It could always be worse!
Everything seemed to go cuckoo with the boys’ health toward the end of the summer. Nothing was clear cut about their situation, and no
one seemed to know what was going on.
The boys both had weird skin lesions that developed a few
days after coming back from a camping trip. We did everything humanly possible
to figure out what could be going on. Was it contact allergies? Were they bug bites? Was
it some other condition? We had no idea and neither did the doctors. And after
several days, when Monkey seemed to be getting better, Prince Charming was much
worse and literally swelling before our eyes.
No one could tell us what was going on. The pediatrician
didn’t know. The doctors at a second clinic didn’t know, even after 3 hours of
them talking, researching and conferring with other doctors in the practice. No
one knew.
Even after 10 (yes, TEN!)
vials of blood taken between the boys for tons of tests, no one knew. (Getting
the blood draw is a whole other story that requires consumption of a stiff
drink – or several – before I am able to speak about it…)
The skin issue remains a mystery to this day, but thankfully
the rashes are now gone. After about a week of not knowing what to do, making
lots of phone calls, visiting various doctors, and doing endless research on
the internet, I figured out a simple cure without any help from the doctors.
The secret is activated charcoal! I stuck a little pile of
charcoal on top of the lesions and covered them with a bandage overnight. By
morning my swollen Prince Charming was much less puffy. It was a messy miracle that
took about 2 days, cost all of 3 bucks, didn’t hurt, and didn’t have any side
effects. I wish I had figured it out sooner!
In and among the mystery skin issue, we were also dealing
with some additional symptoms and concerns in Monkey. Cardiac symptoms.
Yes, you heard that right. In particular, tachycardia. If
you are not sure what tachycardia is, it’s when the heart rate becomes
accelerated for no apparent reason.
You could have knocked me over with a feather when we
figured out he was having heart issues. It was so unexpected.
When it first started happening, we thought it might have
been an upset stomach, possible cold/flu, or even food poisoning. I was
starting to feel like I was on Dr. House’s team with all
of the research and differential diagnosis I was attempting.
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Each time Monkey would get his strange symptoms he seemed to
recover quickly (within minutes or hours). There was only one time that his
symptoms lasted for more than a day. He never developed any other symptoms of
illness. It seemed strange that he apparently kept coming down with something
but then the sickness never materialized. We knew something was up.
It was by accident that I figured out his heart was racing.
From that point forward, we began documenting all of his symptoms and even
found an app for our smart phones that would monitor heart rate. Then we got in
to see a pediatric cardiologist.
Never in my wildest dreams did I expect one of my children
to have a need for a cardiologist!
She sent us home with a portable heart monitor that we used
to record any incidences as they occurred. Monkey was still being
monitored when school started, so then I had to have a long discussion with the
school nurse and his teacher to go over the details of the heart monitor in case
he had tachycardia at school. What fun.
After all of that, and a couple of visits to the naturopath,
we still have a lot of questions about the boys’ health issues over the summer.
We don’t know exactly what happened with either of them. We don’t know if the
skin issues were related to the cardiac issues. We don’t know if any of the
symptoms will come back.
The cardiac symptoms began going away once I started on a
supplement protocol given to us by our naturopath to help Monkey’s immune
system, focusing heavily on natural anti-virals. I did that for two weeks and
as a result he stopped having his cardiac episodes.
We had a follow up appointment with the pediatric
cardiologist to go over the heart monitor results. I reported the information
about the naturopath’s treatment protocol and how the episodes tapered off and
then stopped. Much to my surprise, she told me that since the naturopath’s
protocol seemed to work, I should immediately begin doing it again in the
future should Monkey’s episodes return.
What? A mainstream medicine person agreed with my naturopath
and that natural methods worked and should be used again? I was happily
shocked. Usually, information like this is met with disdain in the traditional
medical community.
In our first visit with the cardiologist, she said there was
a chance that his heart symptoms were being caused by some kind of virus. We
were never able to pinpoint an exact virus from the myriad of tests run with
the blood draws. So, she felt that success of the anti-viral supplements through
our naturopath proved that Monkey’s heart issue was definitely being caused by some
unknown virus. And, it could happen again. So, I will keep anti-viral
supplements on hand for such an occasion.
All of this is to say, that during this time of health
uncertainty, I really felt the stress of not knowing what was wrong and feeling
helpless to fix it. Keeping that in mind, I know that it can always be worse.
Someone else always has a worse situation than you.
I better understood that I should not take my boys’ good
health for granted. They have come a LONG way in their journey with autism and
are much healthier than they were when they were younger! We have made a lot of
changes, including the GFCF diet and proper supplementation. My boys are better
because of it. I recognize that my life is much different now than it otherwise
would have been had things not changed and I hadn’t been open to visiting a
naturopath and doing other sorts of non-traditional treatments.
During this time of concern over the summer, I really began
to think of everyone I know that has dealt with things far worse than I can even
imagine as a parent. I have friends who have children with Down syndrome that
have dealt with multiple heart surgeries in their babies. I have another friend
who had a child born with a significant heart defect, and right after her baby had
a procedure to essentially re-build his heart, their apartment burned down and
they lost everything while their son was recovering in the hospital. I have
friends who have children with autism that cannot speak and still wear diapers
at ages 8, 10, or even 16.
I can think of tons of examples of families that have a
different experience with their child, and in my mind and my own experience it
seems almost too difficult to imagine. What I’ve dealt with in my own boys is
much more challenging than many of my friends have had with their children.
But, we all deal with the cards we are dealt.
We all have different experiences, challenges and triumphs.
All we can do is try to do the very best we can in each moment of crisis or
moment of joy. The boys’ health scares over the summer really brought that into
focus for me.
I am so thankful for everything with my boys. Even though things
have been hard in many ways, they’ve also been so wonderful in others. I am
grateful for the path we are on, despite the twists, turns and brick walls
along the way. I am also keenly aware that it could always be worse, and I’m
exceedingly glad that today is a better day.
