Tuesday, June 30, 2009

More questions, as usual

Another new layer unfolds. It always appears that with our gains, comes the confusion of additional changes. We have been seeing major gains in Grayson lately, he is just flourishing in between rounds of chelation, but with each round we unveil yet another new possible problem. It seems like we change his supplements monthly....talk about heavy on the wallet? And with each new issue comes the recommendation of more testing...also out of pocket expenses for us. We just can't keep going at this pace or we will be out of a house in no time! We are trying to pace ourselves, but this is something that is very hard to do. A parent wants to do EVERYTHING possible to help their child, NOW, not when the paycheck allows it. It is painful to know that we need to be doing more for him, but we are forced to decide on what is most important at the time...ya know, like eat dinner or try a new supplement that MIGHT work...pay the gas bill or run another test to see how his liver is handling the chelation. How does one prioritize these things when they don't have a decent flow of income, is beyond me?? I am grateful for our ability to at least do what we can.

So the antifunal and antibacterial meds worked wonders, wow, what a difference!! We see such marvelous gains in him, he is calmer more regularly, he is waking in a GREAT mood, sleeping well and until after 8am every day (heaven!) sometimes I even have to wake him after 9:15am! The down side to the meds is that they put additional strain on the liver, which mercury and chelation also do. This is such a balancing game. We have increased the appropriate vitamins: vitamin C, B and E three times a day, plus we have added an additional liver support, artichoke extract. We also figured out that he probably has adrenal fatigue, which would cause the severe mood swings so we added Adrenal Cortex Extract, perhaps this is the cause for our recent wows. He has been pretty amazing for the past three days or so...hmmm, yes, it might be the ACE after all! BUT....isn't this always the way, with all these great changes we have seen a significant increase in itching. Crazy, frustrating, nonstop all over body itching!! He uses the back of his hands rather than fingertips, he rubs under his chin, across his forehead, along the sides of his head and ears, up his forearms rubbing them along the sides of his body, then he truly itches in the classic sense, his shins and ankles, both sides at the same time. This goes on all the time lately and it has been irking me trying to figure out the cause. We have spoken with Dr. Woeller and Dr. Schmidt. We have considered allergies, although it's not consistent with anything in particular (we tried removing foods and using Benedryl, which interestingly sometimes helps for a while) but nothing seemed to be addressing the root cause. I posted this concern on the Autism-Mercury Yahoo Group site and one person struck a cord. He said that liver stress can cause whole body itching. Between chelation, heavy metals moving through his body and then taking the additional medications, this makes complete sense. Of course, he recommended more testing, but he also said that if we increase his liver support and the itching subsides, we have our answer. I tested this tonight and it seems to have actually worked!! Although, only for about 2 hours or so. I am going to work with his Milk Thistle (which I don't think I have been dosing enough daily) and artichoke extract and might even add in another liver support, maybe going back to the liver life. Even with this newest event, we couldn't be happier with the results of the medications! We have to go back on them for one more round, to be sure we got all of the spores in every stage of their life cycle. Then about 7 days after we stop the Flagyl this time around, we are going to do another OAT test and see how his levels have changed. This is all fine and dandy, but what I am really curious about is how we will keep them down naturally, after we have stopped all of the meds. That is yet to be determined and only time will tell, but for now, I am enjoying the ride!

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