I broke my hip in 1975 and the doctor told me to expect the onset of arthritis. Four years later I had severe neck pains that became a stifling dull ache. The VA hospital diagnosed me with osteoarthritis in the neck.
About that time along came Aspartame and because my six-foot frame was carrying 195 pounds I decided to use it, four spoons of sugar in my 12 ounce mug of coffee. For upwards of fifteen years I consumed Aspartame in the product Equal, approximately 32 packets a day.
Since around 1982 I have experienced long periods of time with strong arthritis-like (very limiting) pain and over the years I tried just about every arthritis medication brought to market. Only one, Daypro, did much of anything positive. When it first came out I got a prescription for it and it made me feel ten years younger (pain-level and limitations wise). But only two and a half months later it quit! I have since learned that many doctors prescribe it for its painkilling capabilities, and that a large percentage who take it for an extended time discover that it stops working.
Since 1979 I have visited approximately twenty different doctors, and NONE of them ever told me that my problem was NOT arthritis.
By 1989 my pain had become so bothersome and limiting I spent $17,000 borrowed dollars to build a home addition, in which to house a heavy-duty two-seater medical-grade Jacuzzi that cost $5700. Two to four soaks a day kept me suitable for work (not much else) until 1995, when I had progressed to the point where getting in and out of the tub was becoming dangerous (tinnitus and a balance mechanism I could no longer trust) and more significantly, a fifteen to twenty minute soak at 105-108 degree water only benefited me until I cooled down. This very expensive aid was no longer worth the effort.
Over the years I did have some very significant mood changes, all negative, and dark. My ability to recall events, people and even electronic procedures (things I have done often during my 41 years in the business!) became severely degraded, and often this was a source of embarrassment. My eyesight also changed for the worse, almost as if though on a schedule. I saw a specialist on the tinnitus and he could find no cause.
A little over three years ago I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. No history of it on either side of my family. At 83 my grandfather Firring had a grossly enlarged prostate that made him stop working (self-employed) and finally made him bedridden until he had an operation but no cancer.
Eight years ago, my father who had complained of severely limiting arthritis pains expired from his decision to not treat a urinary problem but no cancer. I seriously entertain the idea that Aspartame had a role in my cancer, which has destroyed all capacity for completely enjoying my wife of thirty-five years, cost thousands of dollars to treat, and continues to cost around $800.00 a MONTH to contain!
Sometime after radiation treatments for cancer my left hand slowly became numb. Later, in early 1996, it began in my right hand. The muscles and joints on my right arm between the elbow and shoulder became a serious limitation to dressing, work, and everything else. Starting around early 1995 I began to experience very severe shooting-stabbing pains. Anywhere and anytime. Pains bad enough to stop me from whatever I was doing, cause me to wince, grimace, and sometimes cramp up and almost always embarrassing. The heels of both feet had long bouts of what I called burning heels, very painful and limiting. I had not slept well in years and purposely stayed up very late (one to three in the morning) so I would be tired enough to overcome the pain. (Over the counter pain products such as Motrin, Advil, and the like were out of the question because in order to be effective I had to take far too many of them, and I had already been told I had liver damage.) Of course, this compounded the problem, and during the last three years the lack of decent rest has also affected my work. Between diminished mental powers, ever increasing pain, and falling asleep on the job things were going downhill very fast. Like the proverbial snowball going down the hill! The only thing that made my desk job palatable was several years ago I purchased an expensive executive-style high-back (on casters) chair that minimized the discomfort.
About the beginning of this year I began occupying in an identical chair I have in my home-office, all day long and often slept in it as well.
Around 1994 I stopped taking baths (I used to enjoy sitting and soaking in very hot water because it helped reduce the pain) because getting in and out of the tub. Even changing positions, became too much of a painful problem.
My lovely wife is less than half my size (100 pounds vice 245, four foot eight versus six foot) and she was not able to help much. So despite my onetime insistence on looking sharp, my appearance and hygiene suffered, as well. Around the beginning of 1996 I settled for what the hospital calls “sponge baths”.
On several occasions during 1995 I started to walk down four steps from the kitchen to my home office. Steps I had used for 22 years, and without warning I found myself at the bottom, sprawled on the floor, wondering what had happened. I am still wondering, but now that I have discovered the SOLE cause of my most major affliction. Aspartame, I wonder a lot less. During 1995, realizing my condition seemed to be getting worse at an accelerating rate; I installed a heavy-duty bannister going up those four steps. Where once I was an excellent mechanically-inclined handyman, installing it was no longer an easy task. For the first half of this year the bannister was essential to my entering and leaving my house. I often used a cane. Once, at dusk, I stumbled while in the middle of the street, lost my balance, and wound up spraining my foot and had to use crutches. On one occasion I felt so bad I had to use a motorized cart to do the shopping with my wife. (I used to do all the shopping, without any problems!) After that I contented myself with driving my wife to and from the store. Until I stopped doing even that around the end of May.
In essence, I was not unlike a large ship with a significant leak that had taken on the critical mass of water, just to the point of beginning to plunge to the bottom.
In the words of my wife. Over the past two years, in particular, she could only sit by and pray, and watch me rapidly degenerate on all fronts: mood, capabilities, attitude, and memory. You name it. She confessed to my daughter how frustrated she was that she could only watch, and brace herself for the day that I would no longer be around. There were several crushing episodes of me crying like a baby on her shoulder, in total agony at my loss of control and worsening condition. Those episodes reinforced her feelings that my days were numbered. After her tragic childhood in Spain, losing her mother to cancer, and many of her family to other tragedies. She didn’t deserve to have her primary reason for living die!
Yet, after seeing the rheumatologist, spending lots of money on tests and exotic drugs to perhaps counter some equally exotic disease, all to no avail, I actually wondered to myself if Kevorkian had a full dance card!
The ONLY thing good that came out of seeing this specialist was his assurance that my pain should NOT be from arthritis. So when all his remedies failed, I knew to keep looking for something else.
Then, around the fifteenth of June, shortly after writing that specialist off as yet another waste of time and money, I chanced to discover the real cause of my affliction while surfing the Internet. One of the few things I could still do and do well. The cause of years of worsening pain, ever-greater physical limitation, negative and marriage threatening mood and attitude changes, failing memory, failing eyesight, and perhaps even the cancer and tinnitus was a US GOVERNMENT APPROVED POISON called ASPARTAME!
Now, going on ten weeks after stopping all use of Aspartame, I have no more shooting-stabbing pains or burning heels, no more use for the bannister, greatly reduced pain, almost no numbness in either hand, a fluctuating visual condition that makes me believe my body is trying to repair the damage, and now that I can see the light at the end of that proverbial tunnel, my mood and attitudes have improved dramatically.
I am once again shopping with my wife, working around the yard, picking up after myself (mainly because I can bend or kneel and get UP again!).
Only time will tell how much of the damage is permanent. Of course, the prostate cancer can’t be erased. Likewise, the years of lost participation in family life, and the significant income wasted on non-cures, can never be undone. The knowledge that this was allowed to happen by my own government, and further condoned by a powerful senator through inaction, sickens me at heart. With all my being I wish for them all the hottest spot in hell!