Part 4: The Story of “A”

This is, as the title suggests, one in a series of posts, almost entirely derived from emails from her family that they send me periodically to keep us up-to-date.

At the end of this post, and in a few minutes all the others, is a standard block of text with links to each part of the story of this child, as well as some additional information.

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From the child’s father:

“It has been over two years now since we began treating Crohn’s disease in our daughter, “A”, using helminthic therapy.

Specifically human whipworm, from Autoimmune Therapies, and she is today doing better then ever. She was around 21 months old when we started helminthic therapy, she had been diagnosed at 14 months of age, and had not responded to any attempted treatment of the disease, except steroids.

She is now over three and a half, and is as happy, healthy, and as beautiful as any parent could want from a child.

Two years ago my wife and I could have only hoped the future should be so bright for her, and us.

A has now taken four doses of the helminths, and each time her condition has only improved.

I can assure you it was not a straight line to good health, but rather a gradual improvement. Like any good, long term investment, there were setbacks along the way. Despite our better judgment, every time there was blood or diarrhea, in the back of our minds, we would wonder if it was the beginning of a major flare, one that would require the drugs we tried so hard to avoid for her.

But the reality was that it never even came close to that. There is no doubt she is doing better now then a year ago, and certainly two years ago. She continues to gain weight, in fact she is 34 pounds, and her stools continue to improve. We have even begun introducing different foods to her diet, with fantastic results.She can play endlessly with her sisters, is as cheerful as could be, and she is even a little chubby, something we’ll take any day of the week over the alternative.

She has not taken any medication for the Crohn’s disease since shortly after she began helminthic therapy.

Suffice to say, treating our little girl with helminthic therapy was the single best decision we could have made, given the circumstance. The treatment has enabled her to live a normal life with Crohn’s disease, rather then one riddled with pain and fatigue, pills, injections, and steroids.

It is not lost on our family, the thought that today we can focus on teaching “A” to read, and swim, and good manners, rarely worrying or even thinking about the fact that she has Crohn’s disease, instead of living in the bleak future we imagined for her, and us, two and a half short years ago.

I’m proud of what we did for her, and we’re thankful to Autoimmune Therapies for the opportunity to do it.”

End of email.

As it happens I am proud too, particularly of those who work with me to do this. I talk a lot, too much perhaps in the past, of the sacrifices my family has made. Far too little has been said about the team working with me.

All, in different ways, are making very considerable sacrifices to be able to make sure people like “A” continue to get the probiotics they need. Our chief scientist, who had a very good career before I came along, has essentially sacrificed that to peruse this. That is just one easy example to identify and explain.

One day soon I hope that it will be possible to acknowledge their courage, the risks and sacrifices they have made, and to do so completely publicly. I am the figurehead for a group of people who are all intelligent, hard-working, dedicated, principled and very high-integrity individuals.

All intelligent enough to not want their name to appear on my blog.

Here’s to hoping that will one day change and their accomplishments and courage can be lauded publicly.

Links to rest of series on “A”

“A” was under 2 years old when diagnosed with Crohn’s Colitis, and the disease appears from the family’s descriptions to have been severe and aggressive. They approached us when the recommendation for treatment from the child’s Gastroenterologist was one of the biologics, either Remicade or Humira, I cannot remember which.

Below are links to each of the four posts, so far, which for the most part are just emails from the child’s dad on “A’s” progress, and his thoughts and observations.

Managing the links between the posts has become cumbersome, so I have created this standard block of links to tie the story together, explain the context if someone happens upon one of the posts and does not realise they are part of a series, and will probably make a static page to aggregate the whole thing.

Part 1: Part 1 of the story of “A”

Part 2: Part 2 of the story of “A”

Part 3: Part 3 of the story of “A”

Part 4: Part 4 of the story of “A”