OUR STORY
I started Turnto after our family was told there were “no treatment options” to help our son living with a rare type of Cerebral Palsy.
So of course - I did what we all do - and turned to good old Doctor Google, and discovered the amazing world of private Facebook groups. I remember finding this blog late one night, of some family trying an orthopaedic suit. I was so desperate to try something - that I just ordered this piece of equipment on the spot. Until that day, our son couldn’t sit. We put it on, and he sat for the first time. We took the suit off and he kept being able to sit. That was the moment we knew that there were things we could do to dramatically help our boys’ lives. But it was on us to find them.
And so began this epic quest to find more treatments for our kids. The crazy thing is that we did. The things we were learning were already in the medical literature once I started digging.
But you see, our family story is incredibly common.
You know the ones facing cancer, some random autoimmune condition, or have a family member with a neurological condition. Patients cannot find cutting-edge treatments without becoming full-time researchers.
It takes those who care the most about this, to disrupt this ineffective and broken system.
We can’t afford to wait decades when we are living with these conditions today
When we are first diagnosed with a chronic illness - we are not equipped with the information to manage it. There is no magic pamphlet with answers to all the questions we have. We’re often told - ‘there is no cure, good luck, and goodbye’.
Your appointment may have come to a close, but you do not. A new journey begins, but there is no map to navigate it. The burden is on us - as patients - to understand how to manage our illnesses.
However, with 120 new medical papers being published every hour in biomedicine alone, nobody can keep up with this information overload.
This is not to even mention that research states that it takes an average of 12 years for this medical research to translate into medical interventions.
For the 2.7 billion of us who are living with a chronic illness today - this is too long.
