After a routine flu shot last fall, Jennings said she began experiencing fever and painful body aches. The symptoms quickly progressed until she could only walk with a twisted, halting gait, and had trouble reading, doing simple math -- even remembering things. Her condition put a halt on her once-frenetic lifestyle.
Jennings developed another odd symptom -- a strange foreign accent; the Midwestern woman suddenly sounded British. "It sounds like an accent, but it's not. I just can't pronounce words anymore," she said.
Miraculously, Jennings could run. She also found out she could walk backwards, and even sideways, and that while doing so, her speech returned to normal.
Traditional medicine having failed her, Jennings said she decided to do something "outside the box," and ended up at a North Carolina clinic run by Dr. Rashid Buttar.
Buttar uses an unproven, alternative treatment for almost every medical condition, from autism to cancer. It's called "chelation," the chemical removal of metals from the body.
Within less than two weeks, Jennings' condition seemed to improve: she walked again, and her stutter disappeared.
But just as she was leaving Dr. Buttar's clinic on her last visit in December 2009 -- with "20/20's" cameras rolling -- it all seemed to fall apart. Jennings was in distress again. She could no longer walk forward, and had to be taken out in a wheelchair.
Novella is confident whatever she has was not caused by mercury in a flu shot.
Other experts consulted by "20/20" agree. Dr. Charles McKay, a board member of the American College of Medical Toxicology, said Jennings would have been exposed to far less mercury in a flu shot than in a tuna steak.
When asked by "20/20" about the effectiveness of his chelation treatments, Buttar claimed he gets results and pointed to patient testimonials on his website. But when pressed by Jim Avila that "anecdotal stories on the Internet are not science," Buttar responded: "Nobody said it was science."
"It's a psychogenic disorder rather than a neurological disorder," Novella said.
Novella feels the temporary improvements Jennings experienced while undergoing Buttar's treatment were also in her mind: she got better because she thought she would. He called it "the placebo effect on steroids."
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