So this is what I looked like in 1992, I was 225 pounds and could walk for quite a ways, but not more than a mile at a time. In 1982 I walked 3 miles at noon every day and weighed 212 lbs. (According to entries into my "Life Book".)
So what it this all about. It is about WAR. It is about Corporate Greed. It is about Betrayal. It is about the medical world. It is about growing old. It is about sub-lethal diseases. It is about the results of lies upon lies. It is about the effects of unintended consequences (not actually a redundant concept). It is about Life's little defugalties. It will be a letter to others with the same disease and those who obtained it from the same source, and for those who do not know they have it and are judging themselves harshly based on their weakness and behaviors.
Reasons this may never 1. be posted 2. be finished 3. make any sense 4. soundly flaky
is that it causes pain to write about it, mental pain, heartache, and hate, lots of hate.
The Specific Subject: Peripheral Neuropathy
What is it?
Where does it come form.
How there is a lot of Ignorance about it at all levels.
It is not about how to cure it.
It is not how to reverse it.
It is not how mitigate it.
It is not how to escape it or live with it.
It is what has and will happen to me as a person with the condition, disease, or what ever it is. This may be of use to other suffers, their friends and family, as well as to my my own.
I will attempt not to be the Goddess of Gloom or the Prophet of Doom.
Outline to be filled in as we go...
RVN
Poisons
PTSD the source and the birth of the name
RVN the warriors
The VA and the Military/Industrial/Political Not-So Complex
The Betrayals
CONCLUSIONS—This study suggests that background exposure to organochlorine pesticides may be associated with higher risk of peripheral neuropathic complications among those with glucose abnormalities, even beyond the influence of diabetes itself.
http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/57/11/3108.short
Since Nam the other Wars
The lies and suppressions
The Diseases
The Dead Commarads
Sneaky Sneaky Peripheral Neuropathy
Source : http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/
peripheralneuropathy/detail_peripheralneuropathy.
htm#282063208
Dissolution by Deconstruction
Next I am told that PN is the source of my "weakness". That I have exercise intolerance....that is my heart pumps blood at a standard rate even when I work my muscles in activities such as walking. My efforts to do things more or less or limited in scope and time out sooner.
logged 9/27/2015
I had been retired about a year and had spent several hours. Working in my studio-store-workshop move junk around and such nothing heavy mind you. I lifted a box to put up an high shelf and I couldn't do it. I had done the same thing minutes before without any trouble. Another time after picking pecans off the ground I started walking to the house and wham-bam I felt like I'm treading through molasses, it was just so much effort to walk. Countless example of the phenomena occurred more and more frequently. My doctor didn't ignore it exactly,she consigned it to the non-life-threatening category. April 2015, someone finally told me what it was and why it was there. I had a one speed heart. It didn't speed up and it didn't slow down in response to exercise or other stimulus. If I worked the muscles too hard they would burn all of the oxygen available and it was not being replace sufficiently by having the heart speed up. Also when asleep it did not slow down. This was an effect of peripheral neuropathy. It is call Exercise Intolerance, it can not be reversed, and it is progressive. The root cause they say is being a diabetic. I had been slowing down for more than 15 years and now I was down to walking a few hundred feet. Their solution was a motorized wheel chair. I'll call it my putt-putt.
They delayed providing it for six months and then they tell me after 13 mouths of use it is mine. Exercise Intolerance cause mobility impairment. I knew that already.
Words and terms and stuff:
xenobiotic is a foreign chemical substance found within an organism that is not normally naturally produced by or expected to be present within that organism. It can also cover substances which are present in much higher concentrations than are usual.
Adipose tissue is one of the main types of connective tissue.
Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are chemical substances that persist in the environment, bioaccumulate through the food web, and pose a risk of causing adverse effects to human health and the environment.
In my case these are Agent Orange = Dioxin and Agent Blue = Arsenic
Addendum.... 9/28/2015
http://www.military.com/military-report/more-ships-added-to-agent-orange-exposure-list.html?ESRC=mr0928.nl
The toxins do not go away they live forever. Airplanes and ships spray with or carrying the materials are still toxic to those who serve on them. You will notice the Navy and Air Force know this. VA and Congress, not so much.
9/29/15
It is sitting in the dinning room. It is waiting for me to do something. But I know that if I do, I will never be able to give it up. It will become a necessity. It will become a constant companion. It will dictate where and how I can go places. It will seduce me with its technology. What if I just let the damn thing sit there and never touch it? Who would care. Hell who would know. It is sitting there, a point of no return disguised as a motorized wheelchair. They call it the Jazzy Elite HD (for Heavy Duty). Jazzy, can you believe they named it Jazzy? What are we WWII vets or something....I'm humming "Oh Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree With Anyone Else But Me" in my head as I look at it. The should call it the Feds "Grateful Dead Machine". After spending almost six months having two doctors persuade them that you have lack of mobility, they take six months to deliver. They do a rental to purchase contract for 13 months, and then it is yours. before that it reverts back to the Feds. They are betting you die before the whole two years are up or are bed fast and can't use it. ( Maybe it should be called the "Lay Laddie Lay" Machine). Thus it is in my house now....waiting....I have not
touched it yet. I'm thinking about it.
9/30/15
Blog Comments
So since this I have learned to get it outside and ride it around. It does allow me to do lots of stuff i haven't done for several years. I am happy to have it, even it it doesn't work in the house. Now, how to transport it?
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So now I'm reading that the toxins actually start their work as soon as you are exposed and continue the messing with nerves, synapses, brain, until you die? So when i date some of my major symptom back 25 years, that's not when PN started messing with me. That was 47 years ago. Humm, when did they decide that PN existed?
Below are FB post about the fall that directed my doctors to the current diagnosis. It often takes one thing to uncover another.
Mortality...time lines.
“Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.”
― Charles Dickens
The first picture is of manatees. The second picture is 60 seconds latter.
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