Back in January, I discovered that I had extremely high levels of lead and mercury in my system. I don't know that I really had any symptoms, but with levels that high, I decided to begin chelation treatments. It's expensive (US$215 per treatment), and insurance doesn't cover it, so we're racking up a little debt. But health is worth it, right?

The pic on the left (click the thumbnail to see the image) shows the levels in January. Note that the lead and mercury levels are literally off the chart. Yikes!

This next image shows the report after the first series of 10 treatments. What I find interesting is that the mercury level is still in the Very Elevated range, even though it's been reduced to less than half of its earlier level. Guess I shouldn't have agreed to all that sushi with Duffbert during the Enron years! So...I was going to start the next series of 10 treatments next week. But then I realized that if I hold off until July, I can pay for this with pre-tax dollars and save at least a couple hundred dollars. For those outside of the USA, this has got to sound ridiculous, to need to spend hours of reading to figure out how one's health coverage works. Anyway, at my job the new "benefits year" begins in July, meaning that I can have a fresh Flexible Spending Account with which to work ...and that means I can use the health care debit card to pay for the chelation, and fund that account spread over the next year, using pre-tax funds. Man, this system of health care in the USA is whacky! But I'm extremely grateful to be in a position to be able to attend to the toxic metals, rather than go insane from the poisoning and do something irrational like install Vista on my home machines ;)