How a Mercury Filling Almost Took Our Son’s Life
This post may contain affiliate links from which I will earn a commission. Learn more in our disclosure.
A Mercury Filling almost took my son’s life.
Here’s what happened with the filling and how my advocating for our son likely saved his life.
There are some stories about our family’s health that I tell on occasion to share about what we’ve been learning.
Recently I thought that I should share some of these “stories” with all of you so that you can learn more about what we’ve been through.
Before I start, keep in mind that I used to be someone who never thought twice about
- drinking non-filtered water
- eating lots of sugar
- using a microwave
- getting immunizations
Like all those things I mentioned above, I never thought twice about getting mercury fillings either. I mean, why would I have thought that my friendly family dentist put something into my body that would actually hurt me?
Ahem. Think again.
Our Mercury Fillings
Since I completely trusted our dentists, and since the mercury fillings were a lot cheaper than the alternative (and we were not raking in the dough at the time when our oldest needed fillings, and he needed a lot of them), we always got the silver ones.
One particular time, after he got not just one mercury filling, but two mercury fillings, he kept complaining that one hurt. I kept reassuring him that nothing was wrong, but he kept complaining and complaining.
After a while, I started worrying.
I then remembered stepping into the room when he was getting the fillings put in and seeing quite a bit of blood. I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t recall ever seeing a whole lot of blood from fillings before, but then my fillings were always quite superficial and I only had two in my whole life until after I got Lyme disease. But the blood thing continued to bother me.
So I took him in to have the dentist look at it, but the dentist found nothing wrong. I think we even went in twice for reassurance.
The Nightmare Begins
A few weeks later, our son woke up saying that his tooth hurt a lot and his cheek was swollen. That afternoon he laid down for a nap around 2 pm and slept ’til 5, which was very odd for him.
When I woke him up (so he’d actually sleep that night), the nightmare began.
Half of his face was swollen down to his jawbone and up around his eye. His eye was almost swollen shut.
I called the doctor and they sent me right over to the hospital.
Now I knew something was wrong.
Our son was admitted immediately. His swelling was cellulitis, a potentially life-threatening infection of the soft tissues. Since it was around his eye it was dangerously close to his brain.
Not words a mama wants to hear.
The doctor started IV antibiotics, but our son got worse. When I saw my son the next day (Dad stayed in the hospital with him because his younger brother was just a baby and I was home with him), half of his face looked like the Elephant Man’s.
24 hours after being admitted there was talk about him being sent to Infectious Disease because the infection wasn’t responding.
“No!” I screamed silently.
I drove back and forth from the hospital, getting whole foods and clothing for my son. Crying, praying, and singing Psalm 23 from the Psalter…
“Yea, though I walk through death’s dark vale…yet will I fear no ill….”
Finally, just before they were ready to send him on to the next set of specialists, things started turning around a lot. And we went home with a lot of antibiotics and my son finished them.
Nightmare Round 2
Then, about a week later, my son told me that his mouth felt funny.
I looked in his mouth, and there it was. A small swollen spot just above the filling.
I was VERY scared and made an appointment with our doctor.
The Doctor Who Wouldn’t Listen to Me
Doctor thinks mom is crazy and that the swelling will go away on its own.
MD: “It’s not just above the filling” he said.
Me: “Yes, it is.”
MD: “No, it isn’t.”
Me: “Yes, it is.” At this point, I was getting angry and frustrated that he wasn’t listening to my mother’s instincts. Couldn’t he see it? Didn’t he know what we’d just been through?
MD: “What’s it going to take to make you happy, Adrienne?”
Me: “A referral to an oral surgeon.”
And finally, I got the referral and went to see not one, but THREE oral surgeons.
Their recommendations were each different, including:
- Outpatient surgery
- Biopsy
- The third, most experienced doctor said, “I’m just going to pull the tooth.”
I went with the third, since it was the least invasive and least expensive.
The tooth was pulled and the most well-respected oral surgeon in our city said,
“Yes, it (the problem) was just above the filling and I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
The “it” was a granuloma.
