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September 3, 1969
I was born. Nearly a month over due.
1974, age five
I hide the pain of a broken leg for four days.
I jumped off a stage at the local community building. I broke my right leg. In my five-year-old mind I was afraid that my parents would be mean to me if they found out so I hid the pain. My sister, Debbie, realized something was wrong after four days and told our parents. Also around this age, I fell off a swing. It hurt.
[Even at this young age Karen dealt with hiding pain from people. Falling off the swing will cause her issues later in life.]
June 5, 1987
Today I graduated high school, in the ‘High Scholastic Standing’ range of 3.00 to 3.60 GPA. Looking forward to life…
October 20, 1989
I was in a car accident today. I was on a one way street in Clarion about to turn left onto a two way street, when someone tried to pass me. They hit the driver side back wheel. Car is slightly bent, looks like it will be okay. I don’t think I’m hurt.
[I don’t know that there is any significance to this? My father died on October 20th many years later.]
Sunday, August 23, 1992
Before we left for the Warren Hamfest today, in Bob’s parent’s kitchen he asked, “Would you like to get married?” I said yes.
[Karen was first licensed as N3ITJ, later to upgrade to Advance Class after taken a test in technical proficiency and 13 WPM Morse Code to be come known as KD3ZU. She maintained the local amateur radio repeater’s software for many years.]
Sometime in the early 90’s
[Karen always made notes to herself to discuss with the doctor. From the $8000 amount this is very near her accident. We probably spent a million dollars or more when you account for the insurance, and even now, more than a year after her death when I’m adding this, the expenses are still coming in!]
Friday, Oct 22, 2010 at 10:21pm
I will give the condensed version here. I am sure I will forget something.
[As far as I know Karen wrote this message to herself in 2010, not sure why she did it then. I found it after her death.]
A minor car accident in October of 1989 started daily chronic neck pain and headaches. I did not have pain prior to that but I believe my underlying issue started when I was a teenager with scoliosis.
[Karen did not think she was injured at the time of the accident. It took many days for the concussion to come on. Not clear when the leaking issues may have started. She hit the left side of her head on the door jam and had a sideways whiplash, something that there is very little study on.
Things she heard with her ears did not stick to her brain very well. She compensated with her eyes. Things she saw, like reading, she remembered to never be forgotten. If it was important, I sent her messages so she would see them with her eyes over FidoNet (before the Internet), then over email on the Internet. This makes her vision problems described later more significant than it would seem.
The Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) caused during Karen’s car accident caused obsessiveness, which she turned to advantage of obsessively studying anything that caught her interest. Mostly she studied medical texts, insurance, and dog obedience training.
1989 to 1994 we saw about 35 different doctors in the area of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Akron. Most said there was nothing wrong with her, a few to their credit said they had no idea what was wrong with her. After doctor 35 we gave up on doctors.
Due to Karen’s hearing issue she learned to make typed notes to take to doctors appointments. We also learned to take three copies: One for us to hang on to during the meeting with the doctor so we would not forget something. One to give to the nurse that would usually be seen before the doctor for the records. Lastly, one copy we put into the hands of the doctor directly. Karen discovered that some doctors never looked at the one given to the nurse!
We also went to a pain clinic in Pittsburgh for evaluation in this time frame. At the start of the appointment they insisted she write on their form in long hand everything she had neatly typed on the form she had gotten to prior to the appointment. This had her in tears. By the end of the day it became clear to us this place had no interest in Karen as a person, they were only interested in her insurance money! We never went back there. We found a pain clinic in Meadville that Karen stayed with for twenty-four years. She found there that cryogenic nerve freezes of the Occipital Nerve relieved some of the neck pain. Chemical/drug injections did nothing for this pain. Karen continues...]
… my husband was supportive and helpful, if it was not for him during this time … I would have killed myself over unrelieved pain. I exercised for a few sporadic years prior to 1999. 1999 is the year I started to faithfully do water exercise. It helps with depression but not enough. I have been on many antidepressants and they do not offer significant relief.
Systemic Tendinitis Starts
In 2003, I accidentally cut my left leg down to the bone just below my knee.
[A dish broke. Never throw broken glass into a garbage bag, put it in a box! The bag brushed her leg when she was taking it out. I have added her medical records for this event in the hopes they help someone: Karen’s medical records from 2003 when she was given Levaquin® and got ‘floxed.’]
I immediately went to the ER. After I finished the antibiotics I received at the ER, my leg became infected. My PCP gave me another prescription for antibiotics. The infection improved, but after I finished those antibiotics my leg felt infected but looked fine. My PCP gave me a lecture that I did not need more antibiotics as that would contribute resistance. A few days after this conversation with my PCP, my leg became an angry red, and was dead weight. The pain was HORRID! I went to the ER and was diagnosed with cellulitis. Several weeks of antibiotics cleared up the infection.
Six months after I thought the infection cleared, my left wrist started to hurt. My PCP diagnosed tendonitis, and prescribed physical therapy.
[Karen spent a year crawling around the house on this construction, skateboard-like thing so her ankles would heal.
