Even after I found the answer (after one year), I was still in severe pain.
Oh yes. It got even worse when treatments started. It felt like entering a torture chamber and
being left alone to go absolutely mentally insane and have a heart attack and die. All the while, I
was never sure I would live through it or not and the uncertainty itself made the thought of dying
seem as a blessed release.
It was my experience in the beginning that the dosage given by my first environmental medicine
doctor was way too much for my level of toxicity and lack of strength. And, the intravenous
chelation was way too invasive for way too long. Because of this, the physical pain and mental
anguish worsened.
The hateful mercury that was trapped inside my body’s cells was now being forced out of my
cells. My weakened, damaged organs and nervous system could not effectively handle it. Of
course, I didn’t know then what I know now.
This is also why it is so important to be under the care of someone truly qualified, someone who
understands the whole process of chelating mercury from the body and has the knowledge and
insight to determine the correct dosages, how to prepare and protect the body and which
modalities to employ and for how long. Unfortunately, physicians must not be taught this in their
medical schools.
What kept me going?
I spent 3 hours every day Monday through Friday undergoing Nutritional IV’s, as well as chelation therapy alongside with cancer patients. Of course I overheard
many conversations. Perhaps I couldn’t fully understand their trials because in truth, I considered
them blessed. They had only physical pain and debilitation, not mental insanity along with it.
They got recognition, compassion, emotional support and understanding from their doctors,
friends, family and society. In my case, nobody understood anything about mercury toxicity and
looked at me as if I were nothing but a nut case. Except for my mother and for a few months my
friend, Elizabeth who helped take care of me, I was completely alone. This isn’t to minimize
cancer or the dread of any illness. With health challenges there is always someone who has it
better and always someone who has it worse.
I used what mind I had left to keep it in perspective as best I could. There are really just three
things that kept me around. One just had to be God giving me the strength to endure every day.
My dogs, definitely my dogs and my obligation to them kept me anchored. I had to be there to
care for them. And, my mother’s presence. Her being there, egging me on hour by hour, day by
day. Literally, I would just be so close to ending it so often. My mom was literally my personal
coach. She kept me in line and motivated. She kept me from killing myself.
What made the treatments for removing mercury so difficult?
Immediately after exposure to mercury, it starts leaving the bloodstream and starts storing inside
your body’s cells, starting with the brain cells, nervous system, thyroid and pituitary gland,
endocrine system, liver and kidneys, other glands and organs, the intestines, muscle and fat cells.
That is why you can have such a wide variety of symptoms. Since mercury crosses the blood-brain
barrier, mental and nervous system disorders become apparent. As a result, you literally start
going insane. This is why it has long been called “the Mad Hatters Disease”. That is what makes
mercury toxicity unlike any other disease or condition, even other heavy metals.
Now we’ve named the poison, but where did it come from?
By asking the right questions, my chiropractor determined the likely sources of poisoning were
my mercury amalgam (silver colored) dental fillings and the farm-raised salmon I ate regularly.
Being the last straw on the camel’s back, we established the fact that three weeks prior to the
original onset of symptoms, I had a dental procedure called an apicoectomy. In my case the oral
surgeon had placed amalgam fillings (which consists of over 50% mercury) in the roots of my
tooth, inside the gum. There are hundreds of microscopic capillaries that directly link to other
arteries that connect to every location throughout the body via the bloodstream.
I did have oral surgery to remove the poisonous mercury amalgam filling from inside my gum. I
also had all my amalgam fillings removed, according to a safe schedule as designated by my
specially trained and certified dentist. Trust me, it takes a specially trained dentist to safely
remove amalgam fillings. It is a delicate procedure in which all dental personnel wore three layers
of latex gloves and full haz-mat suits. I was fully covered from head to toe with a special material
as well. They used three extremely special and expensive air filters – one was kept an inch from
my mouth, another six to twelve inches from my head, and another just above my body, about a
foot above the dentist and assistant’s heads. Only a couple fillings were removed at a time as it
would have been be a much greater danger to expose me to more mercury during the removal
process.
