"I am an 18 year old girl from Norway. My mother and I have a very close relationship and we have always been like best friends.

My mother has been in great shape as long as I can remember, although she has had trouble with migraine headaches since she was a teenager. In spite of the migraines she kept on going, but two years ago it all came to a sudden stop. She got very sick and couldn't even walk up the stairs without getting tired. We were all scared, but the thing that scared us the most was that if she worked out, she got even worse. She went to the doctor, but he didn't believe her when she complained about pain and gained weight. He said that she was probably just getting older and therefore was depressed. It was terrible to see her sad because she couldn't work and be with me as much as she wanted to and I hated the fact that she thought she was fat and ugly.

I know my mother and I knew that it had to be something more than what the doctor had said. She went to another doctor to get a second opinion and they finally found out that she had hypothyroidism and that she also was starting to develop clear signs of asthma. Because it took so long to find that out, her illness had worsened and the medicine didn't help. I watched my mother lose her job, her health, her ability to do things with me and my brothers, and her physique and self-esteem. This was difficult for the whole family and I was very afraid that she would get even sicker. These illnesses didn't run in the family and it was scary that she got so sick in such short time.

My stepfather spent several hours awake on the computer looking for help. After some time he read some journal articles written by Dr. Erin Elster. Erin Elster is an upper cervical specialist and had written several articles about similar cases. She said that my mother's problems could occur as a result of trauma to the cervical spine. My stepfather wrote Dr. Elster about my mother. The only problem was that there are few people who are trained to perform this technique to the spine. This meant that my mother had to leave me and my stepfather and go to a new country totally alone. She was reluctant to do it, not only because she was scared, but also because that meant that she had to leave me for several weeks at a time many times. But she understood that a sick mom is no better than a mom that's away a lot and she finally went.

The flight took fourteen hours and she was tired when she came to Boulder, Colorado in America. My mother learned that Erin too had been sick with asthma and that that is the reason that she got trained to help others with the same treatment. My mother soon noticed the difference and after only a few treatments she went jogging, something that she hadn't been able to do in two years.

As my mother got better, she wanted to help others also, because that's the type of person she is. Because this is such a rare procedure, most people don't know about it yet, and when my mother went to the local paper to ask them to write about what Erin did, they didn't care.

I am convinced that there are many people out there that can also be helped. I hope that more doctors will choose to become trained so that more people can be helped and that more countries will be able to offer this treatment so people won't have to travel so far. I also want to thank Dr. Elster because she has given me my mother back and I want her to be able to help other moms and children."

~ Britt H's daughter, Norway