ITP Personal Stories

Kid's Stories

NICO’S STORY

Nico was diagnosed with ITP on the 30th of June, 2002. He had been getting increasingly bigger bruises, a few nose bleeds and was very irritable. We had just purchased a big inflatable pool and we continually found excuses as to how the bruises happened. That same week before the diagnosis he had fallen backwards on a cement floor at the fire station where his dad works and had a swollen lump for weeks. Had I known the danger then I would have collapsed! ITP kept us in a state of constant fear and apprehension for intracranial haemorrhage.

The worst step to take was to get him tested. People were thinking we were abusing him. The stress mounted in our house over disregarding the whole thing, an approach that was continually pursued by my husband even through the whole illness. “He will get better, don’t do so much”. I realised that we all have different ways to cope with our fears. Either we throw ourselves into mad action or we become passive, almost frozen.

I had already started reading from the only reference book in the house on illnesses called Recipe for Nutritional Healing by Balch and Balch. It stated that excessive bruising could mean a very low amount of Vitamin C in the body and that further, it was a sign of very serious illness. This antioxidant theory would prove very helpful down the line in my search for a healing.

Finally, confronted with the truth, we spent Canada Day, July 1st at the Children’s Hospital in Winnipeg. I had just had my fourth baby, Santiago, on March 26, so I breast fed and cried all night on the couch next to Nico’s bed. I did not know what he had. I had never heard of it. I thought he was going to die. A nurse gave me a list of sites on the internet and an explanation. As soon as we got back home Nico had food poisoning and really bad diarrhoea so the next visit to the paediatrician I asked for a stool sample to be taken. It seemed that even before this poisoning Nico had already had e-coli in his intestinal tract. A test revealed a toxin called veritoxin which is left in the system after such an infection. The district nurse was very interested and asked all sort of questions but no solution was offered. How did I get rid of this toxin in his intestines?

Nico was admitted to hospital with 9,000 platelets. An IVIG treatment raised his count to 400,000 but only lasted for 4 weeks. He then plummeted to 14,000. That was the only round of plasma he ever received.

I thought so much about how this thing called thrombocytopenia had attacked Nico. I felt under siege, at war! Our dog had become sick about the same time Nico had a mild infection that was cured with a round of antibiotics, a word and a therapy that we have not used since and never will again!

I had the dog tested for the ehrlichia, a type of worm left over after a wood tick that lives on deer bites a dog and then humans. The test came back negative. I found out about this link through the PDSA site and pursued every avenue possible. I spent long nights awake at the computer doing research. I decided that crying was not going to solve anything but I was mostly obsessed with knowing where this thing came from.

Our paediatrician was very open and I was able to do blood tests on request. I decided not to torture Nico with weekly testing. He was so upset he bit, spitted and yelled for hours every time he had a poke. One nurse threatened him once and I had to complain. Obviously she did not have to go through it.

We tried the Chinese herbs that are prescribed for ITP by Dr. Ba though the recipe is widely available through the Chinese medical establishment. They tasted horrible. I made chocolates with the powder inside. Nico would not take them.

At this point I was consulting with a Naturopath who was very laid back about it. I just could not believe all these people I encountered were so matter of fact about an illness I considered deadly…deadly that is for a 3 year old who is super active and can’t be kept still.

In came the Nintendo and Nico spent hours playing still in front of the TV. The whole family was stuck that summer. I just had to think. I needed him to be safe. I padded his bed and the railings on the stairs. I would wake up at night to make sure he was OK or was not bleeding. Sometimes his nose would bleed while asleep. This terrified me.

The PDSA site helped me realise there were so many kids so much worse off. I started calming down a bit. I was completely convinced from the first week I had done research that I would not treat Nico with steroids, plasma or anything of the sort. The side-effects were too dangerous. They did not constitute a cure. I believed intrinsically in the power our bodies have to heal themselves if given the right tools.

Nico had three months of weekly Reiki treatments. Reiki is a type of channelled healing that flows through the healer into a sick person. It is based on the principle that Chi or life energy flows through pathways called chakras. The therapist also did Reflexology on his feet and hands. Points on our hands and feet relate to parts of the body and its organs. The therapist worked on his spleen, liver and other organs and mood areas helping Nico relax. He usually became very calm after the sessions and almost fell asleep. You can also learn these techniques and apply them yourself.