What’s a granuloma?
Well, I didn’t know either, but here’s what it is. According to Wikipedia:
Granuloma is a medical term for a tiny collection of immune cells known as macrophages. Granulomas form when the immune system attempts to wall off substances that it perceives as foreign but is unable to eliminate.
Initially, I thought that my son’s body appeared to be attempting to wall off the mercury filling. However, after sharing this post, two readers commented that the dentist might have created the problem by perforating the root canal and exposing it to bacteria that then wasn’t addressed.
Either way, this was a complete disaster and the dentist did nothing to alert me to anything that had gone wrong, and the doctor wasn’t willing to listen to me.
Regardless, stay aware and vigilant about your and your family’s health.
Tooth removed. Granuloma gone.
No more swelling.
Takeaways
1. Don’t assume that others’ stories of “invisible health issues” or sensitivities are invalid or “all in their head.” I used to think so. Now that a number of them have come to roost in my own household, I know otherwise.
2. Mercury is a poison. I recommend not putting mercury fillings in your mouth as a permanent structure. I’m not saying this is for sure what caused the cellulitis, but I don’t want it in my body or in the body of those in my family.
3. You are the parent. You are in charge of your child’s health. I knew something was wrong with my son and though I was ridiculed by his physician, I pressed on. He might have died otherwise. Guess who isn’t our physician any longer? I sent the resulting medical results to him and didn’t even get a reply. Not good.
4. Don’t take the lives of your loved ones for granted. Things could have turned for us on a dime that day. For now, we are all still together. Thank God.
More “Natural Health” Posts
– Natural Autism Healing and the Best Therapy of All
– Natural Autism Healing – Monster Included
– Help! I Can’t Get to Sleep – Natural Help for Children (& Adults)
– Do You Have Adrenal Fatigue? Take This Quick Test
– How we avoided antibiotics – the pink stuff
– Why I’m Thankful for – Autism
Do you or your children still get mercury fillings?
Thank you so much for your post. I have a childhood friend who actually went crazy from his mercury fillings. He already had a predisposition to schizophrenia, and when he was about 14 he started going off the deep end. Hallucinations, not sleeping, he started drinking just so he could go to sleep. They put him on so many different anti-psychotics for years, and nothing was working, they were actually making him worse. Finally last year, they figured out that he had been slowly losing his mind due to mercury poisoning in his blood from his fillings. Now he is 27 and can’t keep a job, he is living on Social Security, and he is a full blown alcoholic, all because, he spent his formative years being mis-diagnosed and mistreated for a sickness he never had, and he began self medicating with alcohol at a young age. My friend will never be the same but I hope this will open people’s eyes to definitively getting second opinions, following your instincts, and expanding the search beyond what is common. Good luck with everything.
Thanks for your informative comment. On a not-too-side note, I am working with someone who is an expert in heavy metal detox and I am getting significantly better. If you are still in touch with your friend and would like the information you can read Theresa Vernon’s information that you can link to from my post on adrenal fatigue.
Thank you for your submission on Nourishing Treasures’ Make Your Own! Monday link-up.
Check back later tonight when the new link-up is running to see if you were one of the top 3 featured posts! 🙂
I am probably going to sound like a commercial here, but honestly, I had a mouthful of fillings and crowns replaced because I was suffering reactions to the materials in my mouth. To anyone who is motivated to find out about how mercury amalgams and other types of dental work may be the cause of their medical issues, I strongly recommend doing reading and research at drhuggins.com (their phone number is listed on the site). Dr. Huggins is a dentist who found that patients recover from “mysterious” symptoms (meaning they could not be resolved through traditional medicine) when properly trained dentists replaced the amalgams with biocompatible materials (tested prior to insertion in the patients’ mouths). His staff is able to recommend dentists who follow a safe protocol (like the one you mentioned, the wife of a colleague of your husband). One of the things that convinced me to do this, is his history of getting people well who have things like MS and ALS. I urge anyone to look into it, read about it, and make an informed decision.
