Thanks for your prayers!

Dear All,

First, I need to give thanks to everyone, anyone who took some time to pray for us during that challenging year and a half, anyone who took the time to give us a call, leave us an encouraging word, stayed with us as we went through this year. I also want to thank all of Living Love Fellowship for their support for having prayed for us weekly during our pre-study worship. I want to also thank doctors (Dr S. Leung in partcular), bioresonance therapists for their care.
I want to also thank my family, during this year, I haven't been the best husband, I haven't been the best son, I haven't been the best dad, I asked for your forgiveness and thank you for your support.

To all of you THANK YOU.

This year, we settled on continuing Lémuel's bioresonance therapy, we moved home and since then, Lémuel has been constantly showing progress, now he walks, he talks, he sings, he says "Aiyyaaa" like a true Cantonese speaking kid. He still has some development delays, we hope that he will be able to get into a kindergarten, next year K1's resources are pretty limited. We leave it to God, we'll pray and see.

Here are some pictures summing up what we went through:

April 2013, his body was completely trashed, red everywhere, swollen, injured, he started to lose weight dramatically, feeling very itchy, suffering from his multiple wounds.

At that time, he was all covered by wounds as you can see:

May 2013, start of his steroid topical treatment. That's what I call bleach for the skin, his body went from reddish to snow as white, but he was swollen ALL over his body, he looked fat, but his body mass went from 50 percentile to under the curve.

As we continue using steroids, we could not get rid of certain rash attacks, he would have  the eyes all swollen up.

Lémuel prepared to sleep in his wet wrap, a real little mummy. That's every night, from May to November 2013.

Up until May this year, he remained tied up when he was sleeping. That's when he was also having wounds on the cheeks.

If he could get his hands off of his wrapping and reach his face, it would end up like this. In order not to shock my readers, I decided against publishing pictures of his face. Believe me, having to clean up massive amount of blood in the middle of the night is the last thing I wish to anybody.

April 2014, we were at the beach and you can still see his skin not completely restored, his cheeks took a VERY long time to heal, arms and legs rashes would come and go.

After a year of treatment:

So again, THANK YOU VERY MUCH for your prayers and support.

Now, he still has allergies, he still has a very long list of forbidden foods that is veerryyy slowly reducing, he still has sensitive skin. I'll keep you up to date. I'll also try to find time to write down treatment we did in details for people looking to help their kids if they are suffering from the same thing.

This would not be complete if I don't also give thanks to our Heavenly Father who placed Lémuel amongst Myrtille, Yukyin and I. We learnt a lot, we shared a lot, we grew a lot. Thanks to You. I need to admit that a few months ago, we could not envision the fact that Lémuel could live a normal life but Thanks to your healing hands, I see him a living testimony of your Love.

Growing out of allergies?

Dear Reader,

Nearly half year I haven't posted anything. A lot has changed. Myrtille is growing, her relationship with me has not changed, I am always expecting too much of her, it's like the lack of care from my own parents has turned myself into a freak. I don't really know how to work on myself, but when I see her, and hear her... especially when she complains and she does complain a lot, I really want to scream out loud.
So, I took a decision, don't know how long it will last, but I need to be a better father... I need to think of ways about making her feel proud of herself, proud of me and I need to learn how to be proud of her... maybe I should also say it... it might help her.

Anyway, started to learn how to tie her hair in a different way than a pony tail... It's growing on me and she likes it.

Being a Dad... is difficult, being a girl's dad... is even more demanding, our brain does not just work the same way. I need to be even more delicate than with my wife. I don't know how friends having two or three girls are doing it... I wouldn't.

Lémuel....

He changed, now he walks and copy us. His vocabulary is still very limited but he quickly catch those habits we have. He is still walking drunkard style, that's very funny to watch and he does not care about hurting himself.

Allergies? Yes... they are still here, we moved flat and since then, we are using steroids a lot more often, as we want to be able to control their skin condition, that makes them sleep better, prevent them to sneeze like crazy. Inside us, we still want to chase, we want to know why? But sometimes, it's seems like we will never know and we should just spend our time on creating memories with the kids and wife.

But, I do thank you for your prayers, Lémuel is way way way better than last year. It was around May last year that he was depressed and nearly died of infection. Now, he is always walking around and smiling, hoping to catch a cuddle time with Mama. We came a long way from that.

Thanks

Myrtille, 5y


Lémuel, 20m



The watermark is wrong, it should be 2014.