Healing Music was introduced as well. I heard this wonderful music by chance on the radio one day and instantly phoned the artist at her home in Maui. This music is very special. Music therapy also had amazing effects on Nico, calming and relaxing him. We still play it when we feel stressed at home.

I painted and redecorated his room in soft green like the colour of a new baby and hung all his favourite things on the wall. I ended putting just a mattress on the floor, but it all matched this very relaxed atmosphere. There was no TV or anything disturbing. I even burned a lavender candle at night after our story. Lavender is calming. You can also use the essential oil on the pillow to induce sleep.

I knew about Ayurveda from the web site and contacted a practitioner in Canada. She used ancient recipes with oils and lip balms to help his bleeding lips and cracked skin. She suggested a diet for Nico. You can do a dosha test on her site to determine what foods are suitable to a particular person according to their constitution.

I am so thankful to have found all these wonderful healers through this path. They patiently listened to my concerns, helping me cope and find peace among the storm with their wisdom and knowledge.

We started taking Nico to a haematologist at Cancer Care. It was awful to see the kids undergoing chemo. I was so against this supposedly healing place. I did not believe that something that could make you so sick could also heal you.

We did not have a good rapport. There was a push to treat and we refused. The Naturopath had started Nico on Moducare, a immune system booster, and a dose of 500mg of vitamin C a day. The haematologist was horrified and called the head pharmacist to do research on this product. She came back telling me to stop giving it to him. I laughed in silence looking at what they considered as healing and left to continue doing my own thing.

Someone on the site gave me the lead of Dr. Gonzalez Vergara a Mexican specialist who was treating ITP patients with an alternative method using megadoses of antioxidants, Vitamin C, E and Zinc. In his papers which I had the honour to translate, he compares ITP with scurvy. In the illustrations and symptoms both diseases were indeed very much alike.

I learned about serotonin and had an explanation on Nico’s awful behaviour. I started him on megadoses of antioxidants until diarrhoea occurred and then lowered the doses. Vergara has been doing this with his own patients for years with very good results. Nico’s appearance improved but not his counts. Vergara also used homeopathy but from a layman point of view with the belief that a one given remedy could cure a given disease which is the opposite of what it really does.

We travelled to Mexico on a vacation in order to give Nico some sun so that he could be free on the sand and the beach, saving him from having to hear mum say “be careful” every two words. My grandparents had taken my brother to the mountains back home in Argentina when he was little when he suffered from very severe anaemia. I thought of the links. Could this have been inherited at all? We were going to go visit Vergara but by that time I had discovered a new path that seemed so much more promising though Vergara taught me enormous lessons. His generosity and care were limitless. We were corresponding daily for months!

The Naturopath had recommended a hair analysis. I had suspected metal poisoning as a cause too. The test came back with high levels of metals. The Naturopath had recommended Magnesium Citrate daily to cleanse them. It was awful. Nico would not take the pills.

Doing research on the Internet I discovered Chlorella, an algae with amazing properties that has the power to cleanse the body of toxins. I started Nico on Chlorella daily, 1 pill open with honey together with 30mg of zinc, 400mg of Vitamin E and about 1000 of Vitamin C.

This would seem horrendous to most of you out there. All I could read in the discussions were the endless lists of blood thinning foods and supplements that I should stay away from but I had a hunch that Nico’s body was not processing nutrients the same way, never mind being severely depleted of them, something nobody had dared explain. Vergara confirmed this for me.

The Naturopath gave Nico an allergy test done through a blood test. Allergies to wheat, dairy and a million other things came up. In this respect the allergist who we consulted soon after made it very clear that allergies come and go in our bodies and that under the stress of ITP Nico’s body had developed apparent resistance to certain foods but that he was not really allergic. I decided to believe the allergist instead, continuing with the theory that nothing was “normal” in his body under the stress of ITP. We reintroduced the foods. There was no change to his counts.

At the same time we went on a diet transformation for the whole family also induced by my readings on the macrobiotic diet, my own vegetarian diet and the books and sites that suggested getting rid of refined sugars, canned and processed foods and other toxic ingredients. Nico started a daily diet of brown rice, vegetables, organic meat only once a week, home made yoghurt and granola with flax. I learned a lot about nutrition, raw juices wheat-grass, distilled water. His counts improved, his looks improved but nothing would become as clearly effective as homeopathy.