Kathy, you do not sound like a commercial at all. I so appreciate your sharing. This stuff is real and I know it is. Maybe it doesn’t affect everyone, but it affects a lot of people. Might Huggins be the originator of the protocol that some holistic dentists use? His name sounds familiar to me. The woman whom I am working with on metal detox says that MS is due to metal toxicity. So sad. I am doing my best to alert people to what metals and adrenal burnout can do to their health. Thanks again!
Well, I have a mouth full of fillings and now you have me concerned. Thanks for the information. The dentist wants to change them all out because they are old. Maybe I should take him up on it.
Susan, in my opinion, if they are old, I’d get them removed, but really interview holistic dentists in your area to make sure that they have good safety protocols in place to take care of you when they are coming out.
Hi Adrienne, I agree many of his articles lead to a product promo and the headlines are really over the top. I guess I’ve just accepted it and his organic products are the best so far. (fwiw, he started writing 3yrs before making products because he couldn’t find the pure products and he needed to make $$ so I guess he’s allowed to promote a little 🙂 I was driving myself nuts trying to find organics with the USDA seal and he strives to make his as wholesome as possible. Honestly, I wish he’d make more because I can’t find things! 🙂 But, I like that he backs up his product info with research. And yes, on some things, I still question, but on most I agree. I used holisticdental.org – there is a search to find one near you. I have not had an appt yet so I can’t say what the difference is except that philosophically, I want someone who believes what I do and that I can trust them.
I don’t know about the molecular size – good point and that’s beyond my knowledge! I guess I look at it like skincare. I don’t want to put chemicals on my & my kids’ skin knowing it will be absorbed. And since the gums are skin, I don’t see a difference between gum absorption and swallowing. Chemicals in the mouth just don’t sound right. Gut instinct. If you find anything let us know! For your gums, I wonder what a holistic dentist would say?
Hi Nan. I’d love to correspond more about all of this. Mercola’s skincare is just a relabeling of someone else’s products so I assumed that a lot of his products were the same. I don’t know that he has the capabilities to make all those products. I’ve never bought anything else from him, however. I know about holisticdental.org but I will say that just b/c someone is on there doesn’t mean that they are good. The main dentist in our area on there has some disturbing things in his past (and present). He says that he’s the only holistic dentist in our area (which is not true) and a recent newsletter of his had two real problems in it. He was advertising a “Patient Appreciation Day” at which he served hot dogs and pop (I am sure they weren’t organic) and had two real live psychics there to do fortune telling (I verified this on the web). Then he had an article mentioning that he had lost one of his office workers, but stated that he was busy interviewing for a replacement. He then directed readers to see a photo of these interviews taking place and the photo was of him with two scantily-clad showgirls, with his arms around them. An acquaintance of mine told me that when she went to see him, he had the hygienist drill her teeth. I didn’t see that first hand, but it didn’t sound good to me. I phoned his office about the newsletter, but got no response. Ugh. He recommends fluoride tpaste, but not fluoride in drinking water, for whatever that’s worth. Guess I should call the other two holistic dentists in my area and see what they have to say. Anyway….let’s just say that a medical professional needs to be above-board in a number of arenas for me to trust. him or her. :-(.
Very scary Adrienne – glad things are getting better. I’m in the process of changing dentists to a holistic one. Former one is pro-fluoride! Any toothpaste that you put on your teeth also gets absorbed into your gums and body, not-swallowing toothpaste doesn’t make it safe. You can find mercury-free and fluoride-free dentists by googling. I have zero trust in the FDA – recent news is they allowed Johnson & Johnson to put 2 chemicals into the baby shampoo, one of which releases formaldehyde, the other causes cancer. Other countries banned them decades ago and we’re just looking at it now! I’ve found a great resource http://www.mercola.com – he is a physician, but believes in a preventive & natural lifestyle. All of his articles have sources and he tracks the money in research studies – big pharma, big fluoride. It always comes down to following the money. I could go on and on. Kudos to you for following your instinct! Hugs!
