Blake's Story...

Two years ago, my then-7-year-old healthy, fun-loving son, Blake started having strange breathing problems. He would suddenly turn pale white, and would say “I can’t breathe. It’s hard to breathe, Daddy.”  He would get so weak, he’d have to just sit down wherever we were for a few minutes, until the sensation went away.  It wouldn’t matter if he had been doing something active or just sitting – this breathing problem would come on for no apparent reason and would last anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes.  When I told him to just relax and take big, deep breaths, he said he couldn’t and that it hurt his chest.

We took him to our doctor and had him checked for asthma and related conditions, but no problems were found. We had him wear a Holter monitor to check his heart, but his pulse and heartbeats were normal, and never even changed when a breathing problem would occur. We took him to a pediatric pulmonologist to check his lungs, but his lungs were perfect.  He had several blood tests and they all came back with no problems identified.

But the problems continued, and got worse.  His periods of weakness began growing to 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 3 hours, and the level of fatigue grew extreme. Some mornings he would wake up and not be able to walk from his bedroom to our couch without our help. One day before piano lessons he was in the shower and when he didn’t come out for a while, we went in to check and found him sitting in the tub not able to stand up.  Then, the headaches started. At first, he’d have a headache once or twice a day. Then, he’d have 5 headaches a day. And then he was having 7 or 8 headaches a day – every day – and could no longer function normally.  He couldn’t make it through his schoolwork, no more karate lessons, no more snow-skiing, no more hiking, biking, roller hockey, Awanas – he could no longer do the things he liked to do.  Just too weak and too many debilitating headaches.

We took him to a pediatric neurologist, but CT Scans, MRIs, and the rest showed no problems. The neurologist said “I don’t know what the problem is. Let’s try treatments for migraines and seizures.”  Nothing worked. Nothing made a difference.

Our Pastor, David Seifert, urged me to visit Kathy Flood, since she had been helping to keep him healthy for years.  Kathy and Tiffany worked with Blake to figure out what might be wrong, and said that we would begin a process of “peeling back the layers” to find the root cause of his weakness and headaches.  Through food testing and other tests, they determined that Blake had a very active virus, most likely centered in his digestive tract, and that it had been attacking his body for a long time, to the point where he was no longer “thriving” but just “surviving”.  They prepared a list of foods that he could and could not have, in an effort to starve the virus and strengthen his body again.

We implemented a strict diet of only organic fruits, vegetables, nuts, and meat. No cereals, breads, milk, cheese, pastas, fast-food, junk-food, cookies, candy, etc. Kathy had said that we might not see any change in Blake’s symptoms for a couple weeks, since the foods he had been eating would still affect him for 10 days. The first goal was to get rid of all the toxins, chemicals, preservatives, and hormones in his normal diet, and to see what affect, if any, this would have on his health and well-being.