My road to discovering homeopathy was very bumpy. I went to the wrong homeopaths, did not even knew how it worked until I discovered a site where a group of homeopaths around the world patiently guided me and instructed me. As before, I knew somehow I was on the right track but I did not seem to look in the right places.

After a while and having already tried homeopathic remedies from the Naturopath and reading the homeopathy case on this site I realised there had to be something more scientific to it than just this one homeopathic remedy curing ITP.

My dear homeopath there in the US did a “constitutional remedy” on Nico, a remedy based not only on the symptoms but also on his whole medical and life history. After the first take his counts had doubled!

Homeopathy works in a completely opposite way from allopathic medicine. The remedies which are centesimal dilutions of plant, animal or mineral sources are prescribed by giving the body exactly the same symptoms the body already is presenting, like two batteries of the same charge. When the two meet in the body they destroy each other. Homeopathy deals with the symptoms on a given individual and does not prescribe by the name of a given disease. If we compared notes, all ITP sufferers would have slight differences in the symptoms, their concomitants, the way in which the disease makes them feel emotionally etc.

But it is not that simple. The art is to choose that exact remedy. Two hundred years ago the German doctor Hahnemman discovered this by taking a dose of “Peruvian bark or “Chinchona Officinalis” or quinine to the rest of us. In a medical treatise he was translating he found the claim that quinine cured Malaria due to its bitterness. Being a pharmacist and medical doctor himself he did not trust this claim. He then proceeded to take quinine himself. To his amazement he started developing the symptoms of Malaria so he discovered that quinine cured Malaria because it gave the body exactly the same symptoms as the disease itself.

The homeopathic process can be slow or fast. The key is to give the specific condition one and only one remedy at a time and repeat the dose only if the symptoms present themselves again. If the symptoms change during the course of an illness a new remedy is introduced and the other left behind. So if you look for a homeopath make sure he/she is from the classical school.

I am witness to Nico’s case and to the myriad of times I have used homeopathy on my family. I have the Repertories, Materia Medica and Remedy Kits the homeopaths use and I am slowly learning. We do not go to the doctor anymore. We do not use any other form to cure ourselves.

Nico had been poisoned by antibiotics all his little life, and probably vaccines and chemicals. I was so unaware of the dangers inherent in all of these things until he became severely ill. I would not have known before. Why would I? Everyone was doing it around me? Why should I have questioned it?

Nico taught me the biggest lesson of my life. His illness brought back my faith. He restructured the family, introduced new values, shocked me and shocked the family. We almost divorced a million times. We almost left and gave up discouraged. We cried in desperation, hopeless...This lasted for almost a year.

All I can say is he is a living proof that this horrible condition can be cured if only we dare say we will try something else.

To me the solution is to see our minds and bodies as a more holistic, total set of components not focusing on why and how to get rid of it but what is there to restore balance. Ancient cultures once thought this way and all we have done with technology is to travel further and further away from our contact with ourselves and nature.

I am now starting my own training as a homeopath. I want to give back all this wonderful knowledge. This was a miracle and I shall honour it.

I wish you all the best in this battle. Praise to this site and to everyone involved in this battle! You were my saving haven.

For more information (all capitals should be omitted on the emails)

gaguero@mts.net is my address. Please feel free to write.

www.hpthy.com a search for Thrombocytopenia will take you to Nico’s story. This site is non-profit. Cases are taken and treated there for free.

www.demystify.com an online book to read about homeopathy and learn what it is.

Lewra@aol.com is Elaine Lewis the homeopath that treated Nico. She writes as Snoopy on the hpathy site and writes on a monthly e-zine on homeopathy for that site. She lives in Philadelphia.

Engonzal@siu.biu.max is the email address for Dr. Gonzalez Vergara. I have permission to give out copies of his papers on request.

www.mercola.com is a site to start reading about nutrition. There are many others on the net.

mdupas1@mb.sympatico.ca is Jenny Dupa’s address. She was Nico’s Reiki and Reflexology therapist. She also teaches mediation to children. http://www.starlightharmonymusic.com/ is the address of the site for Healing Music by Michele Bodine. You can read my statement there and purchase her CDs.

http://users.accesscomm.ca/journeytothesoul/index.htm is the address to the site journey to the soul of Christine Machiraju who patiently advised me on herbs and oils to help Nico’s skin. She explained the principles of Ayurveda and ancient Hindu healing principle.

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