Still struggling

Dear Reader,

Time is flying, we are 2014 now, Happy New Year by the way.

2014 and Lémuel is still sick. He is ONE now, he did not get birthday party, no cake, no toys, no friends, no outing. I think we used to being spoiled. He is sick and everyday is the same headache.

Beginning of October, as the doctor was not seeing a drastic improvement of his condition, he advised us to go have a look at Bio-Resonance therapy. So, after having being very reluctant to do so, we went ahead. First session passed and we were already reassured. 85% of the allergies we knew he had were diagnosed by the therapist, so we went on a full treatment for Lémuel. It's a lot less intrusive than the IV injection he had at the last doctor, so he is happier about that.

Months passed, he is improving, but lately, he started to have some rashes on his cheeks that we can't get rid off.

That was a month ago, now it spread a bit all over his head and it's a nightmare.

His behavior changed too, he is more aware of his food, he uses "scratching himself" as a way to express when he is not happy and will often scratch his legs, torso, hands etc... we are trying to change this behavior of him, but it's not something that can be achieve in a short period of time.

At night, he is wrapped up in a swaddling cloth, last week, he managed to free his left hand out of it during the night, he turned his bed into a blood bath, blood everywhere on his head, cheeks, etc... Yukyin and I were scared, but we needed to act quickly. Cleaned the wound, placed on new bandage etc... Yukyin got sick with the quantity of blood she saw. It was not a pleasant night.

So where do we stand today? I don't really know. I just hope that he is going to get better.

Myrtille too, started to have rashes spikes, she has a lot over the legs and hands, as she is older, she can't control herself and scratch at night. We can't really wrap her.

Our living is closed to a nightmare. Myrtille, Yukyin and I also went to the Bio-Resonance therapy, I have been diagnosed a depression. Although I can still convince myself to hang on, knowing that I have signs of depression is depressive in itself.

Anyway, if you have two secs to spare, please pray for us.
Thanks

Getting better

Dear Reader,

Yup, he is getting better!

Last time we put steroid was yesterday but it was after 8 nights without!
Please continue to pray for him.

Now they can start to interact a lot more:

It's not perfect though, he still got reddish after a few days and it does not seem to reduce, but he has been sick the last few days and we know that it affects his rashes. Myrtille on her side has more and stubborn rash, we don't really know what's the reason she got rash all of a sudden these last week, but we are monitoring her situation.

Anyhow, just a quick post to thank everyone for your prayers, it's working! Thanks to The Lord.

See you soon.

Seeing Light

Dear Reader,

Here is our family last update, Lémuel has been under detox medication for around 9 weeks now, at his last doctor visit, the doctor decided to switch his medication from IV injection to oral intake, it allows the treatment to be given in a more stable way. We received Lémuel's food allergy test and Yukyin took the loving decision to live on rice, potatoes and sweet potatoes so that she does not trigger his allergies through breastmilk, I really thank God for such a loving wife, she is a model for me. In the same time, Yukyin got her heavy metal test result and she has 12 times the reference value for Lead, which is quite astonishing. Hence, she picked up on the treatment too, we'll see how she fares but her rashes has been under control so far.

Lémuel's skin is a bit better, we went from daily steroids to steroids once every two days, it does not mean that he is completely clean from rashes, it is just that his rashes does not peak suddenly one day to the other. First day after steroid application, he usually get a lighter tone, second day one would see clouds of red rashes a bit everywhere. In the last 3 weeks we have seen a slight improvement as on that second day, he has a bit less rashes every time. So we keep praying that he will get completely clean one day. Also, his rashes are a bit different from before, we do a lot of efforts to keep his rashes disinfected, as we moist them with a lot of greasy product and do a wet wrapped treatment at nighttime, it is important that his skin is free from bacteria before doing so, luckily, the doctor prescribed a disinfecting ointment that we can freely apply on his skin. That helps his skin being free from bacteria and avoid infection. His rashes are drier now, they don't ooze liquid as we could have in the past, which is a good thing.

Improvements... but at what cost? Yukyin's diet is boring and we are just staying home every week... hence you don't see a lot of pictures of them. Hopefully, we will finally have him off those medication and he will be able to start eating like a normal person.