How can there be any debate about the safety of amalgam dental fillings? It is a known,
uncontested fact that mercury is the second most toxic substance on the planet; a neurotoxin
that crosses the blood brain barrier. Yet, they are safe to place one to two inches from the brain?!
The amalgam material is delivered into a dentist’s office marked by law as toxic bio-hazardous
material. By law, it is labeled as bio-hazardous waste with strict and special regulations for its
disposal. How could it possibly be safe to put amalgam fillings into your mouth when it is
considered so toxic and dangerous before it’s put it, to take out and to dispose of?
Defining the cure.
The first step always, is to remove the contaminating sources. It only makes sense to stop poisoning yourself first – before you start cleaning up the mess. Any attempt to chelate the
mercury out of your system while there is still a source of mercury in your system (such as
amalgam fillings) will result in “leaching” out even more of the mercury from the amalgam filling
and re-circulate it throughout the body.
However, there is a horrible catch twenty-two here, especially when someone is
severely mercury poisoned. The patient is often exposed to more mercury during the removal
process. It’s a dangerous and frightening risk to poison the patient even more when they’ve
already reached their body’s “toxin burden level”.
During the process of removing the amalgam fillings, particles of mercury get flushed down the
sink drain and sometimes dental personnel improperly dispose of removed amalgam fillings
down the drain. This has become one of the greatest threats to our water systems today. More
and more mercury is also contaminating our atmosphere from the 600 coal burning industrial
plants in the United States alone. This gets into our rainwater and contaminates our fresh and
ocean waters, our soil, our wildlife, including seafood and plants.
Understand this: There is no safe level of mercury in the body.
The most miniscule amount of mercury causes cellular damage, including to your DNA. I was
surprised to learn that all seafood and fish, including farm-raised salmon and fresh Atlantic
salmon is extremely mercury toxic. Wild Alaskan salmon is the only mercury free fish in the world
today. (More on this in my book)
After the correct diagnosis, I was referred to an environmental medicine doctor. We reviewed
my symptoms and issues. He sent me home with a one hundred milligram capsule of DMSA
(which was considered a “very low” dose as per his physician’s book, he said). This is a common
drug used to chelate mercury out of the body cells, helping you to rid it from your body through
the liver and kidneys.
This spreads the mercury throughout the body again. In one sense, it is certainly not safe to keep
the mercury stored in the body itself. But when you pull it back out of “storage” from the body’s
cells and allow it back into the bloodstream, the symptoms worsen. After years of sheer torture
that lasted for weeks to months following each chelation treatment, I eventually learned how to
prevent or greatly minimize this effect and I address this issue in my book.
Within forty minutes of taking my first DMSA dose, I began hyperventilating, experienced severe
heart palpitations and my body was shaking uncontrollably. I went to the emergency room again
out of desperation. I told them my condition was resulting from mercury poisoning. They acted
confused and asked: “What’s that?” And “How did you get it?” This was from the attending
physician in the E.R. and registered nurses as well.
Emergency rooms do a great job of monitoring you, watching your vitals and keeping you alive
should you actually have a heart attack. But there is nothing they can do to actually stabilize you
or make you feel better. My mom took me there several more times but we just sat in the car in
the hospital parking lot, waiting it out and determined not go in unless my heart actually
stopped. It was too emotionally traumatizing to continue to get nothing but confused,
judgmental and disgruntled looks from the doctors and nurses as they were unable to accomplish
any actual help or relief for me and therefore, thought it was all in my head.
After that first “attack” we called my doctor. My mom told him on the phone what happened
after taking the DMSA. It seemed as if it really freaked him out, like he didn’t know what to do
or say. He had my mother wait on the phone while he went to look something up in a book, he
said. He seemed baffled about the situation. He dropped me as a patient the next time I saw him.
He considered me a high risk and said there wasn’t much more he could do for me.
