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Small Steps

I was a basket-case.  Panic attacks were the norm by now.  I'm afraid of everything and I have a funky taste in my mouth: a metallic taste.

Countless times, I went to the ER for anxiety; pulse racing, exploding lungs and something bad was going to happen.  I was 21 years old.

"I'm going to die," I feared.

Dr. Eva Stremp Gayton delivered Jeff. A tiny woman with pop-bottle glasses,  poker straight hair and no makeup. 

"Go home now," she said, emphatically. "You're not going to die. Go."

The nurses' snickered.  Frick Hospital knows me well on the ER.

I am not a looney. Something's changed; I'm anxious and terrified.  Everything fell apart at the baby with a blue funk.  Before, I was dauntless, fearless and confident.  What happened to me?  Jeff had eczema and I was borderline lunatic.  My mouth is bad, too.

My fear comes in waves.  Next day, fine; tomorrow, demented. I pretty much learned to live with my craziness.  Something is wrong, but what? 

Valium takes the edge off; no black, no white, no precipice to climb over. There's  unconscious and comatose, specifically, the yellow 5mg., blue 10mg. and the white 2mg. 

The doctor ordered the drug for me;  the physician was my Gynie.  I poured some fears, doubts and concerns about crusted toddler and losing my mind.

Fast-forward 40 years, the palpitations are heart-stopping.  Tenormin doesn't work.  After the stroke, Lopressor doesn't work.  Yes, beta-blockers slowed the heart.  I get that.

But the palpitations would increase the heart, especially the pounding in my chest.  No rhyme or reason, the center of my heart keeps hammering.  It's not Tenormin  and Lopressor.

I'm 51.  I went to Harrisburg for the week-end and I won The Daily Courier and The Associated Press for editorial comment.  The AP snagged first place for Viagra for the Military, a wry observation on humor, and The Daily Courier yielded a second-place.

No palpitations and I chewed Tic Tac.  Yum. Spearmint.

Ruth Ann and Bill Kantor hosted me on Sunday.  They lived in Lebanon,  Pa., just out of Harrisburg.  Second-cousins removed, Ruth and I were amicable friends.  They had a huge garden and tasty, healthy meals.  She was a dietitian, recently retired.  Bill baked bread, wonderful loaves of whole-grain edibles and home-made wine.

Monday, I said goodbye to Ruth and Bill and buckets of rain fell.  Gloomy, lighting-cracking, thunderballing rain.  The Pennsylvania Turnpike grew dark and I turned on my flashers in the berm of the road.  I waited till it's over.  Sheets of rain pummeled the Chrysler Neon.

"Well, that's just wonderful," I said, caustically.

I turned on the radio, but it's static.  And just like that, the pounding, the heart-stopping palpitations were here with the vengeance. I massaged the carotids, put my head down and lay down with my feet elevated.  Nothing works.  By now, I know the drill.  Wait it out.  Ten minutes later, I'm fine.  Although, I waited an hour or more, till the erratic palpitations stopped.  The heart is a funny thing; it just keeps beating.

The rain is abating and little slivers of sunshine peeked out.  I took the back roads, Route 31, for the Pa. Turnpike, just in case I died.

 

As I said, the palpitations gone. Little by little the mercury is gone.  I get twinges of erratic rhythm and fluttery pulse, though, but it's a piece of cake.  Maybe it's the dentures.  Just like that, I'm talking again, but I'm little bit aphasic.

Maybe is the Lopressor.  But maybe not.

No panic attacks and I feel great.  I'm not afraid anymore. And my clean breath.  I'm 62.  Go figure. I walk with cane. My right leg and arm is dead.  Well, not dead, but a tingling.  I use Walk-Aide for my right knee.  The peroneal nerves lift the foot electrically.  Change the AA battery, it's good to go.  It's pretty neat.  I walk every day, barring bad weather.  

However, I'm never going to be the same.

Mercury kills.

A Very Scaly Baby

By now, Frank and I were married, and Jeffrey was a very scaly baby.  

It was 1969, and I was exceedingly pregnant.  Jeffrey was 8 oz. 1oz., he howled all the time, and the nurses said he never closed his eyes. He was an alert baby. The nurses came to the nursery and I fed him.  I had a strange taste in my mouth, probably the anesthetic.  No big deal.  That's not good for baby, I reasoned. Bad breath is not good.  I gargled and rinsed and brushed my teeth.  I resumed feeding Jeff.  But the odor was there.

Insidiously, the mercury was there, lurking.  I didn't know it at the time.  The mercury passes to the fetus and the placenta;  the mercury triggered it.   And, Jeffrey had eczema.

At two weeks, Jeff was a skinny baby. He was a bottle baby and regurgitated half as much milk.  The mouth, eyes and ears were crusted and he cried all the time. I called Dr. Pascal Spino.  Waiting is a chore, sometimes hours on end in the waiting room.  The children were colicky, croupy, cranky and mom's were exhausted.  Dr. Spino is the best pediatrician in southwestern Pennsylvania.  He worked tirelessly.

"The baby has eczema," Dr. Spino said, "see the elbow's and knees?," indicating.

Sure enough, the eczema is everywhere.

"But I don't understand. My husband and I never had eczema," I said.

Frank was illegitimate, so he never had a dad. The family history was sketchy, but the oozing, scaling  and weeping of eczema was nil.

Jeffrey had a milk allergy, Dr. Spino said.  Jeff's eyes, ears and mouth were crusted, and the knees and elbows are inflamed.  I mixed some Prosobee, is a soy-base product, and waited.  Nothing.  I called Dr. Spino yet again.

"It's been two weeks. The eczema is worse," I explained to the nurse.

Dr. Spino called Dr. Martin Murcek, an allergist in Greensburg, Pa., and he explained the situation; namely, a very scaly baby.

