ROCKAWAY TOWNSHIP MOM FINDS A WAY THAT THE DOCTORS COULDN’T
February 27, 2013
Neighbor News (Denville Edition)
When the medical industry failed to heal her daughter of a deadly Autoimmune Hepatitis, Denise Otten took matters into her own hands. That journey has been chronicled in “Curing Courtney: Doctors Couldn’t Save Her… So Her Mom Did.”
Denise Otten of Rockaway Township has detailed her efforts to save her daughter in a book titled “Curing Courtney: Doctors Couldn’t Save Her… So Her Mom Did”
Otten, a Rockaway Township resident was discouraged from writing this book because she is not a doctor or a nurse. Her background is in finance. She responded to the concerns with, “But I’m a mother who would research, and call anyone if I thought there was an answer to save my daughter’s life.” She continued, “So I wrote this book to tell the world that there are alternative remedies to many autoimmune diseases. I’m the average American woman who works and brings up the kids and runs them all over town to their sporting events. If I can find an alternative remedy that healed (remission) my daughter of a deadly autoimmune disease, so can you.”
The story begins when Courtney, now a senior in high school, was 7 years old. Her mother noticed the whites of her eyes were yellow. “Like all mothers, I was scared of losing her and followed the doctors’ instructions completely,” said Otten. “The idea that a little 7-year-old could have hepatitis conjures thoughts of liver transplant and early death … which is exactly what can happen if the patient doesn’t respond to the standard drug treatment.”
The next five years were an odyssey of drug therapy and treatment at “arguably the best pediatric hospitals in New York City.” At the end, the doctors told the Ottens that the medicines were not working. Otten recalled, “They said she would have to take ‘alternative meds.’ At that point I was fed up with their meds and the horrid side effects it had on my now 12-year-old daughter. Her life was filled with her little body blowing up with the high doses of prednisone and the hair growing all over her body. We had to Nair her face, arms and legs regularly when she was 8 years old so that she would feel normal.”
A proponent of nutrition and exercise, Otten was ready to pursue a holistic treatment. “It seemed implausible that there was absolutely no other answer for this illness. I was willing to go to China to find another doctor who might know another cure,” stated Otten. Weeks of internet research led Otten to four doctors with four antioxidant protocols that she put together.
“Within three months my daughter was in remission,” said Otten. “That was five years ago, and she’s a beautiful healthy teenage athlete, who’s going to college in September.”
Taking a less-traveled path may have seemed bold. People told her she was “crazy to go against the medical community, and the doctor intimated that if I didn’t listen to him that she might get worse,” said Otten. “My husband was supportive because he knows that my kids are the most important thing to me in the world. As long as I found research and doctors to validate my findings, he was in my corner.”
Otten concluded, “I truly believe that the vitamins and nutraceuticals helped changed Courtney’s cellular structure so her body would have a balanced immune system and it would heal itself. But healing is not possible without faith. We, as her parents, gave Courtney everything she wanted for her birthday, almost like Make a Wish Foundation, and in return she said she would believe that she would get better. Her belief was strong. Courtney conquered the unthinkable.”
Otten’s first book signing took place earlier this month at Bobby’s News & Gifts in Boonton, where the book is available. She was also on Comcast, CN8, on “It’s Your Call.” For more information about the book, visit www.curingcourtney.com.
Email: kintish@northjersey.com