Myrtille, on her side, is growing too, she is now in K2, she does love her brother, but we see some hints of hate and love relationship growing. She loves it when she manages to get him laughing non-stop, but she does not like that all of our time is spent taking care of him which is not so surprising but in the mid of despair, she surprisingly started to act like him in an attempt catch our attention. Anyway, we know her needs, we will address it, we just need help from above and from your prayers as always.

Thank you for your prayers and support to us.

Ah! Last thing, we are all sick, it started with Myrtille, then Mama, then, Lémuel and now me... Our helper is the one next on the list. Nowadays, our bodies are just unfit to fight against a simple flu.

Living on steroids

Dear Reader,

From my last post, Lémuel went through the worse weeks of his short life. Mid May, just before his 6month check-up, we realised that he lost 1kg which is life threatening for his age, as he was supposed to get 1kg from his 4 month check-up. His rashes got worse and his skin was turned into a humid yellow flaky and bloody swamp. He had very very bad rashes with an severe diaper rash. It's was so severe I better not show any pictures... It still break our hearts looking at pictures of him at that time. 

The doctor (let's call it doctor A) we went to see who did not prescribe any steroids still did not acknowledge that he was going through a painful treatment so, in a call from God, our pastor advised us to go see another doctor (let's call it doctor B). From the beginning, we kept ourselves from using steroids but his condition was too severe to chose not to. Dr B told us that we need to use it because he has too many open wounds and although he can't die from eczema, he could die from infection. So, she put him on antibiotics, swabbed his skin to check if he had any staphylococcus aureus, once his wounds stopped bleeding everywhere, he was to start steroids treatment at a 1:1 ratio, that we scaled down as things were improving. Yukyin had to follow a vegetarian diet as Dr B's is specialist in nutrition and meat, dairy, wheat and egg are a 

After two days, he was clean. All clean, he was so clean, nobody could believe it. Even Dr B couldn't believe it. But our worries continued on, his weight was worrisome. He did not like to drink his prescribed milk "Neocate", a man made milk for extreme allergic kids. On top of that, he started to have swollen feet. During the week-end, Dr B called over and asked us about his condition, she suggested that we still head over the hospital for a blood test to see if he had any hidden issue. So Yukyin spent two days at the hospital. During these days, he was fine, he still did not like to eat anything besides breastmilk. Having him eat his Neocate was quite a challenge, but God also provided us with a helper that is very patient with him.

Weeks passed, he started to gain some weight, but his rashes would come and go, he had a new kind of rashes that we never saw before, so Dr B advised us to seek a dermatologist, Dr C, he confirmed that it was eczema... and his treatment was exactly the same as the treatment for Myrtille... Low let-down ratio with wet wraps... This was kind of a "back to square one" feeling. We did not expected to have to go through all this to find out that we should have kept doing what we were doing at the beginning minus the staphylococcus aureus. Besides, talking about those, his lab report said that he had a heavy growth of them, so he could have died.

Anyway, armed with new creams and treatment, we continued to applied steroids and went back to see Dr B. She was still thinking, why was his condition not improving? he should have started to get better, Mom was eating vegetables, he was on breast milk, we kind of gave up on the Neocate as he was throwing it up, from her point of view, even if her breast milk is wrong, it is still better than formulas. She was at the end of the rope and she gave us two choices: Dr D, a Traditional Chinese Medicine Doctor, and Dr E, a heavy metal specialist. We decided to go with Dr E... 

Meanwhile, at the hospital, we went back for his blood test results, they were bad and all over the map, all the indexes were wrong. But he was visibly getting better. The doctor (Dr F) there was still concerned because of the amount of steroids we were using, but we explained him that we did not really have the choice. :( So, he arranged for another blood test few weeks later to recheck-up on his condition.

Beginning of July, he got his blood tested again, by that time, all indexes were ok, but Dr F said that we MUST stop the steroids because it will have effect on his growth (blindness and bones issue). He gave us Protopic... which is known to give skin cancer. Oh, I nearly forgot, he also did a skin test for allergies and he is allergic to cow and soy milk, almonds, dust mites, pork and wheat.

On the private side, Dr E met him and explained his theory, heavy metals are impacting his immune system and it reacts illogically against healthy external elements. Yukyin did drink a lot of fish soup during the first few months after birth, so that might explain why he has such issues, there might be a link!

