When my youngest child, Kyle, was in elementary school, he began having health issues.
It started with stomach aches and I assumed they were being caused by something he was eating. But there was nothing new in his diet. He was a picky eater, at the time, rarely interested in trying new foods. As far as I could tell, he was eating what he always ate.
Still, I started keeping a food diary, and each time he got a stomach ache, he and I listed everything we could remember him consuming that day, and the day before. But there appeared to be no correlation between the events. None.
Our pediatrician suspected the culprit was stress, but finally sent us to a pediatric gastroenterologist, who found nothing wrong and offered the same diagnosis.
But I knew my son, who was nine or ten, at this time. He was a happy kid, our home life was peaceful, he was a good student who basically enjoyed school, and he had great friends. I wasn’t buying the stress diagnosis, but I didn’t have a better answer.
And then the headaches started, bad ones that didn’t respond to over-the-counter pain meds, and would last for hours, sometimes all day. The pediatrician could find no cause for those, either, other than stress.
Kyle was ten when he began to complain about pain in his legs, sometimes the left one, sometimes the right. These I just chalked up to growing pains, and the pediatrician agreed.
At the time, we didn’t realize, or even suspect, that all of these were related. I know now that Kyle’s young body was sending out distress signals. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize they were a message, let alone understand the meaning.
That understanding was a long, miserable time coming.
The summer that Kyle turned eleven was a good one. We took the kids to Denmark for a week because when we’d asked them where they’d like to go for their first trip to Europe, Kyle – the only one with an opinion – said Denmark, “Because that’s where our family is from.” (His dad’s side, way back.)
It wasn’t until the trip was booked that I realized the real reason. Denmark is where Legos are from. And, yes, we went to Legoland while we were there. More than once, on that trip, Kyle told me his leg hurt. At one point, the pain was severe enough that he was limping.
Throughout the summer, Kyle’s issues came and went, but he swam on the swim team, played with his friends, and mostly felt fine. His life was normal.
Until it wasn’t.
As summer turned to fall of Kyle’s sixth grade year, his headaches got worse and started lasting longer, sometimes several days. Pain meds were still useless against them.
By November, his body was apparently desperate to be heard, because that brutal headache locked in and did not let up…for ten months.
No respite. None. Kyle was in constant pain.
When his pediatrician asked him to rate the pain on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst thing he’d ever experienced, Kyle generally said a 9 or 10. For ten months. The doc sent us to a pediatric neurologist, who ran a bunch of tests, and still found nothing.
“I see this from time to time, kids with headaches that I simply can’t find a cause for,” the neurologist told me. Then he asked, “If you ever figure it out, please let me know.” I regret that I never followed up with him. That’s one of the reasons I’m writing this now.
Kyle continued to go to school, even though he had trouble concentrating. He was a good student, calm and wise for his age, and he accepted his situation without complaining.
In early December, Kyle started running a fever, a high one, and felt miserable. I ran him to the doc, again, but all the tests came back negative for anything known. “It’s a virus,” his pediatrician said, which meant there was nothing he could do for it. Or for the persistent headache.
Things were getting worse, and I was getting scared, because that fever continued for days, then weeks, although it was no longer so high. Kyle’s skin turned sallow, sickly, and I began to be terrified that this child I adored might die. I slept in the room with him nightly, afraid to have him out of my hearing, or reach.
The thing that gave me hope was that, although Kyle was weak, after those first few days of the fever, he was no longer lethargic. He once more felt like playing with his Legos and video games. He kept up, somewhat, with his schoolwork. He’d lie on the sofa and listen while I read his assigned reading to him.
Kyle missed almost a month of school.
It wasn’t until many weeks later that I learned that several other kids in his class had come down with a virus about the same time Kyle started running the fever. One of the other moms told me later, “I’ve never seen my child so sick. Thank God it only lasted a couple of days.”
But Kyle’s immune system had been weakened by what was happening behind the scenes, something that I’d yet to figure out, and unlike his classmates, he had not had the resources to easily fight off the virus.
