Sim Family: 2008

Today this woman came up today in sacrament meeting to bare her testimony. She is from Trinidad and is a former baptist. Needless to say she gave a very powerful (loud) testimony which I quite enjoyed and there were a couple of amens from the audience (well just one guy who was an investigator turns out). She testified of the Savior and of Joseph Smith. She told about how she prayed to Heavenly Father to guide her and help her understand the Bible so that she may teach her children. Who came knocking at her door during her prayer, the missionaries. She thanked them for coming by and sent them on their way. Six times this happened, she would pray and the missionaries would come. Finally she realized the answer to her prayers was not what she expected at all. What a wonderful testimony. When she closed the man in the audience totally started clapping really loud and saying amen. Everyone was a little frozen and maybe trying not to giggle a little bit. Instead of moving on as business as usual in the testimony meeting a member of the congragation thought it his responsibility to get up and announce through his testimony that it is not appropriate to clap at church. Ok duh so we all know that. The man who clapped it was his first time (obviously) coming to church and big deal if he clapped he didn't know. And now is probably turned off from coming back. Although African Americans tend to not be as easily offended so maybe it is all fine. I guess the problem is that I am offended and embarrassed. Testimony meeting is a time to share your knowledge of the Savior, the Book of Mormon, and the latter day Prophets. It is not a time to share your health log, war stories, or a time to lecture people on what they should and shouldn't do. And that's all I have to say about that.

Ok so about week ago (Nov 5) Joe and I were sitting in bed and Zoe (she's our 4 yr old) came in and started chatting with us about the toys she wanted for Christmas. In mid-sentence she stopped talking and sort of stared off, eyes glazed over. "Zoe, Zoe" we said. She resumed after about 3-4 seconds like nothing happened. Joe and I looked at each other and knew what each other was thinking, "seizure"

So we thought well maybe it was just a wierd space out or something. But then she did it again that night. We called DR. Whiting the next day. He was out of town but they got a hold of him and he ordered an EEG. So we had to wait to hear from the hospital to tell us when they could get her in.

So Thursday and Friday passed we still hadn't heard from the hospital. Meanwhile Zoe had 2 little ones each day. Saturday rolled around. About 8:15am we're in the kitchen Zoe looks at me and makes a strange utter sound and is just stuck where she is standing, she can't respond to me talking to her. Her mouth on the left side starts to sag. I gently grab her and pick her up and lay her down on the family room floor. I send Mia to find the phone. She brings it to me and I call 911. Meanwhile Zoe's eyes and mouth are twitching and she is pretty much frozen in place. it lasted about 25-30 seconds. Then she rolls to her side and makes a snoring sound and was almost in a sleepy state, she acted very lethargic (the women over the phone said that was very common after a seizure) the paramedics arrived in about 2 or 3 minutes.

They checked her out and she was fine. Just shy around all those cute Paramedics! They gave her a cute little bright orange bear. She calls it rainbow bear. They offered to take her to Timpanogas Hospital if I would like. I knew that Timpanogas did not have the resources (EEG machine) to treat her so I told them I would take her to Primary Childrens and they said that would be a good idea.

My good neighbors Kay and Jerry came over right when the Paramedics left. They were very concerned. I told them what had happened and Jerry offered to give Zoe a blessing when Joe got back and I accepted. I told them we'd come get them when he got back. Arline (Joe's mom) also arrived she was planning on coming over that morning anyway. So she would be able to watch Kya and Mia while Joe Zoe Jada and I went to Primary's. BTW Joe was up in Tooele for an endurance race. Luckily I got a hold of him just in time and he rushed right home.

So Joe got home Jerry came over and they gave little Zoe a blessing. We drove up to Primary's where they did a bunch of the standard Dr's tests. They determined from what we described that she was in fact having Absence (petit mal) Seizures. They did an EKG as sometimes variation in Heartbeat can cause children to have seizures. The EKG came back fine and so they ordered the EEG, which we could not get her in until Tuesday morning. So we would just have to go back home and wait.

Seizures themselves do not cause brain damage. So if she had more it would be fine unless they were out of the ordinary from her others.

That night (Saturday) we got all the kids down at a decent hour and Joe went right to bed he was very emotionally drained I think. I decided to sit down in the family room and read the scriptures a bit while it was nice and quiet. My mind was very clear as I was reading and a very strong thought came to my mind that said "Zoe had a flu shot." I thought, "yeah, so". I finished the chapter I was in and then got on google. I put in flu shot and seizures. Boom, brings up a ton of stuff. Mainly about mercury. What does Mercury have to do with anything? Well mercury is in flu shots a most other vaccinations. (The pharmaceutical companies claim it is only trace amounts.) What does mercury do to your body? It's a metal, a toxin, and a lot of times your body does not know what to do with it. It can get all balled up in your brain and make your nervous system all wonky (my girls always use that word I love it). At this point I am feeling kind of positive like maybe we can heal her, get her detoxed or something so she doesn't have to live with epilepsy her whole life.

Joe and I did lots of research over the weekend. We found that epilepsy (her form anyway) is somewhat common in children ages 2-5. They don't know what causes it but they can control it with drugs (how convenient). Most children grow out of it. However Joe and I were not feeling good about drugging her up as the side affects were extreme in some cases. It just wasn't feeling right.

