is there any way of getting from a DOMDocument type to a DOMElement type without having to use MakeE

Realted to bug 7435201, which requires the use of XMLDOM.FreeElement.
We use MakeElement fairly extensively but it would be more convenient to use FreeElement in one hit for all the elements in a DOMDocument at the point at which we currently use FreeDocument, when we have a DOMDocument type available.

I'm assuming that FreeElement takes a DOMElement type as input so is there any way of getting from a DOMDocument type to a DOMElement type without having to use MakeElement again? It looks as if I would have to use GetElementsByTagName (input DOMDocument, output DOMNodeList), then Item (input DOMNodeList, output DOMNode). But this only gets me to a DOMNode, not a DOMElement (don't want to use MakeElement again as that is what causes the problem in the first place).