I explained how desperate I was for help and asked him to at least refer me to someone. He said,
“Just who am I going to refer you to? Who is going to want you as a patient? Seriously,
nowadays, you know, you’re such a high risk for suing a doctor because you could very easily die
or have permanent nerve damage or something. I can’t refer you to any of my friends.” He said
it to me just like that. I left there feeling hopeless and absolutely worthless. Definitely unwanted
and rejected. Even a doctor didn’t care enough to even try to help me. Now what?
I ended up in a clinic in Arizona for a whole month of treatment. I paid my friend, Elizabeth to
take off work to stay with me and help take care of me there. The doctor specialized in mercury
detoxification. I received intravenous drugs of DMPS, another drug to chelate mercury. I would
get three to four hours of nutritional IV’s every day as I was so nutritionally depleted. This is
typical of someone who is mercury toxic. Thus began my full-time detoxification program. I would
go to this clinic in the morning, have my IV, a miserable colonic and then go into an infrared sauna
to help facilitate the removal of mercury through my skin and then have a lymphatic drainage
treatment. Then I was sent home to suffer the consequences all on my own.
The chelation process strips your body of minerals.
The mercury in itself acts as a magnet to minerals, robbing them from the body’s cells. It is hard
for the mercury to leave the body on its own. It doesn’t belong there and the body doesn’t deal
with it well. This is why you need a chelator or an agent of some kind to pull the mercury out of
the body’s cells. Then, it goes back into the blood stream and your elimination systems (mainly
the liver and kidneys) do their best to dispose of it via the urine and feces.
The mercury that your liver and kidneys cannot neutralize or successfully dispose of, is then
redistributed into your blood steam and re-poisons you all over again – starting with your brain
cells and central nervous system. Physically and mentally this is a torturous process, over and
over again with each chelating treatment. You can see why it is imperative to understand how
you should prepare and protect the body during this process. No offense meant to physicians or
health practitioners, but even those who specialize in mercury detoxification do not fully
understand how to do this for more severe toxic cases.
What results is a variety of symptoms that suddenly begin to intensify approximately 2-4 days
after the chelation treatment: depression, anxiety, paranoia, fearfulness, insomnia, gut pain,
headaches, inability to eat, sobbing attacks, compulsive thinking, panic attacks, hyper-ventilating,
shortness of breath, severe heart palpations, more hyper sensitivity to light, sounds and/or
outside stimulation, mental confusion, brain fog, slurred speech, impaired brain function,
burning and itching under the skin – so severely you become dangerously suicidal and it can
literally take weeks or months for the intensity of these symptoms to begin to gradually subside.
Then, it’s time to do it all over again with another chelation treatment.
It was a horrifying and merciless process.
After each chelation treatment, I was sent home to suffer it out all on my own, not knowing if
the treatment would kill me, leave permanent damage (brain, nerve, organ, etc.) or if I would be
able to bear the pain and suffering without killing myself. There was absolutely nothing any
doctor or hospital could do to help with any of these symptoms. It would usually take about
three months before the symptoms would begin to subside. Then, I would have to somehow
muster up the strength and courage to go through it all over again.
Removing mercury from the body can be extremely complicated. It took me many doctors over
several years of direct trial and error experience to figure it out. It is a challenging, delicate
balancing act to effectively and mercifully remove mercury without causing more damage to the body.
This is scary. Must every mercury toxic person go through this barbaric and torturous process?
NO! With the right information and guidance, one does not need to experience what I did.
Unfortunately, this information is not so easy to find. Our medical schools still do not teach much
about mercury toxicity (if anything) beyond “standard textbook information”, which is extremely
limited and incomplete. Some of it is downright wrong.
For example: when I first learned that I was mercury toxic and was referred to an environmental
medicine physician, he wanted to take a blood test to confirm my mercury levels. I questioned
him regarding what I had seen in a book written by Dr. Andrew Hall Cutler, PHD, a leading scientist
specializing in the field of mercury toxicity. Dr. Cutler explained how mercury quickly leaves the
bloodstream and begins to get stored inside the body’s cells. Therefore, unless the patient has
very recently been poisoned (ie, via recently consuming fish) with mercury, little or none will
remain in the blood. This results in a “false” negative blood test result. Testing mercury levels via
a blood test is usually completely inaccurate. For a more accurate reading of one’s accumulated
mercury levels, one needs to test their stored tissue (cellular) levels of mercury, which is NOT via
blood tests. I discuss effective testing methods in my book.
