance his progress quickly and went from speaking as a one-year-old to doing it as one of four, just a few months after his intervention at the dentist. Doctors expect him to be at the same level as other children his age when he turns 13, something really incredible taking into account the previous diagnosis they had to face. In addition, now Mason could finally eat without choking; they were all advantages. His life was completely changed in just a few hours, and all thanks to a toothache. Mason had never returned so happy from a visit to the dentist.
“He’ll never forget what that talented dentist did for him and his family,” Meredith says. “The experience taught her to fight for her son and listen to her instinct. Parents must rely more on our instinct on our children. If there’s something you don’t understand and you feel that you should change it for the sake of your child, do it. Doctors may tell you one thing, but you must keep looking and keep trying because normally time ends up giving us the reason. You are the one who knows your child best; no doctor or therapy can ever have the connection that a father and mother have with their children,” Meredith said in her interview.
Currently, Mason speaks fluently and at the same level as any child his age. His parents decided to take legal action after discovering what was really happening to their son, denouncing all the doctors who misdiagnosed their son and condemned him to a life full of loneliness and sadness. The judge who took his case agreed with them, and the family was compensated for medical negligence with a generous amount of money. Part of the money was saved for the university for Mason, who is very clear that he wants to be a writer of fantasy novels, but everything else was used to make a great family trip throughout Europe and start living in peace at last.