Reese & Paige Update

Happy April! How have three whole months of 2012 already disappeared? At this rate, I'll be grey-haired in no time. I have lots of cute pictures to share today, but first I wanted to give an update on the girls' blood work and urine tests.

Reese had good levels of lactate, pyruvate & creatine kinase. (This is something relating to your mitochondria, which I'll explain later). Her amino acid panel was normal. Her carnitine & ammonia are both normal. Her Vitamin D level was a little low, so we're adding D3 drops to her daily vitamin intake. Her zinc level was good, but her copper level was a little high. She doesn't eat anything high in copper, so we weren't sure why that was so high. The pipes in our house aren't copper, so we ruled that out. Her thyroid checked out okay, too.

The most worrisome result was from the chelation challenge tests. One of the tests showed an elevated level of lead and mercury in her system...yikes. Dr. Berger said that it's hard to tell when and how it got into her body. It could have gotten in there years ago and her body just isn't able to flush it out on its own. So what we'll do is start a 2-week cycle six times of giving her the chelating agent (a suppository) three days in a row, and then she'll have 11 days off. She'll get a mineral capsule on the off days to replace anything that shouldn't be flushing out. After six cycles of this, we'll do another urine collection and compare it to the first one. This will tell us if the lead & mercury have left her body. If they are still present, it means she is still being exposed to it somehow.

Paige was very similar in many ways...all of her levels were the same "normal" as Reese's, except for the lactate & pyruvate. These levels were a bit high for her. If these levels are too high, it could result in mitochondrial dysfunction. Dr. Berger explained this as the "powerhouse" inside your body that helps move cells to where they're all supposed to go. In order to decrease Paige's levels, we're adding Coenzyme Q10, Riboflavin and Biotin to her daily vitamin intake. She also had a high copper reading, which was again strange, since we couldn't figure out what it could be that was making it that high. Lead and mercury were also found in her urine, so we'll be doing the chelation with her also. She will be taking a different one, though. She will get one every other day for 10 weeks. At the end, we'll do another urine collection and compare it to the first one.

I know this is a lot of information...I am still overwhelmed by it all. I have learned so much about the body the past few months! I had no idea all of this was happening inside their little bodies. I'm so thankful my friend Mandy Updike told me about Dr. Berger...he is wonderful and is so in touch with what we're dealing with. I can't wait to get these metals out of their systems...I am scared at the thought of them having these toxins inside them. And it's even scarier that I have no idea how it got in there.

Anyway, that's what's going on here as of now. We went 4-wheeling earlier today, and yesterday I got away for a few hours to go see The Hunger Games with my friends Jennifer & Laura and a new friend, Paige. It was awesome!!

Here are my photos from the past week...

Reese reading :)




And being silly...



Little Pippy playing...I often wonder if this metal toy is somehow getting into her system :/



Enjoying a nice evening out on the patio...



Dora was still on the TV, and apparently they didn't want to miss it...haha!



Still chewing on her little necklace...but at least she isn't chewing on random things as much anymore.



Paige, will you sit right here for one second so I can take your picture?


Okay, that's one. I'm out of here.


Playing around after riding the 4-wheelers...










That's all for this week. See you next Sunday :)