We usually spent Christmas with the kids’ grandparents in Florida, and since Kyle’s fever was low-grade by that time, we decided to go, driving down there from our home in the Washington, D.C. suburbs.
While in Florida, Kyle’s fever finally broke, and his headache started to get a little better, leaving me to wonder if maybe his situation was environmental in nature. Was there a problem in our house that was affecting only my son?
January arrived and Kyle was able to return to school, at last. He was actually feeling a little better, his headache down to a 6 or 7, instead of the previous 9 or 10. But just a few days after school started again, his headache roared back with a vengeance.
He’d been so weakened by the virus that the two block journey to and from the bus stop exhausted him. His leg gave out as he walked home one day, buckling under him, and he fell.
His pediatrician referred us to a rheumatologist, thinking perhaps he had JRA, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. I drove him down to D.C. for more tests. The good news? Kyle did not have JRA. The bad news? We still had no idea what was going on.
The pediatrician, completely out of ideas, offered me the name of a pain management specialist, to which I silently replied, “Hell no.” Something was causing Kyle’s issues and I was going to get to the bottom of it.
This all took place during the 2001/2002 school year, when the internet was still young and little better than a set of encyclopedias. I had to rely on the doctors to come up with the answers, but so far, Western Medicine was batting zero.
It was time to look elsewhere. But where? And how?
Some years before, my mom had gone to an acupuncturist in Florida who’d cured her of her migraines. If I was going outside the traditional system, I might as well start there, I decided, so I pulled out the yellow pages and found a local acupuncture clinic and made an appointment.
I’d never been to an acupuncturist, so I had little idea of what to expect. It was years before I fully appreciated the uniqueness of my experience that day.
The doctor placed the needles in Kyle’s face and scalp, and a few in his hands and feet, as I remember. Then he turned off the overhead light and left us there for the requisite hour, or so, in a room that was dim, but not dark. It was the middle of the day, and sunny out.
As I sat there, my eyes on my son, I saw something curious. A white line began to trail down Kyle’s face from the needle at his right temple, like a vein just beneath his skin. How can people doubt that acupuncture is real, when you can literally see the energy moving? I thought, as I watched that line slowly snake down his jaw and his neck, eventually disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt.
For years, I assumed that anyone in that room with me would have seen the same thing that I did. It was plain as day! Yet, years later, when I told another acupuncturist about my experience, he smiled. “You have magic eyes,” he said, which I still find remarkable, since most of the time I’m quite convinced that I don’t.
That session was a miracle in other ways, as well. Within a couple of days, Kyle’s energy levels were back to normal. Not only could he finally walk to and from the bus stop with ease, but he was running, playing outside, dribbling his basketball in the frigid January air.
The acupuncture had helped him recover from the effects of the virus, but unfortunately, had done nothing to ease his headache.
I had no other outside-the-box ideas, so I sought information the way humans have for eons – I talked to people, telling them Kyle’s story, gathering suggestions like precious gems.
My optometrist recommended a gifted chiropractor she’d known for years. One writer friend suggested the nutritional biochemist who figured out her son’s food allergies when no one else could. Another gave me the name of her physical therapist.
I immediately booked appointments with each of them.
All of this, along with additional acupuncture treatments, required me to take Kyle out of class regularly that winter and spring, sometimes once a week. But Kyle managed to keep up with his schoolwork, his teacher supporting us every step of the way.
The nutritional biochemist sent Kyle for a bunch of bloodwork, testing for toxins (heavy metals, mold, biotoxins, etc.), food allergies and sensitivities, and nutrient deficiencies, among other things. Those tests revealed a seafood allergy we’d been unaware of, and a few seemingly minor nutrient deficiencies that she recommended supplements for, but nothing that would account for Kyle’s unrelenting headache.
The chiropractor, who is incredibly gifted and who I still go to, learned early in his practicing days that he could literally feel energy through the palms of his hands. And he uses muscle testing to communicate with the body. In 2002, I’d never heard of any of this, but I’d known the optometrist who recommended him for years, and trusted her implicitly, therefore was inclined to trust him.
