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Opinion April 2013

Medicine Wars

By Grant Flint

Traditional medicine says I'll die if I stop taking my statin drug. Alternative medicine says I'm dying because I'm taking my statin drug. I wish Solomon were here to judge the case — unless he would say: "You both can have him. But he will be dead."

Old, 83, I am a victim torn between two warring camps: traditional medicine — versus alternative medicine.

If Solomon were the judge, each camp could have half of my severed body.

Traditional medicine backs the use of hundreds of billions of dollars of statin drugs. To reduce cholesterol. And now would start children on statins to forestall their ever having high cholesterol with subsequent heart attacks.

Alternative medicine says high cholesterol doesn't cause heart attacks; too low cholesterol causes early death. The side effects of taking statin drugs are muscle weakness and pain, loss of memory, and neuropathy.

My cholesterol was normal when I had my first heart attack. After seven years on statin drugs, I suffer from irreversible shoulder pain. And neuropathy, numbness in my feet, gradually ascending into my calves.

Traditional medicine says I'll die if I stop taking my statin drug. Alternative medicine says I'm dying because I'm taking my statin drug.

I wish Solomon were here to judge the case — unless he would say: "You both can have him. But he will be dead."

Twelve days now until the first anniversary of my third heart attack.

A year ago as the doctor threaded the wire through my groin up to my heart, the happy drug took hold, and as he unplugged the clot, I said, "Yes! Yes! Better, that's better!" And I began to blab about how I had "weaned" myself recently off the heart meds I'd been on. Because I was told to do so by most, if not all, of the alterative medicine advertisements which came daily in the mail.

This doctor, this traditional doctor, thought that was funny, in fact called out the info to a nearby doctor. Who also got a big kick out of it. But his laughter had a smug, superior edge to it, so I added defensively, "But now, I get it! From now on, whatever meds you give me, I'm on it for life!" We all had a nice chuckle about that. Unknown if there was to be any more life.

"He's not out of the woods yet," the doctor told my family later in the waiting room.

But I'm still here. In pretty good shape for the shape I'm in. Faithfully taking my Cardedilol, Simvastatin, Clopidogrel, and Lisinopril. Suffering the side effects, grit-teethed: fatigue, breathlessness, dizziness on arising, dry cough, skin rash, diarrhea, poor sleep, excessive urination, my blood pressure too low, my balance becoming worse, feet more numb, calves becoming numb – keep on dosing daily, no more "weaning" myself off, though my alternative doctors daily tell me in their slick-papered ads that I'm killing myself with those four drugs.

They promise me they have "natural" alternative, non-side effect herbs, potions, powders, pills which will heal without harming. That I am a victim of the Pharmacia Industry, a pitiful pawn of outdated, stuck-in-the-mud traditional medicine. They point out that traditional doctors still don't admit that statin drugs remove CoQ-10, endangering the heart itself, and the brain, and most noticeably (as in my case) the muscles. And causes neuropathy, memory loss, and diabetes.

But I resist the alternative medicine saviors, throw away each day a half dozen pamphlets, solicitations, promises, pleas, at $39.00 a bottle, plus postage.

Have purchased four dozen of them over the years. Who all agreed traditional medicine is killing me, is in service to Big Business, that the traditional doctors are pampered, persuaded, bamboozled, out of touch. Killing poor innocents like myself. Angioplasty, stents, open-heart surgery — worse than worthless, a big-bucks racket.

So what if I stop taking the four traditional heart attack drugs tomorrow? Immediately I would have 50% more energy, no more dizziness on arising, 40% better sleep, the itch would subside, the breathlessness would ease, no more dry cough. Maybe even the neuropathy would diminish. Alternative medicine has a safe alternative to statin drugs. I can buy it at any health store for a tenth the cost of statin drugs, with none of the side effects, does not deplete Co Q-10.

But I won't stop taking my four traditional medicine prescribed meds. Can't quite take the chance.

Have no one to trust, traditional or alternative medicine, as I near 84.

My problem is your problem. We really need all the forces of Medicine to use all that is best, old and new, to save us.

Me, now. You later.

 

Grant Flint has been published in Story Quarterly, The Nation, The King’s English, Poetry, Weber, The Courtland Review, The Sun, Slow Trains, Northwind, and 37 other print and online journals. He was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize.

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