Lémuel's urine sample was sent to Paris for testing... and we just got the results a few weeks ago, he has evidences pointing to the fact that he may have high levels of Mercury, Lead and Arsenic, 4-5 times the upper limits. :( Dr E is still confident, he said that he has faced a number of similar cases and that Lémuel is still young, he does not think it will impact his growth, especially his brain. His treatment will still have to last at least 4 months, it can be quicker but the quicker it will be, the heavier his liver and kidneys will be damaged. He still prescribed a huge amount of supplements to boost his immune system. He is going to go through a chelation treatment.

So, here we are, applying steroids nearly every night (current let-down ratio is 1:15 with Eloment Cream), our diet is vegetarian, dairy free, gluten free, egg free, milk free... it does not leave a lot. At home, we have Air Purifier, we bought anti-dust mites beddings for us, we change detergent, we clean air conditioners etc... did a lot of things at home. 

Thanks the Lord, he is still alive :) Now, he eats a lot more, his rashes is half under control, he smiles!!! we went to look at his pictures when he was the worse and I pray that we never see him in such a condition ever again.

Anyway, if you have time, just drop a little minute of prayer for us. We pray that we can overcome his allergies.

Rashes, 2nd run

Dear Reader,

Today, I need to pour out my sorrow into this blog... Lémuel is suffering from rashes that covers approximately 95% of his body. It started maybe in January, at first, we did not care as we thought it would slowly disappear, but as time flies, rashes started to spread, more and more. Around Chinese New Year, his skin was rough, like sandpaper, completely opposite from what we should expect from a baby skin. When he took bath, he was scratching his knees, scratching his tummy, and as he has some pretty sharp nails, it bleed. We thought that we would never have to go through this again after our first experience with Myrtille and her dust mite allergy... we were wrong. Lémuel has a wider spread rash and he is developing that a lot more early than Myrtille.

As his condition did not improve, we went to see a doctor, he gave us some steroids and bath oil. After a week, we did not see any improvement, so we tried to treat him the same way as Myrtille, wet wrap method with a low let down ratio of corticoid cream. It cleaned his body, but we forgot about the small injuries he inflicted himself and they started to get infected. So we went back to the doctor again and I got yelled at because I should not have treat him the same way as Myrtille... having the same symptoms does not lead to the same treatment, so I clench my teeth and took it all. Lémuel developed an infection and we got a cream for that, we stopped the corticoid and continue the wet wrap, but after two days, rashes were back again. We were lost. The rashes even spread wider in area. :( Things were getting out of control, so I contacted the fellowship, and Yukyin contacted Myrtille's classmates mom and have them prayed for us.

One of the mom called Yukyin back, she shared a similar experience and advised a dermatologist. We went to consult him on Monday, he told us that we made a lot of things wrong, we should not have used the corticoid, we should stop using paraffin based cream, etc... he gave us a bunch of bath oil, moisturizing cream and we started a new treatment. He noted that Lémuel had a bunch of microbes on his head so gave us plenty of disinfectant soap. He stated that baby should be healed by 1 year old, but that's still sooo far away!

4 days through the treatment, Lémuel is peeling around the exposed area (neck, face, head) and the non exposed area are still reddish with little bumps around. For the last two days, Lémuel started to cry in pain every time we would apply his cream, like something is stinging his whole body, he moves his body so as to avoid our touch. His whole body feels like burning hot.

We feel helpless. In top of that, Yukyin has a blocked milk duct following a yeast infection.

God I know that you read that blog... because You know everything, anything that I write, think, You know them even before it reaches my mind, some of these thoughts, some of my acts, You are the one who suggests them to me, plant them in my mind as we plant a seed on the ground. To let you know, I would rather live with Lémuel's skin issue than look at him everyday going through that pain, living with an ever itching skin, living with the stinging reaction of moisturizing cream applied on his skin. I know that he is meant to be one of your child, I know that it breaks Your heart every time You hear him cry, I know that You are with us when we hold down his four limbs as we apply his creams. I know that You are there bearing his suffering with us. Give us patience O Lord, so that we can go through this, strengthen our faith in you. 
In Your Holy name, Amen.

Brother and Sister.

If you have 2 minutes in your busy schedule, please pray for us. Thanks for reading.

100 Days in!

Dear Reader,

We are 100 days in. Lemuel is still growing at a relative high pace, and so is Myrtille, she definitively got accustomed to her brother, exception when he is crying a lot, she is there, talking to him, trying to calm things down but she sadly realize that nothing is working... while he keeps on yelling.

