MARCHANT TIMOTHY ESMOND BARRON

Marchant was born on 27 March 1996, and had hypoxia and fits at birth. He was diagnosed with infantile spasms at seven months and initially treated with vigabatrin, then ACTH. After three disastrous weeks, the drugs were withdrawn.

He started on the ketogenic diet in November 1996, when he was having 100+ fits a day. Marchant is now effectively fit free, although this took some five months to achieve. He used a 4+ to 1 diet, with MCT oil and carnitine additives - no drugs.

In spite of all his difficulties, Marchant is a very happy child, who charms everyone he meets. He also has excellent taste, liking white burgundy, early english music and women with long hair - which he delights to pull (the women, that is).

Marchant Barron - a case study

We are glad we have our son Marchant on the ketogenic diet. He is lively and alert and five months after starting the diet he became fit free. Marchant has been a ‘guinea pig’ in our learning about the diet, with our current knowledge he could have been fit free much sooner.

Unfortunately, we do not think the diet has very much chance of working in the UK as it is currently applied, although this could be simply rectified by providing training for paediatricians and dieticians, and better support for parents.

We sincerely hope our experiences can be used to help other children and we would be very happy to discuss our experiences further.

Marchant - the keto kid

This is the profile of Marchant at Rod Evers' web site   Epilepsy in young people  .  This is an excellent site which has profiles of many children suffering from various forms of epilepsy. It is not especially concerned with the ketogenic diet, but provides extremely useful information on the effects of various treatments, particularly anti-epileptic drugs..

Medical notes

We have kept detailed notes of Marchant's medical history, the better to understand his problems and pattern of development. These notes are made accessible for other parents with similar problems.

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