We Don't Know

I met him two years ago. He walked into my workplace with the biggest grin on his face and said, "I hear you have homemade milkshakes."

I told him I sure did, and he ordered a chocolate one. He's brought his wife with him, and sometimes his two little children. They all love milkshakes.

He's in his 30s, quite handsome, with sparkling eyes, a nice build, and a beautiful smile. You can't help but notice he is missing a limb. I knew he'd been having trouble, but I never knew how he had lost the limb. I figured if he wanted me to know, he'd tell me. I knew he had been in the hospital for the past year, off and on.

"How are you feeling?" I asked him one day.

"Well, they took me off dialysis just recently," he said. So young to be having dialysis, I thought to myself. "They took me off chemo now, and I'm grateful for that," he said.

It was then I asked him why he was on chemo.

"It all started with an accident a few years ago. I had nerve damage," he said. "They gave me a popular drug for the pain. The drug, which was an anti-inflammatory, began to eat my liver up, causing liver cancer. Then I had a tooth filled, and hepatitis settled in after we found out the dentist used a dirty tool to work on my tooth. Between the hepatitis and the liver cancer, I had to go on dialysis."

He told me he never wants to take another medication. "Don't ever take any anti-inflammatory drug if you can help it," he told me. "It can kill you if you have to take them regularly."

It reminded me of a problem my husband ran into a few years ago. He battles gout. Some people think, mistakenly, that gout is caused by drinking, but this is not true. Gout is caused by a build-up of uric acid in the body. The acid does not break down normally, and deposits in any joint in the body. The pain is terrible. Most people start to have problems in the big toe area, but gout can settle in the knee, elbow, finger joints, etc.

A doctor once told my husband that he could give him a tiny pill that would take care of gout for the rest of his life. "You won't ever have another attack," he said, "but it will eventually eat your liver up and you will not live a full lifetime." My husband decided not to take the pills.

After hearing what the man told us this week, my husband is glad that he refused to take the pills. Gout can be alleviated with the right foods, but there are so many things that can trigger it: gravies, pastries, mushrooms, beans, many vegetables, red meats, organ meats, etc.

Just about weekly I see a new drug being introduced on television. I think to myself, "And just what kind of problems is this going to create down the road?" We have all seen drugs enter the market, then be removed when they find out they can be dangerous.

My husband also has an irregular heartbeat. Monthly, he has to have blood work done to see if his blood is either too thick or too thin. He is on a blood thinner, warfarin, commonly known by the brand name Coumadin. I heard it has rat poison in it. I called the manufacturer, Dupont, to verify this, and was horrified to find that it was true: Rat poison is being given to humans. I was informed that the dosage is small, but I still have problems with that. To me, poison is poison.

We don't know what any drug company is putting into these so-called miracle cures today. We don't know what's being put into our packaged foods. I look at the back of a package of prepared foods today and I can't even pronounce the ingredients. I wonder, "What are they feeding people today?"

I remember a doctor told me many years ago, "If you can't pronounce the ingredient, don't eat it." We should all heed this advice!

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