Month: October 2015

You will hear a lot of people say that they have had life changing events. Here are a few of the medical life changing events that have totally changed my life for the better

1. At the age of 8yrso I discovered one day that I was allergic to pollen. My pop made wine every few years and the family would go off onto the local park land and gather Elderberry blossoms by the bushel basket full. It was my job to rub the blossoms over a large screen covering a 20 gal crock. I had done my job and went to the subdivision next door to see some childhood friends. I remember, vividly sitting on the curb, rubbing my eyes. Before long, my eyes were swollen shut and I had to wander back home in total disbelief of what was happening in my body. Little Jimmy endured the testing; scratches on my back and arms to determine all the things I was allergic to, which were, pollen, animal dander, grass, just about everything in my surroundings. I couldn’t sleep on my back or sides for days after each of multiple tests. And then, I spent every summer and fall, traumatically enduring my eyes weeping and red, my nose constantly running, and red, and my mind not able to focus on much else other than the torment. Well, smart, adaptive Jimmy dealt with it until age 30. While living in Canada, I learned that I could go through a three-year program to desensitize my body to the antigen and stop making histamines. It was a total commitment to going to a doctors office, without missing one appointment from start to finish, every day for a month, every week for over a year, then every month for nearly a year. I had to restart after 5 weeks when I moved to Kingston to attend Queen’s University. After the first year, I was symptom-free, yet had to continue to attend for a shot regularly. Suffice it to say, that endurance changed my life on a significant basis. Least of all being able to avoid antihistamines circling my body for 4-5 months every year, causing drowsiness, total brain voids that had huge impacts on my performance in school and work.
2. In 1997 I was diagnosed with a ruptured disc in my cervical spine. It turned out to be two adjoining discs. The pain I endured until it was diagnosed was excruciating. I would take Percocet every four hours just to take the edge off the pain. It never went away until I woke up from a five and a half hour microsurgery procedure. Without the medical intervention, my life would be unbelievably different today. Here are some X-rays of the titanium plate with four screws. They took bone from my hip to put plugs in between the vertebra.

After four weeks, the surgeon could not find the seams around the plugs because it had healed faster that he had seen in 40 years of practice. I am convinced that taking Nutrilite and other vitamins before and after surgery made a huge difference.

The third event involves Hep C. As a cardiovascular pump tech, I would be covered in blood after each open heart surgery. It was my job to clean the pump as well as technically run it. There was a drain in the floor of the clean room near the OR. I would simply empty gallons of blood onto the floor and wash it down the drain. I never used any protection as in those days, we worried about giving something to a patient, not what they could give to us. Being exposed to that much foreign blood and not protecting myself led to me picking up the Hep C virus. It was years later in Canada that I learned that I had Hep C by being turned down to donate blood, which I had done to the 25-gallon level by that time. Who knows how many people got my infection. And then, I lived with the knowledge that I could be stricken at any moment with an irreversible liver disease. The cost of the meds is pushing $80,000. Thanks to months of follow up with the VA, I got it covered, and expect to be 100% free of the Hep C virus in a matter of weeks. Simply amazing. I love science.Me, last night with the bottle of Harvoni pills that will rid my body of the Hep C virus. I love science!