Jeff had golf-ball eyes crusted with ooze, profound itching and scaly skin with strips of baby feet peeled away with dermis. Not pretty.  He was two.  The itching was so bad, he wore mittens I gave him to ease the pain.  Kenalog cream helped, but it was a corticosteroid. He had a gamete of allergies, from trees, grasses, dust mites and milk. 

My granddaughter Jordan is a reed thin sweetie, with angular features and long lines.  She eats like a truck driver, craves sugar and she loves fruit.  She inherited eczema;  wisps of eczema from elbows and knees, ever so faint, in the springtime.

Jeff is 40 now.  He graduated from Penn State University at State College and he is in Operations Management.  He works for McDonald's Corporation for 19 years and every spring and fall the dreaded eczema appears.  Every so often the obsessive-compulsive disorder rears it's ugly head.  The actions repetitive, ritualistic and compulsive.  Jeff never had eczema and OCD.  Ever.  

It's the mercury.

Garlic Jelly-Don't Knock It!

Ora is my caregiver, 1 to 5'clock, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with Twin Oaks, Hopwood, PA.  It's booming metropolis in Fayette County.  Ora has no teeth do speak of and probably no insurance. Oddly enough, my Mom had no teeth.  Weird but true. At any event, she's funny, articulate and excellent housekeeper.  She puts things back; for example, the dog leashes, the water hose for the garden, the little lint dryer...she puts stuff back, thank God.  Just like me.

I have six girls, all gone; there's Renee (An MRI nightmare, every tattoo on her body, even the ears...she's extremely smart and she has a master's degree), Anita works as a supervisor at Twin Oaks.  Her husband had a stroke, he's fine now. She prepared Thankgiving dinner as a pitch-hitter. The women are busy preparing for the holidays, I assumed. Renee and Anita are still here. Rhonda was loquacious,  always smiling.  She quit at nine years and she's good-hearted person.  Rhonda's daughter-in-law, Jen, took off for Harmon House, (rest-home) and bit the dust.  Wendy is quasi-obese and a chain-smoker at 35, however, pleasant and nice. She had thick, thick hair and she planted a garden for me (Remember, Rhonda took off!).  She's a handywoman with the drill.  Her sister's son almost drowned in the pool at Children's Hospital and Wendy took off as well.  I registered for Twin Oaks for about a year.

Ora is diabetic and her husband major surgery for the heart, stents and gizmos. He's almost 62, not Medicare eligible and she's 59.  They have no insurance and a cost factor is prohibitive.  Come on 2014!
She's talking about insurance people.

Oh.  The garlic jelly. Twin Oaks prohibited canning for various reasons, botulism comes to mind, and Ora supervised.  I can't to the canning thing with one hand (specifically, my left hand) and Ora pushed the jars, seven jars and I waited.  Ten minutes.

Twenty-four hours later, the sugar (LOTS of sugar), vinegar and pectin, and the garlic, of course; well, is yummy.

Aak.  My teeth hurt.

Sometimes I Amaze Myself

I had a stroke recently, eleven years ago.  You know the drill; I couldn't speak or walk...wildly aphasic.

My cousin-in-law wrote a blog as well, , M. Knipple, (http://mon-epopee.blogspot.com/) about a dysfunctional clan.  As I was reading, the Google AdSense popped up.  AdSense is a marketing tool with commercials, for example, Stride-Rite shoes.  Huh.  I can do it too, I think.  Follow the AdSense step-by-step, it's a no-brainer! Wrong.  I wrote a blog about mercury fillings and the stroke.  (mercuryfillingstheoddstroke.blogspot.com/)

The stroke is mysterious and nebulous. The brain is functioning, but nobody's home.  I filled out the form via the internet and waited.  "Congratulations!  Your Google AdSense application has been approved."  Huzzah.

Step 1, sign in.  Okay, that's not a problem.  Step 2,  Generate and implement the AdSense code.  No big deal, right?  Tuesday through Friday I struggled with the code.  The code is cryptic, non-sensical letters; block of text.  I edited and copied the codes...over and over and over again.

What's wrong?  I used the website for my blog.  The "edit" dimmed the "paste" over and over again.  Something is wrong. Finally the light went on.  The text is fine, is the tab for "monitize".  I'm truly a moron.

Think it through, step by step.  You're get through this.

Once a upon a time, I was intelligent.  Ha.  God's little irony.

The Odd Stroke

I was 52 years old and I had a massive stroke in 1999.  I'm 62.  I couldn't speak, completely aphasic, and I couldn't walk; confined to a wheelchair and five hospitals.  Nothing clicks.  It's a profound, hopelessly, bleak situation and no way out.  It's tabula rasa; it's a blank slate. 

Or is it?

I'm Michaline Yezek Yankowski Schlueter Roller, thrice divorced and my son is Jeffrey Yankowski.  No alimony, thank you very much.  All three guys are womanizers.  All three guys were the "black sheep", for what it's worth.  Two of the gentlemen were strong and exceedingly powerful mothers.  Chercher la mere, it seems.  Frank Yankowski was misanthrope, O.J. Schlueter is an aberration and Dur Roller was con-man.  However, a good con-man.

  

Mercury poisoning symptoms include:  depression, anxiety, foul breath, metallic taste, vomiting, diarrhea, vision impairment, irregular heart beat and pulse, changes in blood pressure, persistent cough, swollen lymph nodes in neck, excessive perspiration and host of signs.

I'm not a physician, or a dentist, or a science guy.  That said, here's my events about the stroke and mercury fillings.  I obtained medical records 10 years ago. I suffered from funky foul breath and a metallic taste; paralyzing fear all the time, constantly;   excessive sweating, and palpitations so heart-stopping, so violent and nasty, for 20 years.  I know what I know.