TIFU. Know what it means? Click here (at your own peril) if you don’t.

Now take the T (“today”) and substitute TW (“this week”), because the events I’m about to describe happened on Monday.

In yesterday’s post I talked about starting Heilkunst. Martin’s first two clears arrived last week. I waited to start them, because I hadn’t had time to peruse the instructions for the clears, or to revise Martin’s daily supplementation sheets to include the clears and the accompanying drainage formula. Monday I had the time, got everything prepared, and decided to start Martin’s first clear.

By Monday we also had been waiting more than a week, since our visit to Dr. Zelinsky, for Martin’s new glasses to arrive. Martin, with characteristic precision and fierceness, had said he wanted his glasses to arrive “on Saturday, November 1 and no other day!” They didn’t. So when the glasses finally appeared on Monday, November 3, I was eager to present them to Martin and let him start wearing them.

Here’s what happened after the school bus dropped Martin off Monday afternoon:

3:50 pm. Martin put on glasses for the first time, agreed to wear them generally.

3:50-4:20 pm. Martin played, read, and drew pictures, wearing glasses. He took his afternoon supplements.

4:20-6:20 pm. We went to social-skills group. Martin wore glasses. On the way, he drank his camel milk. The group leader reported that Martin had a great session and participated well.

6:30 pm. Driving home from social-skills group, we pulled into Stop & Shop for Martin to pick out his own Lärabar®. Even though we have Lärabars at home, Martin takes great pleasure in going to the store and choosing one. (No doubt he also likes that Stop & Shop stocks “cherry pie” and “pecan pie” flavors, which I don’t keep at home.) Martin, glasses on, seemed energized, if not decisive. He ran back and forth between the standard Lärabar display and a temporary rack of “seasonal” flavors like “pumpkin pie” and “gingerbread.”

7:00-7:30 pm. Martin sat at the dinner table. His dinner was bone broth and pasta with squash and cauliflower. While Martin sipped his broth, I assembled and administered his evening supplements, including for the first time the Heilkunst drainage drop and a Heilkunst clear. He took them without issue.

7:30-7:45 pm. Although Martin loves pasta, after just a bite or two he pushed the pasta bowl aside and said he wanted to finish only his soup, which he did. He also requested dessert and ate a small piece of chocolate. Then he said he didn’t want to wear his glasses anymore, didn’t want to take a bath, and was going to get ready for bed.

8:00 pm. In his room, teeth brushed, pajama-clad, without glasses, Martin scrunched himself into froggy position on the floor and said his belly hurt. Did he need to return to the potty? I asked. Could I get him a drink of water? Would he like more soup? No, no, no, Martin answered. He climbed into bed and asked me to read him a story.

8:20 pm. Martin was in bed, lights out. From the kitchen, I heard him calling me. I walked down the hall to his doorway. “Mommy, my tummy hurts,” he said and smacked his lips. I realized what probably was coming and started toward his bed. Too late. Within seconds, Martin, his pillow, his sheets and blanket, several stuffed animals, and a small part of the mattress were splashed with vomit. In the mess I saw several undigested supplements, along with the few bits of pasta he’d eaten.

Martin almost never pukes. I think it’s happened maybe two or three times in his life.

And I didn’t know what caused it Monday. That was the TWIFU. I know that I should separate new supplements, treatments, therapies, and even vitamins by at least two-to-three days, in order to pinpoint the cause of any reactions. I know that. What did I do Monday? Without a second thought, I let Martin wear new glasses for several hours and started the Heilkunst. When he reacted, when he puked all over poor Curious George, I couldn’t isolate the cause. Was wearing glasses too much stimulation for Martin’s brain stem? Did he get dizzy? Or did the first Heilkunst clear cause his body to reject something? How could I tell?

I’ve been working at Martin’s recovery for four years. You’d think by now I’d have a clue.

P.S. Because of my carelessness, I had to undertake some additional investigation. By the time I finished cleaning Martin, washing linens, and doing my best with the mattress and pillow, it was late evening. (Admittedly, I would have been awake anyway. The Rangers went to a shoot-out.) I didn’t want to bother Dr. Zelinsky or Rudi Verspoor at that hour. Instead, I texted with another Dr. Z mom I know and posted an inquiry in a Heilkunst group on-line, which generated immediate responses. By the time I went to bed, I was 90% confident that the vomiting was unrelated to the new glasses and instead was a proper reaction to the first clear, which was a clear for the coxsackie virus Martin had two years ago. I was even more confident when Martin woke the next morning with a slight rash on his hands, a much lighter version of how he’d looked during the virus. Still, I can’t be 99.99% confident, and that bothers me.