Approaching the 2nd year….

I was doing some searching the other day and reading back on some posts from about a year ago.  I had written a lot of updates about Camden; something I’ve not done in quite a while.  Is it because he’s all better?  I wish I could say that. 

No, I guess I’m just keeping a lot of my feelings inside instead of sharing them.

But here we are, approaching his 2nd birthday soon, and I’m having a lot of the same feelings that I wrote about a year ago. 

Physically, Camden is where he should be.  He was discharged from physical therapy months ago, and we haven’t looked back since.  He walks, runs, jumps, bounces, wrestles.  He does everything a 23-month old boy should do!

But the reflux and allergies are still there.  In fact, in the last few months we’ve had a new allergy to deal with:  environmental allergies. 

I just keep pressing on thinking this is who Camden is and how life is with Camden.  When life throws you a bit of a curve ball, you deal with it.  You adjust.  You press on.  Right?

As I said in his one-year tribute, God doesn’t make mistakes. 

I think everyone who has a challenge though comes to a breaking point where they think why? when will it get better? why?

And that’s kind of where I am today.

Sometimes I wonder why I have these hard times.  I mean, there are people out there in much worse situations that would trade places with me any day.  Why must I feel  down? 

No one wants their child sick or to suffer.  Especially when you have three healthy children, you wonder what you did wrong with the fourth.  Is it something I did?  Could I have prevented this?

I will say, on a positive note, that Camden has forced me to research and learn so much that I can’t say I would have if he was perfectly healthy.  I do appreciate that.  Because that allows the rest of us to be more healthy too. 

So as we approach Camden’s 2nd birthday, here is an update on where Camden is today and what we’re doing.

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Camden still sees the chiropractor once a week.  After a year, we should move to less than that, but it’s just not happening.  We have gone two or three weeks without going (and I get hopeful thinking things are better), but it doesn’t last.  Something triggers something inside him and if I want some sleep and Camden wants to be comfortable again, we need to go. 

Dr. E has helped Camden tremendously because not only is she a chiropractor (who treats naturally), she is a health information junkie. :)  She has a PhD in nutrition and believes the body can heal itself naturally.   This is what Camden needs as his body doesn’t do well with all the chemical-induced stuff out there.  She has offered so much knowledge and wisdom to us in helping Camden that I can only believe it was a God-send that we found this chiropractor.

But about a month ago, even Dr.E had some concerns about Camden and why he wasn’t getting better.  He had developed an awful, oozing, bleeding rash of some sort.  He had been suffering from this rash for a month and a half and I was fearing infection. 

This is a bit of what he looked like:

It would ooze, bleed, itch and keep spreading.  Just as one area cleared up, another area would get bad.  We were up with him crying at night because it bothered him so much.  It would itch him so he would itch it, but then it hurt when he itched it.  Endless battle.

No, I didn’t take him to the doctor.  I know you’re saying I’m nuts, but having never received a solid answer from ANY doctor on his oozing and bleeding ears, I didn’t want to go that route again.  “Um, I think it’s this, so try this cream.”  I also didn’t want Camden put on a steroid which is probably what they would have done to clear this up.  That would lower his immunity even more and that’s the last thing we need.  Plus, it would only be a temporary fix.  I go for permanent fixes.

Dr. E  finally said he needed more help and suggested a naturopath doctor.  She said he would do a NES scan that would be able to scan the whole body and see better what was going on.  Maybe some organ wasn’t working  properly and that was why Camden had all these symptoms. 

Honestly, I was a bit hesitant at first on the whole naturopath doctor.  Yes, I believe in nutrition, but why would this doctor be the one finally able to help us?

So I waited until that afternoon when Camden was napping and made the call to discuss with someone at this naturopath office what they exactly did.  Well, lo and behold, I got to talk to the actual doctor himself!

He told me exactly what they did, which is exactly what I wanted to do for months.  I just didn’t know it could actually be done!

Here’s the gist of it:  The doctor listens to all the symptoms thoroughly.  Then he does something called a NES scan, which is a scientific method and machine that scans the WHOLE body.  It is noninvasive and harmless.  All computerized.  With that, he’s able to see everything inside Camden.  It tells us where he is deficient in areas of his body and then based on the results of the scan, he prescribes homeopathic drops to help build up that area of the body; thus, decreasing or even eliminating the symptoms. 

