I have a story to tell that anyone who sees an American Doctor for health care needs to hear. When I was 18 years old I contracted a painful intestinal infection that sidelined me for many days. The symptoms were serve abdominal cramping, loss of strength and diarrhea. When I went to see my family doctor back in Lancaster, Pennsylvania he could find nothing wrong with me except for the symptoms I described. He sent me away with no medication or diagnosis. He just prescribed bed rest.
Slowly I began to feel well enough to move around and eventually I returned to my summer job. However, I never felt completely myself again. While the pain and cramping was gone I found I couldn’t stomach any of the greasy foods I used to love like bacon and eggs for years afterwards. After graduating from college I enlisted in the US Army. None of their intensive medical screening processes identified any physical problems with me. I had had childhood asthma, but since I had outgrown it by 12 years of age, it was not considered a problem by the Army. Ironically, during the final year of my three year enlistment, at the age of 24, I started displaying asthma symptoms again. Along with the asthma symptoms I began noticing a thick mucus discharge from my chest and throat accompanied by unproductive coughing and spitting. When the Army doctor’s examined me they diagnosed it as adult asthma and prescribed an asthma inhaler. I think it was albuterol, but I can’t be sure after all these years. I’ve never known anyone who has outgrown child asthma only to relapse in their adult years. I’ve known people to have it their wholes and others who never had symptoms until they were adults, but never have I met someone who had relapsed like me.
After leaving the Army I went work in the San Francisco Bay Area and started receiving my medical treatment from Kaiser Permanente. There I began receiving allergy shots in an effort to control both my asthma and a nasal allergy that began to resurface while living in California. The allergy shots gave me some relief for a few years, but I still required multiple inhalers, a nasal spray and an antihistamine to be comfortable. After leaving Kaiser for another insurance provider because my new employer didn’t offer Kaiser as a health insurance option, I sought out an allergy clinic that took my new insurance. As part of their procedure I had to undergo the ever popular allergy skin prick skin test again. I tested positive for the numerous pollens and environmental elements that I had always been allergic to plus a new allergy to shrimp. With this information I slowly drew a connection between shrimp, and other shell fish, and the sudden cramping and diarrhea that always seemed to follow shortly after eating them. All along over the years I slowly began eating antacid tablets like candy and started keeping a bottle of Mylanta in the fridge for emergencies caused by the chronic heartburn that began to develop.
At about 33 years of age I moved back to Lancaster to raise my son who was 2 years old at the time. There over the years doctors eventually began prescribing different acid reflux medicines as they became available to treat my increasing heartburn problem. All along these same doctors were aware of and continued treating my asthma and allergy symptoms. For the next decade or so I continued being treated for my individual symptoms without any doctor caring to look for a root cause.
Around 44 years of age I moved to Wyckoff, New Jersey located in affluent Bergen County. There my allergy and asthma symptoms continued to progress until I started having problems sleeping comfortably as my 47th birthday approached. At this point my mucus discharged became so prevalent that at times I couldn’t breathe comfortably when I laid down at night. This led to many sleepless nights and eventually sleep depredation. A couple of years later I started experiencing a strange rash that first appeared on my feet and gentiles. After seeing two dermatologists who could offer no relief I went to an urologist who was able to prescribe a cream that slowly gave me some relief. About a year after that I discovered a domed mound about an inch (2.5 cm) in diameter on my chest between my left nipple and sternum after popping a pimple. This mound initially looked like a massive in grown hair ball with matrix like hair patterns radiating out from it. Again I visited a dermatologist with no success. After a few months I was able to slowly get it under control with bacitracin ointment, isopropyl alcohol and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2).
Another year later shortly before my 50th birthday I found another domed mound on my right thigh about 4 inches (10 cm) above my knee. For almost a year I tried treating this mound the same way with very little success. Eventually it began to spread down my leg to my foot. My leg began to turn red and swell up. At this point I went to see my family physician, Dr. Lekhraj Lala. He quickly identified a serious bacterial infection and began treating it with strong antibiotic shots and pills. I was excited by the initial success of this treatment and how quickly some of my more series symptoms subsided. Unfortunately, I eventually discovered that more chronic symptoms still remained.
Then while studying it one day I had an epiphany realizing that what I mistakenly thought was horizontally growing matrix hair may in fact be the bodies of worms. My wife, Katrina, then asked her family in Hong Kong to help us research the problem. Based on their research and some of our own I began to suspect roundworms. With this knowledge Katrina took me to an herbal medicine shop in Chinatown, New York City to meet a Chinese herbal doctor who diagnosed me with Ascariasis, an infection of the Ascaris Roundworm. After receiving some herbal teas to treat my condition I went home and began searching the internet for everything I could find on Ascariasis. Quickly I discovered the symptoms of Ascariasis which included:
- Gastrula Intestinal Distress
- Asthma accompanied by thick mucus coming from the chest
- Allergic reaction to Shrimp
As I began to compare these symptoms to the medical history of my adult life I realized that I had been infected with worms for more than 32 years. The unwillingness of American Physicians to accept that Americans could be infected with worms was at root of my problem. Their belief that worms and other parasites were just a problem found in the Third World and the America was above such dirty diseases lead to 32 years of treating just my symptoms with never a thought to the root cause.
When I went back to Dr. Lala I informed him that the bacterial infection he cured was not the primary infection but rather a secondary infection. I then confronted him with the Ascariasis diagnosis, when pressed for an answer he eventually replied, “What do you expect from us. We’re not trained for this!”
The discovery of my Ascariasis diagnosis came just a few weeks before my wife and I were planning to start travelling world indefinitely. Our first stop was Greece. In Greece when my Chinese Herbal teas ran out, I quickly discovered that any pharmacist could sell me Vermox (Mebendazole), one of the primary drugs used to treat an Ascariasis infection. It seems that a pharmacist in Greece is better trained to treat parasites than a typical American family physician. If that isn’t a sobering thought, I don’t know what is.
Through the years the medications prescribed to treat my symptoms have cost me many thousands of dollars and affected employment decision because of my need for extensive prescription drug coverage. For all the money these drugs cost they offered only marginal temporary relief while making money for the pharmaceutical industry and the doctors who prescribed them. This experience has taught me that it is more profitable to treat than to heal! Doctors today have prostituted their Hippocratic values and have become little more than mercenaries chasing the almighty dollar. Reading the Hippocratic Oath only sickened me to how far modern doctors have strayed from their oath to point where, to borrow a pun, it has become little more than a guideline!
Today I have been using Vermox to treat my infection well beyond the recommend dosage because of how entrenched the worms have become over the last three decades. While clearing the worms from my intestines can be quite painful at times, I have felt definite progress there. Unfortunately, I’m still looking for a cure for the skin rash. While I have found:
- soaking in the salty waters of the Aegean Sea
- rubbing on coconut oil
- and, believe or not rubbing it with Ouzo
helpful in reducing the seriousness of the skin infection, I have yet to find anything that will eliminate it completely. The next major stop in our world excursion is the Far East where I hope to find even more enlightened treatment..