Growing with Lemuel and Myrtille as a father is a lot different. Usually, people tend to believe they could stay away from comparing their kids, but I know that's impossible, no matter what we do, we'll end up comparing our relationship with each of our kids, God might be the only one who succeeds in this. Although I love them the same, as for now, it's true that Myrtille gives me more headache than Lemuel, even when I try to remember Myrtille at the same age. I think it will be an ever evolving relationship with them, that's the fun part of being a parent.

Myrtille started to seriously learn French... ahaa... Up until now, she only knew about some simple words, like "fromage" and "yahourt", now she understands when I tell her to put on her backpack. Still a long way to go before she says something in French, but it's growing at its pace. I do hope that she'll learn French so that she can understand English grammar a bit more easier. Hong Kong people has a lot of difficulties with English grammar. Even if I take the risk of being criticized for what I am writing here, I do supervise quite a few university graduates here and their English really needs some polishing, I don't pretend to have a perfect English either... but I do believe that I express myself in a very understandable way (I think it even sounds a bit French). When I talk about it with Yukyin, she tells me that she only understood English grammar in France, when she actually learnt French grammar... :). So, if Myrtille can get a bit better in French, we might pull it off. However, I am not so worried about her, God will end up giving her something to do as He does with all of us.

Another topic though, during one of our daily Bible reading with Myrtille, we were talking about Lazarus who died and got resurrected, he was mummified and placed in a dark place, he could not see anything, that time, it was a bit weird because, I might have read this with Myrtille 3-4 times, but all of a sudden, she asked me "why?". I never approach the topic of death with her, I was surprised and in the same time concerned about the kind of answer I could give her, and then, I went to ask my wife, she replied bluntly that she never approach that because the book never says anything about that. :) see how unprepared we can be sometimes...

So at the end, I went and ask their school teachers. They were happy enough to tell me: "Just say that he is dead"... at that age, they don't ask beyond that, just say that "he is dead", that's all, no big deal... Because this is part of the story. But if it was something happening among family members, she reminded us that we need to treat sorrow and carefully in clearly explaining them what's happening. This month theme is Jesus Resurrection at school... so they will take care of the situation.

For once, I felt lighter. :)

So, back to Lemuel, 100 days... and yesterday night was the first night I slept from midnight to 7h45 without opening my eyes. I hope I can keep on leading Myrtille and Lemuel on the right path.

Thanks the Lord for helping me and thanks for you if you got to the end of this post.

Next will be pictures, been a while I did not post but my flickr account is still staying active!

Two Months in.

Dear Reader,

We are two months in and we are slowly getting used to our pace. We went to the birth registry and we are pleased to announce that our little guy's name is Lémuel, which means "devoted to God", because that's the way our Lord taught us to live our life. In Chinese, his name is 讚熙, "Praise Splendor" reminding us to always praise our Lord.

As I said earlier, we are slowly setting ourselves into baby sitting pace, Lémuel sleeps quite a lot, he does not need us to rock him too much, a big difference from his sister, Myrtille had us rocking every time before her nap/bed times up until 6-7 months and even now, she is somebody who easily feels unsecured about things. She easily get mad about things that she can't accept right away, she would yell on us because things does not go as she expect. She has her character... We just need to learn how to live with it and raise her in a way that she understand her limits. Lémuel is already different, actually, he is more playful, he smiles a lot more than Myrtille at the same age and he communicate a lot more with us, he likes to talk to us, he likes to be with us, and when we let him alone, he will make us understand that he is the poorest baby on Earth.

One of our biggest fear about having two kids was the fact that we would prefer one over the other. I think it's difficult to avoid and through the short paragraph I have written, you might think that there is something that changed between us and Myrtille, but I don't feel this way. Maybe I am just convincing myself, but relations are just different. One thing for sure, we continue to love them with abundance. 

Myrtille changed a bit since Lémuel's arrival, at first, we were over busy taking care of him, Yukyin was exhausted from breastfeeding and the fact that he was in and out from the hospital did not help her at all, so she felt put aside, she went as far as saying that she did not want little brother to be home, but when he was at the hospital, she was worried that we came back without him.

Time passed and she started slowly to get a better temper and play her role of big sister, bringing us the changing mat when we need to change her brother's diaper, talking with him, reassuring him when he is crying, telling him that we are quickly coming to take care of him etc... a playful big sister.

So, two months in... Thanks to the Lord, we are still in one piece. This week, we will have the Chinese New Year, that will allow me to rest a bit and work a bit on my speakers project that did not move for 2 years since I talked about it.