Yesterday, my son who is away at college calls home saying he is suffering from severe abdominal pain and thinks he needs to go to the hospital. After talking with him, he seemed to have the classic signs of appendicitis – so we tell him to get to urgent care ASAP. Meanwhile my wife & I pack quickly and make the 3.5 hour drive to meet him there. By the time we arrive, he was transferred from urgent care to emergency room – and has had two CT scans and consults with several doctors and radiologists. Ultimately they decide that he does have inflammation and infection in his appendix, but also in the small intestine. They decide that the underlying cause is not appendicitis but Crohn’s disease. They indicated that it is critical to get the infection under control before too much damage is done to the intestines. They prescribe him flagyl and cipro. I ask about the neurotoxicity of these drugs and whether there are alternatives – but I am told these are the drugs that have been proven most effective for these types of infections. They also indicated that this infection would be extremely serious and potentially life threatening if not controlled quickly.

Ultimately, we decided that the certainty of the serious infection outweighed the potential adverse side effects of the medications. (Gut wrenching decision to say the least.)

So, just looking for some advice regarding what might be the best supplements or anything else that can be done to reduce the potential for the neurotoxic effects of the antibiotics. It would kill me to see him suffering with the same things I do at such a young age. It's bad enough that he will apparently be living with a chronic autoimmune disease for the rest of his life.