You have read point of honor. You are a sceptic. Good.
"Come on, lizard, WTF? You think YOU have a possible cause for post covid, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and some mental health problems? Is your ego swollen or what?'
Yeah, I am a rural family practice doctor. We are the lowest of the low on the doctor scale. Dumb. At least, that's what they say when they do the lectures in the Big Hospitals and Medical School and Residency. Well, not family practice residency.
"The rural doctor didn't know what the patient had and transferred them to us."
Yeah, fucker. We transfer them because we are hella good, we have to be in order to be rural, but WE CAN'T KNOW EVERYTHING. That's what you scornful ivory tower assholes are for. The fine tuning. I laugh when a perinatologist asks me how to help patients quit smoking. "Ya want the one minute lecture, ten minute, 15 minute or one hour? Or longer?" He gets slightly sheepish and asks for a three minute sketch.
Anyhow, I could be wrong about PANS/PANDAS, these antibodies, being implicated, but I am comforted by a book. The book is Emperor of Maladies, A History of Cancer. So, written by a hematologist/oncologist, has enough footnotes to choke a giant anaconda, but brilliant book. He traces our ideas about cancer, who was figuring out the next bit, and who found the person in the basement and set them up with a laboratory.
He starts with Galen, nearly 2000 years ago. He starts with the four humors.
The person in the basement is a scientist or physician or both. Many were rejected by their compatriots as weird or stubborn or just stupid and wrong. They can be an amateur too, who just gets obsessed with say, lenses, and keeps making them until they invent the first microscope. Often they have been pushed aside by the academic institutions or thrown out of a lab or no one will publish their papers. The two Aussies who figured out h. pylori spent a decade publishing articles. The US physicians ignored them, making tons of money on ulcer surgeries, and people were bleeding to death. But it was the PATIENTS who changed it. They read the articles. They insisted on the treatment. Then they lobbied, until the CDC essentially said, ok, no ulcer surgery unless you check for and treat h. pylori first. And finally the two Aussies got the Nobel Prize. And they deserved it, too. One of them had an endoscope, had no ulcers, drank h. pylori and then had the endoscopy repeated. He had ulcers. Got treated and the next endoscope was clear. Would you do that?
Often the people in the basements are found by someone powerful and desperate. Or someone with mad fundraising skills. The desperate person says "My daughter has leukemia. Help her." The person in the basement mutters, "Well, this is unproven and I can't get anyone interested in clinical trials." The desperate person says, "FUCK CLINICAL TRIALS, HELP HER." The person in the basement says, "Well, she might die." "SHE GONNA DIE ANYHOW IF NO ONE HELPS. WE'VE TRIED EVERYTHING." "Yeah, ok." The daughter is saved, or lives an extra five years, or whatever. The desperate person goes to the top of a tower and starts shouting and fundraising and puts serious muscle and money behind the scientist in the basement, who blinks behind their coke bottle glasses, because they have no social skills and are obsessed with leukemia. The desperate now joyful person builds NIH or the Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins. Over and over and over in this book.
So I need lab rats, I mean, patients. I had my first about 2 weeks ago. Via zoom. I start by saying "I am working with you today as a Tarot Card Reader Healer, I am not working under my medical license nor am I prescribing. This is theoretical, but I may be able to help you." And off we go. I can see the pattern and it is different from mine. Gluten AND lactose are problems. I have no trouble with lactose. Brian fog, not manic/OCD/etc. I think the brain fog is some dopamine receptors being blocked, not turned on. The key fits the lock but it doesn't turn. Mine turn, big time. And I give instructions for oxygen testing. Anyone can buy a pulse oximeter. My hypoxia is actually subtle. At rest heart rate of 70 now and 02 sat at 99%. But yesterday on the beach I tried going without oxygen. With my pulse ox. My heart rate jumped to 130 and 02 sat down to 87%. Damn. Felt like shit. I still need oxygen for any heavy lifting, singing, flute, hiking, walking and talking too fast. Ha. Slow down and I don't need it.
The next nice patients will be free, as I work on fine tuning my hypothesis. It is very interesting.
And you can ask your doctor to test the antibodies: the Cunningham Panel. I haven't had it yet and the antibodies are mostly down. So, you don't want to test when they are down. The baseline rises with each infection, at least that is the implication in a paper on chronic lyme disease. I thought oh, shit. B says oh, shit. I hope NEVER to have an episode again, but if I do, I would request a test at the beginning and then at the sort of peak, guessed. Or maybe monthly for four months. Track it.
There. Send me your tired, your chronic fatigue, your fibromyalgia. If it's not in the US, dunno if we could zoom it? Someone knows. Anyhow, take care.
I've thought that chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia were a switch, thrown by the body, when we seriously overdo or get really sick. I have thought that since residency, 1993-1996. It's the type A people who go nuts with chronic fatigue. "I want to be just like I was when I could overwork and only sleep four hours, fix me." "Um, that is what made you sick." "I WANT TO BE LIKE THAT AGAIN." "Uh, I don't think your body agrees." Man, are they grumpy. Yeah, I won't promise to put someone back in the frying pan that sent them into the fire.
Not a switch though. Crisis antibodies. And so the high ACE score people who have scary damaging childhoods are already primed or got it in childhood. Man, are we fucked or what? Maybe not. Maybe this is something everyone gets if they live long enough. Or almost everyone....