Shintaro Kawakami was born on October 15, 1982, in Okayama-city, Japan. Due to placenta abruptio he was born by Cesarean section in the seventh month of pregnancy. Shintaro weighed only 1905 grams at birth, and he had only a brief birth cry. He was very pale following his birth and received light therapy in an incubator for kernicterus. Because his breathing was shallow, he was transferred to a bigger hospital. He was given oxygen on the way and was placed in an artificial heart and lung machine for three days. He stayed in the hospital for over one month, until he weighed over 2500 grams.
When he was 18 months old, Shintaro was diagnosed as having cerebral palsy. He started having seizures at three years of age and was treated with medication. He began to walk when he was four years old and received various physical therapies until his mother attended the What To Do About Your Brain-Injured Child Course in January 1994 in Kobe, Japan. At that time Shintaro was 11 years old.
Based on the information they obtained from The Institutes books and the course, his parents started a modest neurological organization program. Shintaro was detoxified without complications from two anticonvulsant medications he had been taking since he was three years old. During the previous eight years Shintaro had had about a hundred seizures, but they completely disappeared before his eleventh birthday. Encouraged by these results, his parents intensified their son's program.
When he was seen by the staff for the first time in August 1995, his parents reported that Shintaro's major problems were his uncoordinated walking–his feet turned in and his heels were off the ground when he walked–and that he was behind his peers academically. He had poor convergence and easily became tired. He was reading beginner books at the first-grade level, which he read very slowly and skipped letters.
His understanding and language were at the level of a five-year-old, and he could carry out only simple daily conversation. He was significantly behind in his writing. Shintaro had difficulty using both hands together, such as in screwing the lid of a jar. He was hypersensitive in tactility and smell, and he was inappropriate socially, repeating questions and comments.
Shintaro's neurological age at his initial evaluation was 60.83 months out of a possible 72 months, while his chronological age was 154 months. He was diagnosed by The Institutes staff as having a severe, diffused, bilateral midbrain injury.
For three and a half years, Shintaro and his parents worked diligently each day to achieve the full neurological organization program designed by the staff. During these years Shintaro worked very hard academically. He began to take a biology course at the junior high school.
Shintaro realized that it was very important for him to work hard so that he could pass a high school exam. He thus intensified his efforts, studying school subjects that included Japanese, English, and mathematics. As a result he successfully passed a high school exam when he was 15 years old.
In January 1999, his parents stated that Shintaro's strong points are: honesty, diligence, politeness, and an optimistic and positive way of thinking; his weaknesses are: a lack of social experience, a lack of work experience, and slow writing, although he has begun to catch up in this regard. His parents thus believed that their son was ready to enroll in school full-time.
The staff and parents agreed that Shintaro Kawakami should graduate to life and let the experiences of life polish off whatever neurological problems might remain.