Running his hand an inch or two above Kyle’s body, the chiropractor told me that the headache was connected to Kyle’s gut. “It’s something he’s ingesting.”
That ultimately turned out to be a key piece of the puzzle, but at that moment, it wasn’t a piece I could do anything with, because he couldn’t tell me, specifically, what was causing the issue. He then did the usual chiropractic manipulations, but Kyle’s headache held fast.
Kyle and I tried it all, keeping our pediatrician in the loop, though at this point, he mostly just shook his head at us. I know he didn’t blame me for continuing to try to find an answer, but like most western medical doctors of his time, he wasn’t inclined to believe in anything that he hadn’t been taught in medical school.
It was the chiropractor who recommended Dr. M, a pediatrician-turned-woo-woo healer (as I thought of her at the time).
I’ve been to many, many intuitive healers in the years since – incredibly gifted people who’ve changed my life in profound and wonderful ways – but Dr. M was the first one I’d ever encountered and I wasn’t at all sure what to make of her.
She began by clearing Kyle’s birth trauma, then used muscle testing and some other more intuitive means to delve into his headache. The only thing I remember resonating with me during that first session, was her comment that Kyle appeared to have an issue with aluminum.
Could aluminum be the sneaky culprit we’d been searching for? It seemed plausible to me, because I knew that he bought a can of Very Fine Fruit Juice at school every day. I’d already checked the label and there was literally nothing in it but fruit juice, so maybe it was the can?
That night, when my husband got home from work, I told him the good news. “I think we’ve figured it out!” I was almost euphoric with relief.
I immediately eliminated all cans from Kyle’s diet at home, and made him promise not to buy anything in a can at school. He didn’t, I know he didn’t.
But nothing changed. The headache from hell persisted, and I returned to my dogged determination to find the answer. The real one this time.
This wasn’t the only time I had my hopes dashed. In fact, that feeling became something of a constant as I took him from one practitioner to another, praying that this person would be the one to cure him, or at least identify what was actually going on.
We went back to Dr. M a couple more times, then stopped after she said something to Kyle that I found unforgivable. I think she was frustrated at not being able to get to the bottom of his situation – or maybe she was just incredibly intuitive – because she snapped at him, “If you wanted to let go of the pain, you could. You’re holding onto it intentionally.”
As it turned out, she was right, in a way. Kyle definitely wasn’t holding onto the pain consciously, or even subconsciously. He desperately wanted to feel okay again.
It was his body that stubbornly refused to release the headache, not as punishment, but out of desperation. It couldn’t risk me giving up the search.
Fortunately, I had the time and mental space to devote to this quest. I was writing, but not yet under contract, so it was easy to set my work aside. My older child was a freshman in high school and a self-starter. All she really needed, or honestly wanted, from me at that point was a swim practice carpool driver. Finding the solution to Kyle’s situation became my full-time job.
Kyle finished out the school year with good grades, graduating from elementary school, despite the constant pain. Over the summer, he swam on the neighborhood swim team, and took music lessons to get ready for his audition for the middle school band. We took two family vacations.
He never complained and I wouldn’t have known anything was still amiss with him, if I didn’t, from time to time, ask him for his number – his pain rating on that scale of 1-10. When the summer started, it was still at that unrelenting 9 or 10, as it had been for months, but Kyle had learned to live with the constant pain, as so many people do.
However, as the summer progressed, Kyle’s headache began to lessen, little by little. By mid-summer, his number had dropped to a 6. During August, it dropped to a 4, then down to a 2.
Once more, I began to wonder if there really was a stress component to all of this. Why else would summer make it better? In fact, his headache had eased a bit over the Christmas holidays in Florida, too.
Was school actually responsible for his headaches? In a roundabout way, the answer was yes.
About a week before school started that fall, I asked Kyle for his number and he looked at me with surprise. “I don’t have a headache.” It was gone.
I wanted to celebrate, I really did. But I still had no idea what had caused his pain, so a part of me didn’t trust that it was over.
