Day fortynine

Seven weeks today.

I am having a vacestomy tomorrow. That means I need to eat light for dinner and can have no solid food after midnight.

I am having the low invasive vasectomy. I had the standard vasectomy in 1998, but it did not work. When they tested my sperm for this round, I had 770 million with a motility of 90%. That is a very healthy sperm count. There is no doubt that I am fertile.

It is very inappropriate and irresponsible for me to father a child at this point in my life. I am 53. I need to be sterile. This will take a huge burden off of my wife Ruth and free us up in many ways.

The downside is the discomfort. I must admit that I am nervous about this. But that is something I will have to get through. My BP this morning was 130/78, not bad for a mildly stressed out individual.

I still seem to be gaining some weight post fast. I was 237 this morning. I am being very compliant, so I am not sure what is up with that. I am going to have to not worry about it. I will just continue to eat the diet and let the rest take care of itself.

I had some pain last night in my hands. My nail beds mostly. This is probably due to the killer workout that Jon and I did yesterday. I stressed my grip out a lot in this workout, and that has probably led to some inflammation in my hands. This disturbed my sleep last night. I am going to need to invest in some weight lifting gloves if we keep doing this.

Following up on the exchange with Alex and Alice on Friday night, Ray and I have been swapping emails. I include both our comments below verbatim. As far as I am concerned, Ray and I are OK about this now:

Ray's email:

We can talk about this later, but I believe you misunderstood Alex and Alice's points. I believe they were promoting change (or at least I know that Alice described what she did in detail). I suspect what she is promoting is not as far off. I don't think it was an excuse at all. I think she took every opportunity to point them to lifestyle changes but was describing their unwillingness to change. I think that is unfortunately true. While they may not have the full scope of what is possible through diet changes, I believe Alice is a lot more aware ... based on my side conversations.

Both Alice and Alex are finishing their training. Alex is finishing a dual degree program giving him an MPh (master in public health) and an MD. The MPH does give him some great training in epidimeology. Alice is an RN who is finishing her FNP (Family Nurse Practitioner). They met on a medical mission's trip to Honduras last year. I would say that they are potential converts rather than the system.

I think that Ruth's suggestion is good for now. You are developing an extremely compelling story. I can only tell you that when I discussed your situation with Walid, one of Pam's study partners from Eastern Virginia Med School, he was very interested. His dad, a physician, was an early advocate of diet and lifestyle changes. If Walid goes into primary care, he would like to focus on that approach. I have sent him quite a few references.. of course he has been very busy in med school, but I am confident he will follow up. In some respects we can change people this way.

You are doing great.

Ray

My email in response:

I am hopeful that you are right about Alice and Alex. It is possible that I misunderstood them, given that the discussion turned to malpractice rather than generally about the system itself. Malpractice is a hot button for most folks in the medical industry. The fact that the issue threatens the livelihood of many medical professionals creates anger and resentment. This may disguise the desire for change behind a wall of defensiveness. I suspect that happened Friday night.My passion is also driven by anger of a different sort. Robert Kyosaki says that passion is anger mixed with love. Since my family is littered with catastrophes brought about by medical malpractice and mismanagement, I have some anger about the issue too. The litany includes:

1. Ruth, who was misdiagnosed as depressed, given Paxil, jacked up to twice the recommended dose, and then pulled off cold turkey by her primary care physician. The PDR says you have to tritrate by no more than 10 mg per week. She was at 80 mg. The maximum dose is 40 mg. She cratered within 24 hours and ended up in the hospital with a serotonin storm in her brain. She almost died.
2. My mother, a heavy smoker, was prescribed hormone replacement therapy by her OB/Gyn for menopausal symptoms. These drugs had a known side effect of causing breast cancer which was far worse in women who smoked. The physician neither her told her this, nor followed up with recommended exams. She died within 2 years at the age of 57.
3. My sister Debby was prescribed high blood pressure medication which had a known side effect of causing depression. The physician failed to understand that she was living in an environment of incredible stress. (She was a Dallas County District Attorney in charge of sexual crimes. Ever watched the show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit? That was her life.) She became suicidal within a few weeks and shot herself in the head with a 35 caliber pistol, dying instantly.
4. My daughter was given the DPT vaccine at the age of 2 as part of a routine wellness checkup. Within a few hours her fever spiked to 105 degrees. It cooked her brain. She became severely autistic and mentally retarded for the rest of her life. It was known that the DPT vaccine caused this in a significant fraction of children who received it, but the drug was not withdrawn from the market until years later, and many more children, including my daughter, became autistic as a result.
5. In my own life, I have been examined and treated by many health care practitioners in the past year or so. My health was going downhill rapidly. I was in a downward spiral. Lack of sleep combined with pain was causing me to lose hope and a will to live. No one ever told me to change my lifestyle in this manner until you did.

So, you and I have had very different experiences in our lives with the medical industry. Mine has been in general profoundly negative. To be fair, there have been some exceptions. Sam’s appendix and my brother’s brain tumor being two prominent examples. But in general, I have observed that I am far healthier staying as far away from the medical profession as humanly possible.

Thanks for your encouraging words. I will keep going.

More later.