I just came across an editorial comment that I made in a newsletter that I sent out years ago. I will say almost 4 years ago to be precise. I must admit that I had a sense of humor! My health and my life have changed dramatically for the better since then…
A random sampling of readers has led me to believe that there was a misconception as to why there was no newsletter last week (although the newspaper was published every day). No, I was not in Bermuda (my favorite place – haven’t been there in 14 years and in fact, haven’t had a vacation in 4 years). Rather my health decided to abandon me and my brain was in a London fog (actually it was a brain fog, but London sounded more like a vacation spot) and my body felt like that of Dean Karnazes while he was running 50 marathons in 50 days (okay, not quite that bad) .
Like 44,999,995 other people, we don’t have health insurance, so I headed to my favorite Master Herbologist, Susan Nichols, for some high resolution blood morphology. On the screen appeared what looked to be a water sample from the Rio Grande, but was instead my half a drop of blood. Susan delicately informed me that it was bacteria normally found in waste water and wondered if I had been, perhaps, kissing our dog after it drank from the river or a pond. No, I don’t kiss dogs, but it made me wonder even more about the water in restaurant glasses (the only other place that I drink water except at home and all of that is filtered).
Paraphrasing Renee Zellweger in Jerry Maguire, Susan, “had me at that diagnosis” but went on to suggest that I do a colon cleanse – hopefully not what you are envisioning but rather a powder consisting of a blend of psyllium and herbs that refuses to dissolve in juice. After 6 days and feeling better and definitely not as foggy, I can only think that something that tastes that bad has to be good for you (I took super odorless garlic pills for three days, too, to rid my blood of the pond water).
So my health saga continues and if you would like to read tomorrow’s news today, the article, “Chronic Fatigue No Longer Seen as ‘Yuppie Flu‘” will give you some insight into how the medical community has been treating me in the 22 years since my car accident. But now that I don’t have health insurance and can’t afford to see a doctor, I simply rely on a microscope to tell me that my white blood cells don’t have any of the five markers associated with chronic fatigue
syndrome and wonder how many others of you have fallen victim to iatrogenesis.