School started the day after Labor Day and I made the kids the same school lunches I’d been making for years, which always included a sandwich and an apple that I sliced and rolled in lemon juice concentrate so that it wouldn’t turn brown before lunch.
Three days later, Kyle came home with a rip roaring headache and a look of defeat. “It’s a 10,” he said. The dragon we’d thought slain was back with a vengeance. And I was no closer to understanding why than I’d ever been.
Thankfully, we live in an intelligent, loving universe, and I happened to have an appointment scheduled the very next day with the nutritional biochemist we’d been working with. I walked into her office feeling as defeated as Kyle had looked, and told her what had happened, that he’d been fine…finally…for less than two weeks.
I told her about the chiropractor saying it was something he was ingesting. And I told her that I was suspicious that the canned fruit juice seemed to make his headaches even worse.
“Sulfites,” she said.
I didn’t understand. “But we ran all the bloodwork…”
“There are no tests for sulfites, no way to test for an overabundance of them in the body or bloodstream.”
She explained that while some people are actually allergic to sulfites, others simply aren’t efficient at breaking them down. So if the latter person ingests too many, the sulfites accumulate until they can cause some serious health issues.
Then she pulled out a list of foods with sulfites in them—a list she’d given me back in January, but that I hadn’t yet had the context to benefit from—and as I scanned the list of foods, one leaped out at me.
Lemon juice concentrate. And I knew. Suddenly everything made sense.
As we talked, I told her about the apple slices, and realized that I only rolled them in the lemon juice concentrate for his school lunches. Never at home, where he ate them right away.
The fact that he’d been in school three days before the headache came roaring back made sense to her. There was often a lag time between overconsumption and the body’s reaction, which was probably why I’d had so much trouble, in those early days, trying to pinpoint the cause and effect between his stomach aches and what he’d eaten.
“I don’t understand the fruit juice, though,” I said. “I’ve looked at the ingredients. There are no sulfites in it.”
She told me that it was not uncommon, at the time, for the sulfites to be sprayed on the inside of the can and therefore considered part of the packaging. It didn’t have to be listed as an ingredient. Oh boy.
Now that I had the answer – and I was pretty sure I had the answer this time – I got everything out of Kyle’s diet that was on that sulfite list.
It took a few days, but Kyle’s unrelenting headache went away, and stayed away, this time. You’d think I’d have been celebrating, but I’d had my hopes dashed too many times to be anything more than cautiously optimistic.
But months went by without Kyle experiencing a single headache, stomach ache, or leg pain. That was all the proof I needed. And when, as a teenager, Kyle wasn’t as careful, eating too many french fries, or drinking a can of fruit juice? Wham! Three days later, a migraine-level headache.
Cause and effect, baby.
When I next saw our pediatrician, I told him that sulfites appeared to have been the culprit, but he just shook his head with that same look of skepticism he’d been giving me for months. Unless I could prove it with a test of some kind, he wasn’t inclined to believe it.
Fortunately, Kyle suffered no long term ill effects from any of this.
It’s been a long time coming, but I’m finally telling Kyle’s story (with his permission) in case it might help someone else. The lessons I learned during that excruciating year were innumerable, but the one that landed the deepest was this: When I find the real answer, the truth, everything changes. If things haven’t changed, yet, I know I have to keep digging.
This has become my guiding principle in my quest to unlock the secrets of the Universe, and figure out how it all works. I might feel like I understand how to manifest, but if I’m not actually succeeding? Keep digging, baby.
So many people suffer from undiagnosed health issues. In Kyle’s case, it was sulfite poisoning. For me, although I’d worked with an allergist for years, actual and complete healing of the allergies I’d suffered from since childhood came through an intuitive healer who helped me to release subconscious trauma that I’d carried for lifetimes.
The answers aren’t always where we think they should be. They aren’t always where we’re willing to look. Getting to the bottom of it often takes not only patience, perseverance, and luck, but courage, and a willingness to step outside of the box. Sometimes way outside.
It’s my hope that something in this story will give you, or someone you know, the ‘aha’ moment you’ve been looking for.
Kyle and I both wish you the best of luck.