September Temperatures

I am posting the most up to date picture of Matthews Temperatures in the month of September. Since September 1st Matthew has had only four temperature spikes. We have reason to believe that the past two months bout with mysoitis and fevers may be related to the parasite Trichonella Spiralus. This parasitic worm essentially comes through ingesting food containing the larvae- usually undercooked pork. The larvae permeate the intestinal walls and lay eggs in skeletal muscle tissue. The eggs encyst in the muscles, feeding on the blood suppply there, and then hatch, mate grow and die, beginning the process over again. From much of hat we have read on this it seems many of Matthew's symptoms closely line up with this.

There is no way to prove this diagnosis once the parasite has made it through the intestinal walls without a muscle biopsy, and even then the biopsy would have to sample muscle tissue that actally has the eggs present. There are a couple of medications that can be taken that actually starve the parasite by inhibiting its ability to uptake glucose causing the worms to die, but this is a later course of action. Currently we are having Matthew take natural anthelmintics such as clove and wormwood.

Matthew's progress over the past few days has us very encouraged, but we know we're not out of the woods yet. If he continues to improve we will probably not pursue positive diagnosis through muscle biopsy. We will continue praying for our little guy. Whether this is what is going on or not w may never be positive, but over the past few days of rest and not having the fevers, his myositis has also diminished. His muscles have not been aching the way they had been every day for the past 7 weeks before.

Thank you all for the prayers and support over the past couple of months! Keep the prayers coming. We are so encouraged, yet we also are trying not to get our hopes up too much yet.