Three years ago, FOX17's Stacy Case was diagnosed with Multiple
Sclerosis, a debilitating disease that scared her to death, but she
stands before you, not for pity, but to share her hope that she believes
could help hundreds of thousands of other sick people like her in her
journey to MS and back. They were the words she never thought she'd
hear. "I think you have early MS." Her children were just 2 and 3 when
she got that news. She was scared to death. Would her children remember
her when she was still able to walk, or would they be taking care of her
instead of the other way around? How fast was this disease going to
steal her everyday function? In her 20 years as a journalist, hundreds
of people have shared their struggles and their stories with her, and
they've done so because they wanted their story to help someone else, so
for her to keep this to herself, to not share with you this journey
she's on, would be a disservice to you and to God. Like any other mom,
she just wants to be here for her kids. Call her selfish, but she really
wants to be fully functional too, and MS is known for taking that away.
Chris and she have been together 18 years.



"When my wife first found out, I was just as angry as she was and
frustrated and there was a lot of crying going on," says husband Chris
Stout. "A lot."



All the tears in the world couldn't change what a battery of tests
showed. Her MRI revealed tiny white specks on her brain. They're called
lesions.



"Depending on where they're located, they can cause a variety of
symptoms," says Vanderbilt MS Clinic Dr. Harold Moses. "Some people lose
vision. Some patients can have problems with their balance."



For her, it all started with the sensation of pin pricks, the feeling of
cold water running down the back of her head, blurred vision in one
eye, and extreme exhaustion over the period of about 5 months. Then she
woke up one day in July 2008, got out of bed, and couldn't walk.



"Very scared, very scared," says husband Chris Stout. "It's natural to
be scared. You have visions of something being really really bad, and
you have all these visions: 'Is it going to be me raising these kids by
myself?'."



Imagine an electrical cord with a divet in it. The current would have a hard time traveling past this spot.
That's what happens with Multiple Sclerosis. Immune cells mistakenly
attack the Myelin or insulation around nerve fibers in the brain and
spinal cord, a process called Demyelination, effectively cutting off
communication from nerve to nerve, and since, as a journalist, she's
trained to search for answers, she immediately started the research
process, spending hours each day online, on the phone, trying to lay
rest a strange hunch she had, a gut feeling that wouldn't go away. Could
the dental work she'd had done just prior to her onset of symptoms have
triggered this terrible disease now ravaging her body? She'd recently
had four 30 year old silver amalgalm fillings taken out and replaced
with 4 new silver amalgalm fillings, because that's what insurance
covered.



"An amalgalm simply means it's a combination of several alloys," says
IAOMT Trained Biological Dentist Dr. Ada Frazier. "There's like nickel,
but it's a small percentage. 10% silver in this alloy. 50% mercury in
this alloy and a few other alloys mixed in."



50% mercury? Dr. Frazier has a biological dentistry practice in
Meridianville, Alabama. She's a member of the International Academy of
Oral Medicine and Toxicology, a worldwide dental organization that
focuses on the connection between your mouth and your health, an
organization that produced this video Case found during her research.
This is mercury vapor coming off a 25 year old silver filling in an
extracted tooth. The background is a phosfluorescent screen. The mercury
vapor absorbs the flourescent light and you can see it as a shadow on
the screen. She quickly learned that happens every time you chew or
drink hot liquids with silver fillings in your mouth.



"Think about it," says Dr. Frazier. "This is mercury. It's toxic, and
anybody else, the EPA or anybody else, they handle it with kid gloves.
we put it in people's mouths and say it's safe."



Case also discovered that 100 million of these fillings are placed every
year in the U.S., while other countries have banned them. She had 8 of
them from childhood, which means she could potentially absorb 120
micrograms of mercury a day. By comparison, the FDA puts out a warning
about mercury in seafood, which exposes us to just 2.3 micrograms of
mercury.



"Over time those metals can cause disease," says Doctor of Osteopathic
Medicine Michael Bernui. "When you reach a certain burden those toxic
metals, the effect of them, can start causing cellular dysfunction."



Armed with tons of disturbing information and several books, what was a
mom to do? Wait until this disease ravaged her body enough to start on
the standard medication for MS? Or choose to make herself the guinea
pig, and take a controversial, alternative route? In Part 2 of LIVING
WITH MS, We'll take you on this long journey down a path of hope, one
that Case believes will ultimately, one day, reverse her diagnosis. It's
a report anyone with an auto immune disease could find helpful.Living with MS Part 1