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02/02/10 |
                              
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The Fragility of Recovery
The past 7 weeks have been the most frustrating of my entire life. Eight weeks ago we met with Dr Usman. We were all elated by how well Cam was doing. We were finally becoming comfortable with applying the word "recovered" to Cameron, for while he continued to have medical related issues, all of his "autism symptoms" were long gone. Even Cameron's methylation cycle had returned to normal and was working appropriately without assistance. We were primarily concerned and focused on Cameron's speech articulation issues. His vocabulary was full and appropriate, but he was still difficult to understand because the neuropathy in and around his mouth made it difficult to articulate sounds appropriately. Then...the light bulb broke! I drove up to the children's school one afternoon and discovered a large stack of fluorescent light fixtures and bulbs had toppled over outside the building (they were being replaced with incandescent fixtures in the classrooms) and at least one fluorescent bulb had broken on the porch by the exterior door to wing of the school that Cam's classroom was located in. I immediately reported this to the school director and asked if she understood that fluorescents contain mercury and that door that the bulbs broke by needed to be sealed off and that the debris needed to be cleaned up appropriately and thoroughly. She told me that she understood. The week that followed Cameron's behavior was irradict. He began to have symptoms return that we had not seen months. We were in the middle of a homeopathic clear so we attributed these changes to that. However, the symptoms were not passing as they should have with a clear. After five more days of school I discovered that the broken bulb(s) had not been handled appropriately. I found debris from the incident near Cameron's backpack, coat and lunchbox which all sit in the hallway next to the door where the bulb broke. I also found Cameron laying on his stomach on his classroom floor screaming uncontrollably. This was behavior/symptoms we haven't seen in 2 years. Then I learned from the director that she had never sealed off (or even locked the back door), that the bulbs had been thrown into the dumpster, the outside hosed down, and the debris tracked inside had been vacuumed (dispersing the mercury throughout the entire building). We did not intend to return our children to school until the school was properly inspected and cleaned by a professional mercury removal company. Instead our children were expelled from school for my unwillingness to accept the directors word for the safety status of the building. So we are home schooling now and shopping for a school for next fall. However, this acute exposure has sent Cameron into a complete tailspin. His methylation cycle has crashed and his liver and kidneys keep backing up. When this happens he begins to rage (hitting, spitting, throwing things) even to the point of being in a complete trance and coming to 20 minutes later asking what happened and why the house is all tore up. He feels so badly when he learns that he caused so much destruction but truly has no control. All of this is making choosing a school for next year very difficult. He was not able to get into the school that we were hoping to enroll him into next year because of this return of symptoms. I don't know what to expect for him come the fall though. I hope that we can quickly move this poison out of him and return back to the track we were on in February, but I fear it could take longer and that we may need to continue home schooling and focusing on medical treatments. Still, as horrible as Cameron's regression has been. We are thankful that he was not even more severely affected, especially because our friends' son was even more dramatically affected. We have known Elliott since he and Cameron were 4 years old. He has always been very high functioning Aspergers in that time. Elliott's parents got a clue about the vaccine connection to their son's symptoms and had discontinued vaccinating much sooner than we had. However, the acute exposure from the light bulb was enough to tip Elliott's threshold and send him into full blown moderate/severe Autism. The last day the children were in school and I found Cameron screaming in pain on the floor was also the day Elliott stopped talking. He suddenly lost all of his speech, began losing control over his bladder and bowels and his muscles tone diminished since this environmental exposure at school. Here is a link to video footage of Elliott taken before and after the exposure to mercury at school. (note: if you have difficulty viewing the video you may need to update your version of Quicktime). Elliott's parents are doing all they can for him, as they always have. However, their road had just become so much longer than it was mapped out for two months ago. The have the additional challenge of Elliott's allergy to sulphur. Currently, every mercury chelator available is sulphur based. Dr Boyd Haley had developed a new chelator that has been awaiting FDA approval for the past year. This new chelator does not contain sulphur, is able