Unleaded, Please

As we progress through Sam's healing on many different levels, the addition of chelation therapy has given us some amazing, if disturbing, results.

Chelation has for over 50 years been a time-tested and efficient method for removing toxic metals from the body. It was first utilized in World War II by the Germans who began to see the negative effects of heavy metals such as lead and mercury on people who made submarines. Excessive amounts of harmful metals in the body can cause a variety of symptoms, ranging from things like headaches, constipation, and colic all the way to brain dysfunction, seizures, and in extreme exposures, even death.

The toxic effects of metals are nothing new. In the middle ages and onward, tiny untraceable amounts of extremely harmful metals were used in the black art of assassination. Over 100 years ago, Lewis Carroll wrote of the Mad Hatter in his famous story "Alice in Wonderland"; it was common knowledge that "Mad Hatter's Disease" was an occupational hazard for those in the hatmaking business, which involved mercury as part of the manufacturing process. Lead in paint, pencils, and car fuel has been discovered the past century and steps have been taken to alleviate that adverse metal on the effects of the population.

When we started the diagnostic process with Sam, one of the tests involved sending a hair sample to a lab to be tested. The human body uses hair and fingernails as depositories for unwanted metals, so measuring the metals in the hair is one way of determining whether someone is carrying a heavy metal load.

The results were alarming: unusually high levels of several items, such as arsenic, aluminum, and lead. After more tests to make sure he would be able to adequately handle the chelation therapy, and after healing his gut to a sufficient degree, we begain under the eye of our trusted doctor to administer an oral chelating agent, DMSA.

Sam showed no adverse affects other than brief periods of slight diarrhea and increased stimming, and seemed to markedly improve. After awhile, we tested him again for metals, and he showed a much more normal amount. We also observed that quite a bit of mercury was pulled out, which did not even show up in harmful levels on the original test. We had heard that sometimes metals can hide in the body's tissues and not show up at first, but when the chelator was administered it must have loosened the mercury up and pulled them out.

A few months ago we switched to an IV chelator, which has shown to be even more effective in pulling some metals out. Again he showed no adverse effects from the therapy. He was tested again and the results were stunning: LEAD was leaving his body in THREE TIMES the normal amount!

We are so thankful to God for leading us to this therapy as a path for healing our whole boy. We also are left with more questions than we have answers for...
1. WHERE did these metals come from? (they can come from oral ingestion, the air we breathe, etc.)
2. WHEN did they get there? (it could be from 2 years ago when we believe Sam first suffered his onset of symptoms, but we don't know.)
3. When his chelation therapy has removed the load of metals, WILL our Sam be able to reach a state where his body is naturally disposing of them, as most of our bodies do, or will we always have to administer some kind of "help" like a chelating agent?

While we may never get the answers to the first two, we certainly will the third. Please continue to pray with us:
- Express thankfulness that the therapy has been so successful, improving Sam's condition significantly.
- Pray for continued success in removing the harmful load of metals and other substances from Sam's body.
- Pray for Sam's body to be restored to the way God originally designed it to be, to filter out the metals and toxins without any medicinal assistance.
- Pray for our insurance company to realize the IV chelator it is indeed a "needed" procedure, and to therefore cover their part of the cost of it, because currently they don't.
- Pray for continued insight for our doctor and continued faith for us.

And since I love you all so much, I'd like to impart a bit of advice...i think it would be a good idea to get rid of those dental fillings that happen to be 50 percent mercury. (Please...at least look into it!)