His words were: “We focus on the symptoms, NOT on a disease, and we heal the symptoms, therefore, preventing a disease.”

For the longest time I have assumed that Camden was deficient in areas—mainly in vitamins—and I was even thinking of doing a blood test to find out where we could increase certain vitamins to help him out.  This scan was able to tell us that but also so much more.  It scans every area of your body including your immune system, live, kidney, digestion, nutrition, cells, blood, vitamin levels, environmental exposures—EVERYTHING!!!!!!  They pride themselves on success—they get results!  They find out the causes before the disease.

So what were Camden’s results?  Well, every area of his body that helps to fight off immunity were LOW.  There’s a color scale from yellow, being good, to red, being bad.  Every immunity organ, cell, etc. in Camden was red.  The one the doctor chose to focus on was his white blood cells.  They were red which indicated they were not working 100%.  Now, go look on Wikipedia at what your white blood cells really do in your body and you will clearly see why Camden has a lot of his symptoms, especially all his allergies.  So one homeopathic drop that he’s on right now is working on building up his white blood cells.  This should help with Camden’s allergies, food and environmental.

The second red-flag area was his pancreas.  The pancreas produces the full spectrum of digestive enzymes and when not working at 100%, things like reflux can appear.  The doctor thinks that by focusing on getting Camden’s pancreas working better, it will help decrease or even eliminate his reflux.

The third area was his spleen.  The spleen is another immunity fighter.  Yes, you can live without your spleen, but without a spleen a person has an increased susceptibility to infections due to the loss of an immune function that the liver, which takes over the spleen’s functions when it’s removed, is unable to compensate for.  Again, getting Camden’s spleen functioning at 100% will help him fight off viruses, infections, etc.

Camden had some other areas, such as his duodenum which helps with absorption of nutrients, and Vitamin B deficiencies, but the doctor wanted to focus on the cells, pancreas, and spleen first and foremost.  He felt that by doing this, it would help decrease or eliminate a lot of the symptoms Camden is having.

I felt very overwhelmed when I walked out of there.  I was overloaded with information, but everything that doctor said made sense.  He didn’t make me feel like I was making up anything or crazy for anything or blow me off in any way.  He explained everything to me (so knowledgeable!) and told me Camden would get better, that he didn’t have to just live with all these allergies and reflux.  He says they focus on supporting the healthy function of these areas. 

He wanted to see Camden in another month to rescan him and make sure we were on the right track.  We should notice improvement by that time.  That was June 21st. 

Have we noticed improvement?  Unfortunately, I can’t say that we have.  Camden’s ears have gone back to oozing and bleeding, he still has weird rashes, he has yeast infections and we’re still going to the chiropractor weekly, if not more, to help alleviate reflux symptoms.  We’ve had many more sleepless nights with much more crying!  He had a new reaction to bug spray, which resulted in respiratory symptoms that were quite scary.  Honestly, it’s been a rough and tough month. 

I’ve asked about all this and I’ve been told that it’s most likely all a healing process for Camden’s body and it may have to get worse before it gets better.  I’m praying this is true.

Our follow-up appointment is July 19th.  One day before Camden’s 2nd birthday.  I am anxious to see what the results are of his second scan.  I am also anxious to share with the doctor what we’ve gone through with Camden over the last few weeks. 

As time goes on and I don’t see the improvement that he told me we would see before our follow-up appointment, the hope begins to fade.  I never had so much hope that I actually believed ALL of Camden’s symptoms would go away, but I did have hope that SOME of them would disappear.  We have a little over a week before our  next appointment and all, if not more, of his symptoms are still there.  I never even shared with him Camden’s yeast issues that he’s battled from day one.  Those were not bad when we saw him, but for some reason, they’re back. 

I do believe the human body is able to heal itself with help and more often than not, we don’t allow our bodies to do that.  Too often we turn to the doctor for some quick fix.  Maybe Camden’s body is  just going to take a little bit longer than we thought. 

As always, I ask for prayers.  Prayers for wisdom, patience and discernment.  Prayers for sleep---peaceful sleep.  :)   Camden is such a trooper through this all and I am thankful he is able to adapt so well to things.