to cross the brain blood barrier (no other mercury chelator is able to do this), and has tested to be more efficient and safe than anything else on the market. Unfortunately, the FDA is dragging its feet in approving this much needed product and delaying the recovering of thousands if not millions of children. Fluorescent Light Toxicity I'm going to interrupt this update for a moment to share with you the dangers of fluorescent light bulbs. This is especially important since the Federal government passed a law in December (in the 2007 Energy Act) which will require the elimination of all inefficient light bulbs by 2012 and increasing the use of fluorescents. The EPA standard for mercury poisoning is .01mcg of Mercury (Hg) per kg of body weight. Both Elliott and Cameron weigh 40lbs (18kg), therefore the EPA would have considered them to have been Mercury poisoned at .18mcg of Mercury exposure. One 40w fluorescent light bulb (standard four foot tube) contains 3 grams of Mercury in each tube (equal to 3 million mcg). This is the type of tube(s) that broke and were improperly cleaned up at the children's school. Even if only one tube was broken and mishandled the exposure to the children in the school is millions of times over the EPA's limit of mercury poisoning. Additionally, CFLs (compact fluorescents), which are commonly replacing incandescents in the efforts of energy efficiency, may contain between 3-5 mg of Hg depending on wattage. Significantly lower than the four foot tubes, yet thousands of times over the EPA standards. The dangers of these fluorescent bulbs not only occurs when they break, but also when they are disposed of and placed in landfills (exposing our air, soil and water systems to Hg) and to a limited extent when they are in use. We've made a very conscious decision to not have any fluorescent fixtures in our new home. We are trying to balance health, energy efficiency and environmental concerns in the construction of our new home. Many of our light fixtures will have LED light bulbs in them instead of incandescent or fluorescents. LEDs will allow us to reduce energy costs while not exposing our children or the environment to unnecessary poisons. Autism Yesterday Generation Rescue has produced a new movie entitled "Autism Yesterday." This new film is a thirty minute documentary about five families whose children have recovered from Autism through biomedical treatments. The film was premiered world wide on Thursday, April 17 with the help of Generation Rescue's Rescue Angels. As a volunteer Rescue Angel, I organized a local premiere in my community. There was a very bad storm Thursday evening. Even so, we had 33 people join us for the premiere and a wonderful open discussion afterward. I had invited local parents, autism groups, DAN doctors, therapists, community members, the press and 100 local "traditional" doctors (pediatricians, family physicians, pediatric neurologists, pediatric and gastroenterologists). We were fortunate enough to have one doctor join us, a few therapists and homeopaths and many parents. The following morning I was awakened by a call from a reporter at our local CBS affiliate. She had received my invitation to the premiere and wanted to know how the premiere went. She explained to me that she is currently working on a special segment for CBS about the connection between vaccines and Autism. She asked a few more questions and then asked if our family would agree to be interviewed on camera for the special. Yes! Please! Our community had been waiting to be heard for years. We certainly would always welcome the opportunity to have our children's voices heard. "Autism Yesterday" is now available for sale at Amazon. The proceeds benefit Generation Rescue. You may also include a review of the movie on Amazon's website. You may also view a trailer for the film at www.autismyesterday.com . As the mother of a child who is recovering from Autism, this film embodies everything we have lived and feel about autism and recovery. Everybody needs to see this film, especially if you have been touched by autism. Cam's Autobiography Cameron has been a drawing, coloring and writing machine since receiving intensive IMT treatment in December. He used to hate to color, would never draw and we would often have to bribe him to write anything. Now he goes through packs of paper every week. One day he had a bunch of pictures spread out in the family room. I saw them and assumed he was drawing pictures for a new game he was making up (something he had been doing a lot of lately). Later that afternoon Cam brought all of the pictures to me and began laying them out on the kitchen counter for me to inspect. I asked him what they were and he began explaining them to me. I was amazed. He had drawn a series of pictures depicting his life story. We went through each picture together. Cameron explained each drawing as I took dictation and wrote down his explanation on the back of each picture. I have since scanned each of his drawings into my computer and placed them together in scrapbook format adding my dictation of Cameron's explanations into work balloons on each page. I am including them here to share with you all.
This site was last updated 01/09/09
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