Mariel Strauss (24 Jan 2008)
"To Stephanie on Sarah"


 
I pray for you too, Stephanie and Sarah, and for your whole family.  I
believe the Devil IS attacking harder, but it's hard to understand why
God allows it.  I see it happening to many Christians I write to
online, not just on Doves, but most are not so young as Sarah.

I suggested before that you check her status on porphyria.  If you took
my advice, probably doctors told you "it's too rare, she could not hare
it."  That's what my pcp was thinking when he was not diagnosing me,
even though three times he thought of my symptoms possibly adding up to
porphyria.  After I was finally dx'd by someone else, two someone
else's, three, actually, he found two other long time patients of his
who had this problem.  He told me about it, to his credit.  Yet, he was
still stumped on how to treat it, and I had to move on.

As I said before, the main doctor for people with porphyria is a
hematologist.  Although porphyria usually has lots of neurological
symptoms, the hemo is the one who addresses and tests the root causes
of porphyria.

Why don't you just read up about it online before you do anything more?
  There are several support groups active on the subject.  We could NOT
function without each other, as most doctors are pretty ignorant about
large ramifications of this disease.  One place to start is a website
"Porphyria, the Unknown Disease", which gives among other informative
insights a list of safe/unsafe drugs in porphyria.  This alone could
tell you if Sarah might have this disease.  The safe/unsafe drug list.
When I saw it, I knew.  I fit so well, although no one fits in every
tiny detail.

There are other rare diseases which can cause these symptoms, but most
are NOT basically neurological.  They are diseases which have neuro
effects but the nerves are not the starting point.  I won't even name
them for fear of going off into the swamp.

I do suggest you seek a a hematologist, possibly one you find on the
web, to check this out.  You may have a long road to get to the bottom
of it, even if this IS the answer.

I won't nudge you again, but am just praying for your suffering
daughter.

Mariel