My physician looked confused by this and scoffed at it. After all, I was just a patient and no patient
could know more about a medical condition than a physician, right? He actually showed me in
his physician’s textbook where it said the appropriate and “standard” method for testing mercury
is via a blood test. This lack of education and understanding is why I eventually completed my
education and became a licensed and board certified Holistic Health Practitioner – so I could
legally consult with other mercury poisoned victims and share what I had learned.
I cannot guarantee someone will not have any minor discomfort or ailment while chelating
mercury out of their body. However, there are things to enhance the proficiency and safety
during the chelation process while minimizing any symptoms or damage to the body. It just took
me a lot of doctors, time and money to find out.
There is much more to the whole plan than just taking a drug to pull out mercury. You need
certain specific binders to be present, ready and waiting in the intestines and colon, before the
pulled mercury arrives. These binders will attach to the mercury in the intestines and help
eliminate it through the feces. Certain binders work better with certain chelators and that can
vary from person to person. This can be more accurately determined based on the patient’s
specific symptoms, level of toxicity and level of vitality. One needs to be able to decipher whether
or not the patient’s kidneys and other organs are able to handle this hardship, if cellular nutrition
is developed enough, as well as knowing how to strengthen and protect several different bodily
systems prior to and during the chelation process.
Otherwise, the toxins go through the intestinal walls just like food does and it goes back into the
bloodstream to poison you all over again. I went through this for years. Doctors held onto the
“no pain, no gain” attitude. But I am here to tell you there is a better way and you need not
experience the suffering I did. I am recorded as the most mercury toxic patient ever to survive,
as well as fully recover. The fact that I am alive and did fully recover should give hope to anyone
suffering from this horrid condition.
Why don’t doctors know about this?
When I was initially diagnosed with mercury toxicity and learned that one can become mercury
poisoned from vaccinations, fish and amalgam fillings, I mentioned this to some people (friends,
my fiancé, nurses, doctors). They thought I was crazy for even suggesting such a thing. They told
me, “that’s ridiculous!” and that any doctor that claimed such a thing must be a “quack”! They
actually resented me for even suggesting this and abandoned me as a friend, fiancé, patient.
Today, it’s far from unheard of. Most everyone now knows that fish is mercury toxic and harmful.
Most people are now aware that pharmaceutical companies put mercury (thimerosal) as well as
aluminum in vaccinations and flu shots, although I don’t think most people realize just how
much. More and more are realizing amalgam fillings can poison you. President Obama recently
stated that our #1 environmental threat today is mercury. Knowledge about mercury is now
gaining recognition in our country.
Because of the scientific studies that clearly demonstrates that amalgam fillings do “leach”
mercury vapor and gets stored in the body, causing cellular damage, many other countries have
banned the use of amalgam fillings. But in our country, it is actually illegal for dentists to even
warn patients about the risk of getting mercury poisoned from amalgam fillings. Many have
gotten their license permanently revoked in doing so. Nonetheless, dentists have progressed and
many more now do understand. Due to this risk, most dentists do not mention the danger
involved with amalgam fillings to their patients and simply choose to no longer use amalgam
fillings in their practices. Many more seem to be growing in their anti-amalgam practices… more
in the new century than in the 90’s.
I give my opinion (based on facts) about how and why our political system (the ADA, EPA and
FDA) is responsible for the “intentional cover” up about the dangers involved with amalgam
fillings in my book. Thus, being responsible for many deaths, suicides and illnesses. I suspect
that’s a large part of why there is such a limited level of learning available in our medical/dental
schools today.
Continued..part 3
Copyright © 2012 · All Content Copyright · Connie Fox · MercuryMadness.info