02/04/2022
âThou shall not eat the fruit of THAT treeââŠ
Posted on December 12, 2018
Kateri Maria is our only child named after a Native American Indian, and the only one who came out with jet black hair. She is our free spirit and also the only one of whom Iâve had to call poison control on at least three times. Since she was young, she loved to eat all the plants out of the garden. Once, she ate every leaf off my entire stevia plant. It never recovered.
We tried to tell her, you canât eat every plant! Even though your mama loves herbs â they arenât ALL good! But the spirit was too strong.
One day I came home and she was crying saying her mouth was burning. The rest of the children ran up to inform me that she had eaten another random plant. At first, we thought maybe she ate one of the cayenne fertilized plants in the garden. She shook her head no, that wasnât it, and pointed to an Elephant Ear plant in the front yard. In a possible attempt for my husband to use his science degree for the âperfectâ experiment, or maybe just to deter from the question â âHow well was he really watching our children?â â he offered himself as a human guinea pig, and grabbed a piece of the Elephant Ear and stuck it in his mouth. âIâm thinking it was probably this oneâ, he says, âSee, itâs not too badâ, he shrugged, as he chewed slowly and then spit it out. Within minutes his mouth felt like sharp needles poking all over, while it continually burned and stung him. He was clearly in pain. Right after this, Kateri began complaining of her stomach, now burning the same way.
With both the scientist and the doctor at a loss, we grabbed the phone to call poison control. (Dang, this kid was going to get me on a list or something.) Poison control assured me that everything was fine. Yes, the plant was a neurotoxin, but a Popsicle would do the trick to neutralize the toxins. Who were they kidding? My kids donât get sugar! My first thought was that they would all be eating pieces of âElephant Earâ plants just to get to the Popsicles!! But I complied, and went to the store. I couldnât bear watching my baby in pain. The Popsicle did the trick. Shortly thereafter, she was good to go.
That night however, a very interesting thing happened. She developed a fever. A very high fever, but only âburning upâ in her abdominal area. The heat was radiating directly in the middle, when she began complaining of the same stomach pain. I called poison control again to make sure this wasnât a dangerous side effect or something? They told me it had nothing to do with it. Thatâs when my Naturopathic wisdom kicked in. The poison was literally burning out of her body. It was natural healing âin actionâ. The next morning she felt perfect and after that she never had another stomach problem. She also never ate another Elephant Ear. ( or a Popsicle â just kidding).
Sometimes I think back to this event, when Iâm teaching my patients about suppression and healing crisis. You donât always want to drive things deeper or shut them down. Sometimes you have to let the bad stuff come out to get to the good stuff. Sometimes things get worse before they get better. And sometimes, just sometimes â Popsicleâs are the BEST medicine!