Caused by the drugs above, see: Fluoroquinolones. Cipro® and Levaquin® should be taken off the market, and the FDA knows it! Levaquin® made it so she could not walk from the tendinitis.
I really believe that these antibiotics prevented future CSF treatments from working! So far there is no medical prof of that, just anecdotal evidence from several people that said their CSF Leaks started after taking a FQ based antibiotic.
Are the FQ antibiotics damaging the Dura? We need to find genetic markers in some of Karen’s preserved tissue. If you know of such genetic tests please contact me!]
Garth, Karen's Love.
All of this crap is the result of these #$@&%*! drugs!
During therapy my right wrist started to hurt, which was weird because the PT was not working on that wrist. Then the pain traveled up to both elbows, and shoulders then both knees start to hurt. At this point, I saw a rheumatologist. He diagnosed me with Rheumatoid Arthritis. This rheumy got the RA somewhat controlled. Three years ago, I developed tendonitis in both feet. My pain was a twenty on a scale of 1 to 10. I tried working with my Rheumy for about 18 months with this. He was a being a jerk so I switched rheumatologists last year. I have to drive almost two hours one way to the new Rheumy, but it’s worth it. The new rheumy changed some of my meds (not pain medication) and got this multi-year RA flare controlled which stopped a lot of the pain. The tendons in my feet are permanently damaged from being inflamed for that long. I can walk, just not very far. The new Rheumy diagnosed me with a variant of RA that attacks tendons [Caused by the drugs above]. My RA does not attack my joints.
[We cleaned up what we ate, drank, and got artificial chemicals like fluoride in toothpaste, chemical based soap, shampoos, cleaning products (amazing what white vinegar will clean) out of the house. We went with natural organics such as hemp-based soaps and cooking oils. The Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) and Lupus symptoms went way over time and did not return. The issue really was multiple chemical sensitivities!
Overlook NOTHING in your environment nor the products you put in or on your body (hair coloring or getting a perm for example). Consider things like air fresheners. Good smelling stuff can be quite toxic just as the reverse might be true. There was nothing that could be done for the tendon damage caused by the drug!]
This past June [2010] a tendon in my left index finger spontaneously dislocated. My rheumy prescribed hand therapy and a splint. During hand therapy both knees became painful and inflamed. I developed the general overall sickish feeling I have during a flare. I saw my Rheumy again. I received three Kenalog injections. Kenalog stopped the underlying flare. Bilateral knee tendonitis established itself prior to the Kenalog injections. This is nearly healed now. If not for my new rheumy, that tendonitis would have become chronic and spread to additional areas. The old rheumy would not have done anything to help me because my blood work numbers were normal. Whereas, the new rheumy assured me that they treat patients as people, not as the numbers on your blood work.
… Those of you that had tendonitis know how bad that pain is, and that you MUST rest your tendons or they will not heal properly. Tendons take forever to heal because they do not have a good blood supply. I have to take care of all my daily activities and this takes me all day whether or not my tendons are inflamed.
[“… Commonly used FQs include levofloxacin (Levaquin®), ciprofloxacin (Cipro®), moxifloxacin (Avelox), norfloxacin (Noroxin), ofloxacin (Floxin) and gemifloxacin (Factive).
… For many people, the concept of being “floxed” is difficult to comprehend. “The reaction is mostly disbelief,” says Girard. “They have been taking antibiotics their whole life and never had anything like that. Or they have taken Cipro® and they have arthritis or depression but don’t understand it could be from the Cipro®. But the reaction is mostly disbelief—until it happens to you.”
Fluoroquinolones, or more accurately their precursors, were developed as a chemotherapy drug. When it was discovered that the compound could actually kill bacteria, they were reformulated and marketed as antibiotics. However, they are far from penicillin.
Simply put, fluoroquinolones work by entering the bacteria’s DNA and preventing it from reproducing. However, they do not work only on bacterial DNA. They actually penetrate all the cells in the body. It’s believed that the tendons rupture because the FQs confuse the DNA, and the cells literally get mixed up.
“Tendons will be rebuilding wrong, and rebuilding wrong, until one day you overextend them and they snap. People get it in their shoulder, rotator cuff, hands, wrist,” ~ Mark Girard.]
I have no friends. I wish there was a local Chronic Pain support group were I could physically talk with others in Chronic Pain. I do water exercise at the Y, but I still feel very lonely and depressed.
Throughout the years, I have never been prescribed any pain meds stronger than Darvecet and Vicodin which do practically nothing for me.
[Having high power drugs would change later, however, the stronger ones only made her sick or have an even worse headache. Karen felt that narcotics lowered her CSF pressure, which you don’t want when your pressure is already too low! There may be no medical evidence to support this conjecture. Low CSF pressure causes pseudo Chiari, as shown in the drawing on the next page. Things are getting yanked on that were never meant to be yanked on! This is what causes the excruciating headache.]
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
I am no nurse, but several healthcare professionals that know me and are not treating me said that I more knowledgeable than the average person. Studying health-related subjects is my hobby.
http://smile.amazon.com/ch/47-1141080
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