Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

This week has been a wild ride for us in the HinJew household. Aside from the bottom dropping out of the economy and the gobs of "ripples" felt from that, aside from the fear of "what in the world is going to happen next", we're "enjoying" our own spinning teacups and bottomless free-fall that comes with Asher's disease.

On Monday, Asher's kindergarten class drew letters using corn grits. About two hours after the fact, Asher's teacher thought, hmmnnn...perhaps that's not such a good thing for Asher to be doing and called me. I wished she had called earlier.

Corn is like touching Drano for Asher. It really is like a chemical burn on his skin and it makes him horrifically sick. In the past, touching corn has caused Asher about two solid weeks of sickness and vomiting and a loss of several pounds of body weight. So I'm thrilled to report that he suffered no/little ill effects from the corn. This is HUGE! It's really amazing and is proof that we're on the right track. I really and truly can't believe that he didn't get sick, particularly after taking that huge allergen hit by rolling down the hill at the company picnic. Amazing.

That was Monday.

Tuesday was gymnastics. The kid was a disaster. They worked on the balance beam, which is Asher's worst area. He was particularly congested on Tuesday. He couldn't do a doggone thing on the balance beam. He even struggled with things that he's been able to do in the past. I am beginning to see a correlation between Asher's congestion and his balance/coordination.

Asher's gymnastics teacher got really frustrated with Asher. She's clearly never had a student like Asher before. She let her frustration get the best of her and, well, almost crossed the line of being hurtful to Asher. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. Frankly, I've been in that state before and I can understand being that frustrated. But then again, I'm not a teacher.

On Tuesday, Asher brought home his progress report. In short, he's failing kindergarten. He got nearly all check minuses. We've said that we wanted him to repeat kindergarten but we didn't want him to FLUNK OUT of kindergarten! That's a different story.

Back to gymnastics: After his class, Asher came upstairs to where I was sitting and saw the jigsaw puzzle left behind by Simi (who just started his class) and excitedly started to do the puzzle. This particular puzzle is for age 2 - it's very simple. Asher quickly put three pieces together and excitedly looked to me for praise and I just died inside. None of the pieces even remotely matched and he really had to force the pieces together to "fit". They were a VERY obvious mismatch. After seeing his horrendous report card, watching this particularly atrocious gym class and now seeing this pathetic puzzle effort - I had to really struggle to keep my composure. It took everything I had not to bawl my eyes out in front of him.

Tuesday was not a good day for Asher.

So now he does jigsaw puzzles every day after school. I quiz him on simple math in the car on the way to school. And I'm feeling a small bit more optimistic about his intellectual capability.

We've been working incredibly hard to clear his congestion. Clearing his congestions helps him - a lot - or so it seems.

On Wednesday, I had a talk with the exception children's coordinator at Asher's school. I've been bugging him since this summer about Asher. Hopefully he'll start giving us some help. Asher needs it.

Now, toward the end of the week, Asher's energy level is rising to amazingly high levels. Raj even used the word "hyper-active" to describe Asher today. It's hard to believe, but Raj is right. I never thought we'd ever use that word to describe Asher. It truly was just a few months ago when I, literally, had to drag Asher out of bed in the morning. And now here he is unable to sit still for a minute. Unbelievable.

As you can see, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is taking us for quite the spin.

Asher Update

Asher has been taking oregano oil for nearly a month now and the results have been astounding. It's absolutely amazing. The most obvious ways: he seems so much healthier now. The puffiness and allergic shiners are gone (with the exception of today - more details to follow) and his sinus congestion is almost gone - still a bit of trace of that. The congestion really wants to hang on. The patch of eczema is gone from under his eye. We've been able to stop giving him two of his medicines - Prevacid and Ketotifen - which is a REALLY big deal. He has more energy - but that's probably from the B12 spray we're also giving him.

So here are the real interesting ways he's improved: he has more balance and coordination. I don't understand the connection between gastro-intestinal distress and balance and coordination, but there certainly seems to be in Asher's case. In Saturday's soccer game, a boy on the other team pushed Asher and he didn't fall down! He kept his balance. He kept his balance and I cried.

You should see him in gymnastics. He can follow directions, he can stay on task, and he can do what all the other children do in the class. He's been taking gymnastics for a year now. Every week, I watch him in the class and silently beg for him to pay attention, go through each of the stations, and do as well as the other children. I've tried bribing him. I tell him I'm watching - and I do. And no matter how hard he worked, nothing changed until we killed the MRSA. Now, I watch Asher and tears of extreme happiness run down my face. He looks just like all the other children. OK, so he's probably the worst in the class, but at least he doesn't look out of place now. Now when I watch him, tears of joy stream down my face and I say silent thank you's. It's amazing.

His running seems better too, although there's still a lot of room for progress. But, heck, I'll take what I can get.

His brain seems to have unfogged a bit, too, although, again, there's still room for improvement.

Just yesterday we went to a company picnic. The grass on campus is absolutely gorgeous. It's thick and lush and there are lots of fun places to roll down the hills. The grass is also full of chemicals and the blades of grass are so thick and sharp that it cuts you. Rolling on that grass is like giving yourself a bazillion paper cuts and getting tons of chemicals in your skin in the process. I've rolled down the hill on that grass and suffered skin rashes and itchiness so severe it lasted for weeks. When Lula, one of our dogs, was a puppy, I'd take her for walks on campus and she'd get red, patchy, itchy welts from the chemicals on the grass. So, when I saw Asher and Simi and a good friend of theirs rolling down the hill, I cringed. I wondered just how long he'd suffer a reaction. I wondered if we'd have to hospitalize him. And I wondered how long it would take until we'd see the inevitable reaction.

I'm thrilled to report that, so far, aside from a bad case of hay fever, he seems to be OK. The dark circles returned under his eyes and he's sneezing and has a runny nose. But that's it! No hospitalization. No skin problems. I consider that an amazing improvement in his health. And yes, I was dancing the jig that my son has "merely" a case of environmental allergies.

My goal is to take the oregano oil for six weeks total, then after a month being off the oregano oil we'll test to see if the MRSA is gone. But it's really hard to take the oregano oil. I take it with him because it's really nasty stuff. And it makes my stomach hurt. I can only imagine how it makes his stomach feel. So, I'll be happy if we get to five weeks. Heck, we may have to stop at four weeks- it's that bad. I'd really like Leila to take it too. Her congestion returned after she stopped taking it. Truthfully, it's really hard to get a 2 year-old to take this incredibly nasty stuff. They just don't understand. So, we may be battling MRSA for awhile.

Well, there's a lot more, but I'm really tired. Julie, my apologies for the delayed update.

Until soon..