Hi Nan. I read Mercola regularly. Sometimes his focus on his own products bothers me and I don’t think he’s 100% right (who is?) but he has been right on about some really important issues. One problem I have right now is that I have receded gums and some areas of my back teeth in particular have areas exposed where there is no enamel so every dentist I see recommends fluoride toothpaste to me. I am not sure what to do about that. I hadn’t used it for a long time but now I am wondering what to do. Does fluoride get absorbed? I know that some chemicals may not due to their molecular size. I’d love to hear what you know. Thanks for the encouragement!
Hi Adrienne,
I really enjoyed your post, this is great information for us to have. Hope you are having a great week end and thanks so much for sharing with Full Plate Thursday.
Come Back Soon!
Miz Helen
Thanks, as always, Helen, for stopping by.
To further educate ‘Mercury Fillings’ are actually amalgams therefore they do not leech. There is no such thing as pure ‘mercury filling’
Bonnie, I have to run so I can’t address your other comment yet, but what do you make of the earlier commenter who stated that the “mercury rises to the top”? I verified this with a very reputable dentist in my area just this week. He said that some or all of it separates out.
Okay people, relax. Jayna’s comments are absolutely CORRECT!
The mercury filling did not cause this! The pain etc. was cause from excessively deep decay causing the abcess. Your dentist should have informed you that the decay was close to the pulp (nerve area), or deep. Maybe he/she did. Assuming this was a primary tooth, then yes with this absess you would have had a pulpotomy or extract the tooth. If it is an adult tooth a root canal would be the next step/required. Mercury fillings placed into teeth do not leech into the blood system….if they did they would be banned. Banned meaning, dentist would not have access to the product to place them into the patient’s oral cavity.
The dentist and or oral surgeon would explain it to you this way as well.
Yes, your child suffered, antibiotics are required.
Education is key to inform all patients and parents.
Good daily dental hygiene, good nutrional diet and annual dental examinations are important to prevent such occurances. Sealants are preventative measures to molar teeth(back teeth) which have deep pits and fissures.
Thanks for sharing, Bonnie. The only thing I can say right now is that there is clearly a divide here. Maybe it’s more of a “both and” than an “either or”. I think there is a lot about mercury that the dental institution does not want to discuss. I also think that when you look at the current efforts of the FDA to shut down the supplement industry that it becomes clearer and clearer that sometimes money is the reason why certain things are promoted — and not the patient’s welfare. I am not an anti-allopathic medicine person. I was, in fact, pre-med in college. I do, however, think that there is a lot of misinformation out there – and not only in the medical and dental arenas but in the social and political as well. I think that your information may, in fact, be accurate, but based on what I have seen money do in the political and medical arenas, just because dentists are allowed to use mercury doesn’t mean that it is safe. My periodontist and I had a good discussion about this just this week and he agreed with me. The information changes and we need to remain open-minded. Thanks again – really. I mean it.
I am a ‘Canadian dental professional…and have worked in many specialties. Canadian guidelines in most cases are more strict then the US FDA guidlines. In many cases amalgams are used less frequently than in the past due to the fact that light cured restorations are easier, quicker,are more esthetically welcomed, and they bond to the restored tooth. Amalgams do not bond.
Periodontists,as a profession, do not do restorations. They primarily only work with ‘gum disease’ as in gingivitis and periodontitis. They should be referring restorative work out to another professional.
Bottom line abcesses only occur due to deep decay, or blunt force trauma. It does not come from amalgams.
I and many of my fellow collegues have amalgams and are in no hurry to have them removed unless warranted. I would be the first one to have mine removed if I knew there was any risk.
Hi Bonnie.