So Monday night rolled around, it was a full moon. We had to keep Zoe awake 2 extra hours and wake her up 2 hours earlier to be sure she would sleep for her EEG. She was so tired that night. We let her go to bed at about 9:30 and Joe and I were quite tired so we went to bed shortly after. AT about 11:30 I wake up to Joe totally falling out of bed. He like flew out of bed I don't even know how. Totally hurt his head and neck on the floor. The thing is he didn't even realize he had done that. I said sweetie you know you are on the floor right? "Oh" he says. So he climbs back in to bed. Then at 1:00am his phone starts ringing, what the heck. So he gets it and its a customer dropping their car off at his shop and she says the shop door is unlocked. Now why she is dropping her car off at 1am and why she would even try to open the door is beyond me nevertheless Joe went down and everything was in its place (thank goodness). So he goes to leave and can't get his truck into gear so he forces it and totally breaks the shifter. Of course he's parked in such a way that he has blocked any other car that he could possibly drive home. But with some fudging he gets it into gear and makes it home. I waited up for him so its like 1:30-ish. At about 2am we wake up to Kya totally puking in her bed. So I get her in the bath get her all cleaned up, new bedding, the whole bit. After I tuck her in and settle back into bed about 30 minutes later...puke. I get Kya into the bath again, change her bed, again, and get her settled down. I struggled a little bit to get to sleep after that. Then 3:45, Jada starts crying, she's hungry. I feed her, get her in to bed, then I go to bed, 45 minutes later it's time to wake Zoe up for her early morning. So I am sitting up with her watching a cartoon and she is so tired poor thing. AT about 6am she starts seizing again I yell for Joe and he comes out. I talked to her through her seizure. It was about 20-30 seconds again. She was very tired after. It was so sad.

My friend was going to watch Kya for me while we took Zoe up but after her night I thought I'd better stay with her and Joe would take Zoe up for her test.

I heard from Joe at about 10:30 he said they were setting up an appointment with the Neurologist immediately. They could get her in at noon. Joe said, "I'm no doctor but there were a lot of spikes on the graph test." So at this point I'm balling...she has a tumor, a growth, something bad. Her appointment was set for noon. Joe's mom offered to come because I wanted to be there with them.

After the Neurologist finished his assessment he concluded that it was most likely just absence seizures but what was different about the eeg was that there were also focal seizures which are in two different seizure families from what I understand. So he wanted to have her get an MRI just for precautionary measure. I was greatly concerned. He like everyone else though said seizures happen to many children in this age group and there is no found cause but with medication they generally come out of it. I asked him what about mercury poisoning. He asked why she would have that. I said she had a flu shot a couple weeks ago. He said well they took mercury out of the vaccines blah blah. Joe said well what about the flu shot? He said well I'm not exactly sure on that...(hmm we thought). We asked if diet could help he said yes. If you don't give her sugar, dairy, etc but it's too hard so lets just give her the medication. (hmm we thought). He went over the different drugs and the side affects were, as we expected, not good. We chose the one that was most mild and went on our way.

The next day (Wednesday) I was able to get her into Life Clinic in Provo, they do Homeopathic Healing. Cindy (she's an RN) who does not take new patients is my visiting teacher's sister in law so she gladly made room for little Zoe. They have this really neat machine that reads your body's energy (an EDS). So you hold a metal bar that is connected to the machine in one hand the other hand she uses a stylus type instrument with a metal tip and she touches different points on your hands and feet, which correlate to different parts inside your body, intestines, bladder, liver, kidneys etc. There is a green bar in the middle of the graph if the line is in there all is balanced, if it goes above there is too much of something going on. (I think she may have had a little seizure while she was in the chair but it is hard to tell as Zoe is also a deep thinker) As she is going along everything is good she found a few little random things like inflamed joints, producing too much insulin. Then she comes to the nervous system, the graph goes up out of control. She checks the fat cells, the graph goes crazy. There is toxicity in her fat cells. She says well her body doesn't know what to do with these toxins we better check to see what metals may be in there. A lot of mercury and traces of aluminum, cadmium, and bismuth. I said she had a flu shot. Cindy said well there ya go. She also found traces of irritation with previous vaccines. She put together a whole supplement package for her. Her homeopathic drops, metal-free spray (which safely detoxes the metal from her body, if you don't detox metal the right way it can cause major problems like depression and fibroids I read that online), fish oil, arctic cod oil, multi vitamins, and acidophiles. I also talked to the Doctor there, though he wasn't much help other than he strongly believes the vaccines are causing the seizures. I said so what you are telling me is that if I do this supplement regimen the seizures should go away when she is detoxed? He seemed to think so.

Ok so this may sound crazy to those who do not believe in homeopathic balancing and method. He said bring her prescription in tomorrow and we will read if her body wants it. Sure enough the machine went nuts when we asked her body if it wanted the meds, we asked how about a different dose, or medication, no, no. I said ask her body if it needs an MRI, no. Ask her body if the metal is causing her seizures, yes. At that point Cindy said well you should be prayerful at this point on what to do. I said I think you are right.

In discussing her situation with Joe we both felt very strongly to go the homeopathic route, get her body detoxed and see what happens. If anything at least we will have gotten her body cleaned out from all that junk in there and she will feel more balanced. Whether the seizure's will stop is another question. But we will just take it as it comes.

So she has been on the cleansing for 3 1/2 days and not a single seizure. She was having them twice a day before and they were getting worse. We are hopeful this will help our little Zoe as we like all parents want our children to have a normal, easy, happy life.

Through all of this I am grateful to have the spirit testify to me as it has helped us make (what we think) are the right decisions for Zoe at this time. My mom told me that mothers have a special intuition with their children and not to ignore it, I think she is right. All the feelings and experiences we have had have pointed us to go down this path. And so far so good. Now whether or not we can prove that the flu shot caused all of this will be quite difficult. As we have seen with autism, the pharmaceutical companies are not looking to admit fault in anything. What we can do if anything is share our experience with others and what has and has not worked for us.