How our Honey Business got the name Megan's Honey.
5 Yrs ago, one of my twin daughters woke up one day and started walking funny, at first we thought she had fallen off of something and hurt her leg.
When it didn't go away and after many Dr visits and many tests later, she was finally diagnosed with Juvenile Rhumatoid Arthritis at the age of 18 moths old. Like any parent who has had a child with a serious illness, we were devestated.
The Dr wanted to put her on Methotrexate which is a low dose chemo therapy..... it scared the crap out of us. We trusted our Dr she was one of the best JRA specialist at one of the best Children's Hospitals in the nation. She started off on a liquid form, her body did not process it well, and was basically destroying her liver.
They wanted to try a new medicine but the Dr wouldn't give it to her because we lived in a 100 yr old farm house and she would be susceptible to fungal lung infections. We had to buy a new house.
About that time a guy told me I ought to keep bees. I asked why and he replied
" have you ever met a beekeeper with arthritis"
Those words stirred my thoughts at night and I realized I hadn't, most beekeepers I knew were very old men, and I often times wondered how they could still pack those heavy boxes of honey.
I did my research and found out there there just might be something to this Bee Venom Theropy. I asked my daughert's rhumatologist about it against my wife's wishes because she was afraid the Dr would think I was crazy.
Turns out I wasn't!!!! ...........she said there was many promising studies in Europe, but studies here in the US get killed by big pharma. So we got our bees in preparation for the day we would be brave enough to treat her with it.
Mean time her medicine she was on stopped working so the Dr wanted to go back to the methotrexate in injection form. She said her body would metabolize it differently. It did and it was working .
Here she is age 3 giving her self chemo injections
The problem with this is even though it was working when she was on it chemo kills her immune system even with a low dose so when she got sick ......(which happened often)....... she had to go off her chemo and on prednisone which only treat the symptoms, and also has it's own problems like growth reduction and severe weight gain which cased even more stress on her arthritic joints.
Here she was on prednisone
and to compare her twin sister.
When she was off her chemo she would get knots on her joints ....( and her arthritis was spreading) and they would take months before they would go away, once we got her back on chemo.
Finally I'd had enough !!!!
I grabbed a bee, iced her wrist, and once it was numb I gave her that first sting.
It scared me more than it scared her and it became badly swollen ( which is a normal reaction) but 3 days later after the swelling went down the knot was gone!
We have been treating her off and on as needed with BVT ever since!
We found out that Rheumatoid Arthritis is an auto immune disorder so her body doesn't recognize the inflamed joints because it's her body attacking itself. By injecting a foreign protein such as be venom it triggers an immune response and causes her body to produce a cortisone dump to counter act the inflammation from the bee sting. That cortisone also attacks the inflammation from the arthritis.
She is now 6.5 yrs old and finished her first season of soccer and T-ball. Something we thought we would never get to see her do.
I'ts amazing what parents sometimes take for granted.
I thank God every day for my Daughters, and I thank Him for the Bees!