I mentioned my periodontist just because I had a conversation with him. He did not do restorative work on me. He is certainly trained in them and works hand in hand with the top professionals in this area. And, by the way, he was top in his class in one of the best dental schools in the U.S. Anyway, I want to reiterate here that I really appreciate that everyone thinks that they can add to the conversation here. I really want this blog to be a place where people can talk about all kinds of issues. That being said, this post is not the only one where I am going to be posting on things that have happened to our family (and to friends as well) that have shocked me and woken me up to the fact that we – parents and non-parents alike – need to be our own advocates in our own health care.
It used to be (or at least seemed that way) that only “super sensitive” people had things happen to them. Now, in the US (and I am sure in Canada as well), numerous people are getting immune disorders, autistic spectrum disorders, allergies (including life threatening), fibromyalgia, and other ailments that the medical profession finds to be eluding them as far as a cause is concerned. I have strong opinions about why this is. I think that all of these things are converging around the fact that our food system and our environment has been gradually getting more and more compromised and that are bodies have gotten weaker as a result. The weaknesses are being passed down generationally and now we are seeing the results. I think that heavy metal toxicity has a role in all of this and I will be giving evidence of that as well in future posts.
You mentioned an abscess -there is no proof that my son had an abscess. He had a granuloma with bony tissue in it and cellulitis. The most experienced oral surgeon in the area said he had never seen anything like it. Saying there was an abscess is jumping to conclusions in my opinion, don’t you think? I would like to talk with the surgeon again about this, but if it was such a “cut and dry” abscess situation, then why would this not have been discussed by my physician, the dentist, or by three oral surgeons who examined my son?
I think it is altogether possible that this situation resulted from either the mercury itself, or the trauma plus the mercury.
You mentioned that there is no risk for amalgams. I think that we really need to be careful to say that there is no risk. To be fair, I myself used to listen to everything that doctors thought and followed whatever they said. Now I have an injured gut, an autistic son with life-threatening food allergies, and I have reversed my own rosacea and acid reflux by taking stomach acid supplements (after being prescribed acid reduction medication). With all due respect to you and to your experiences, until you have lived through these things and seen them with your own eyes, it’s hard to understand how difficult it is.
Feel free to drop by again and let me know what you think, especially after reading the other posts that I referred to.
I hope that you stay in touch and feel free to chime in as much as you like. And by the way, I didn’t mention it in my last reply, but let’s keep the conversation respectable and thoughtful I really want to hear facts and opinions and even emotions, but saying we should “all relax” and adding all caps writing or something to that effect, is not the tone that I want to have on my site. You may not have meant it that way, but there are a lot of people reading my blog who have been through a lot of things and to insinuate that they are all just uptight nervous folks is not taking their real-life experiences to heart.
Thanks again for your input.
“Mercury fillings placed into teeth do not leech into the blood system….if they did they would be banned. ”
Bonnie, are you really suggesting we blindly trust that the government protects us from that which is hazardous to our health?
There are plenty of poisons leaching into perfectly-legal consumable products we use every day. BPA seeping into your canned tomatoes. Teflon pans seeping with PFOA. Toxic levels of aluminum sinking into your pores from your deodorant. I could write a novel here.
We need to think for ourselves and take control of our own health, and the health of our children. The dental industry, the medical establishment, and the government are not going to do that for us.
Emily, thanks for your input. I was just working on a reply to this comment, but you beat me to it. I have a busy night ahead of me so I’ll probably finish it later. In any case, I completely agree with you. There are for sure “alarmists” on the side of the fence that I find myself on so often, but as I see the nightmares in my own and my family members’ and friends’ lives, there is more and more that I do not trust about the mainstream info that we get. And especially as we slouch (or run) towards socialized medicine. Then we will all be pawns in their machine and will be able to do very little to educate and help ourselves. Thanks again.
I found this blog on tatertots and jello weekly wrap up and I’m so glad I clicked on the link. My son just turned two and was wondering when to take him to the dentist. After reading this I know to avoid mercury fillings and to also stay on top of his sugar intake and oral health.
Best to you, Jazmin. We learned the hard way that dried fruit can be a big problem as well. Hope you have better results than we did. Some of it is just the genetic cards that you are dealt.