Hi again Lisa,
Thanks much for your reply and description of your detailed plan of action. When you mention good luck if I decide to try this stuff, I'm not sure if you're referring to the Rizols Gamma or the IV antibiotics described in the video. I can say with a high degree of certainty that it's quite unlikely I would ever do the kind of IV antibiotic treatment that this woman went through. On the other hand, I have a personal policy to "never say never".
This is the first fall that I haven't made a herculean effort to make an annual midwest trip, with its attendant stresses and strains, and months of recovery time afterward. The energy that I've normally expended for that now seems available to me to start on a more concrete therapy program for myself. This is why I appreciate your detailed descriptions of what you're doing, and why. Helps me formulate my own plan of action.
I'm curious, when you talk about going out into the Godforsaken wilderness, I wonder if you've ever considered or attempted some kind of "extreme air purification" program, similar to what you say is available at Dr. Rea's office. I've been giving more and more thought to trying something like this, but don't know how effective it might be. Anyway, I'm curious whether you've tried anything similar.
I'm actually considering going to Arizona sometime this winter (probably late winter) if I don't begin to see some promising results in the next few months. In my my mind, I would think Arizona might be a good place for air quality, and might give me a lift if air quality has indeed been weighing on me more than I'm aware. Was wondering what your thoughts are on Arizona air quality. (I know, it's a big state!) :Retro smile:
Wayne
I meant Rizols Gamma, which is potent enough in itself.
But actually, in Spring 2010, Dr. Guyer's thought for me was IV antibiotics. That's why he had me get that Frye Labs test. So he wasn't wholly opposed to the idea. I'm pretty sure he didn't have in mind anything as intensive as what that woman got though.
He also suggested for me some kind of extreme air purification program, but (going back to the Midwest) I understand why. What he meant was to buy a super-good house and then use the air purifier to get rid of the toxins from the outside air. And the reason he said that is because the air in Indiana is indeed very toxic, but in ways that can be filtered out. Indianapolis is just plain city air -- regular pollution and not too much of it, not at all hard to remove. The countryside is substantially worse -- some biotoxin that grows in conjunction with farm chemicals. (It's all over the MW, suburbs as well as cities, so it may be fertilizer and pesticides in general rather than agriculture specifically, though maybe agriculture is particularly bad. Someone just wrote on another board that in a lot of subdivisions, people put in decorative ponds specifically to collect to the runoff from the chemicals, and that wildlife won't use those ponds. The missing piece that people don't get is that it's not the chemicals themselves that are bad -- though of course they're bad too -- but the cyanobacteria that is able to grow in polluted ponds.)
But that stuff filterable too. I was able to filter it pretty well even in the RV. And when I went into a log cabin (highly recommended! it's the only sort of dwelling I'd trust myself enough to buy) that had a good climate control system, it actually felt pretty good.
I don't believe that air filters can make much of a dent on the "?" (stuff that made me so sick in Lake Tahoe and that I believe is responsible for the particularly rough ME/CFS symptoms) though. Erik tells me not, and (based on my experience with that stuff) I have every reason to believe him. Just stepping outside in it for a couple of minutes would be enough to make me acutely sick and ruin all my hard avoidance work, even if filters did work. That's why I put it in a category all by itself.
So I think I could have made gains in Indiana. I do not think I could have gotten well there though. Since Guyer himself says that he's not seen a patient who went from my level ("the sickest of the sick") to being as well as I am, he seems to be in tacit agreement that my way is better.....even if he still isn't routinely recommending proactively that ME/CFS patients look at their environments and move if they're bad. But then, that's a hard thing to recommend, if you want to keep patients.
I asked him if he had any patients in Ann Arbor, and he said yes. He looked at me really oddly when I told him that I found that city to be particularly bad with the "?" and listed the symptoms. My guess is that he has no idea what to do with those people, but that he's hardly going to recommend that they move based on what I say. Which, of course, he shouldn't.
What type of dwelling are you planning to stay in in Arizona? Rule that applies pretty well: southern Arizona is quite bad, northern Arizona is quite good, the area in between is moderate. But since elevations in northern Arizona tend to be higher (as well as further north), it's colder in that direction.
If someone had boatloads of money ($3000/month + enough money to eat meals at a nice a restaurant), La Posada Hotel in Winslow would be a great, easy choice. The air in Winslow is pristine, and the hotel (a luxury railroad stop built solid in the 1930s, renovated with no drywall) is very good. But Winslow (on the 4 Corners reservation) is a depressing place to be other than the hotel. Certainly there are plenty of other buildings that are excellent in Arizona, and where the air is good, but I can't say which ones they are. La Posada is safe because it's solid with no drywall and no wall insulation. Eliminate those two things and no particularly bad mold can grow (which is why log cabins -- without drywall -- are safe.) But modern construction is an accident waiting to happen, so even if a building is good today, it could be bad tomorrow.
Let me know if you're serious and we can discuss.
Best, Lisa