As we were refreshing our budget for this year, I tallied up our monthly supplement costs, so I could try and work it in. Here’s what we are currently giving her:

Dorthy’s Meds	$/mo
Oxytocin	$50
Glutithione	$80
Seratonin	$120
Singular	$10
selenium	$3
Multiple Mineral	$16
Krill	$20
charcoal	$5
digest right	$30
Cal-mag	$20
melatonin	$5
Super-Nu	$17
	$376

Now, that is a good chunk of change for us – over the holidays, we were watching TV at a relatives (we don’t watch much at home) and I saw an advertisement for a BMW with the same monthly payment…. so we now have the new joke that Dorthy is our “Beemer”. We’ve tried trials phasing some of these out, but they all seem to be be important – we’ll get regression without all of them working together. The good thing is, is that we know a lot of what we can do to help Dorthy, and we’re making progress every day.

The kind of sad thing is that she used to be on 5 different prescription medicines (asthma meds, paxil, etc.) that we have been able to wean her from through better diet (at significant cost also) and the supplements. The new end cost is lower than the prescription only regimen (at least before insurance), but the burden has gone from our insurance company to our pocket. We have made some progress – we are paying for most of our supplements on our medical “cafeteria plan” – meaning that we don’t pay federal taxes on them, but it would be nice if insurance covered more.