Let them eat cake!

Originally Posted by wolf

Sounds like it's time for you to get another reporter to do a story on you so you can live off the donations like the last time.

I am having lots of computer wierdness as I mentioned above. This reply may or may not go through. If it doesn't, I won't try reposting it. You're a tough girl, Wolf, so here you go:

I take it then, that you have studied the work being carried out at the University of California by of John Edmond, PhD. Just which part of his hypothesis do you object to? The part where he identifies oxidative stress as the cellular injury caused by chronic mild carbon monoxide exposure? Or where he hypothesizes, accompanying conditions may include carbon monoxide acting as a rogue neuro-modulator perturbing carbon monoxide-like regulatory processes that are involved in cell signaling?


Surely, you agree with Ellenhorn and Barceloux writing in the peer reviewed monograph, Medical Toxicology - Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Poisoning. New York, NY: Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc. 1988., p. 823]

Severe carbon monoxide poisoning produces anatomic changes (e.g., cerebral edema, hemorrhagic focal necrosis, venodilation, petechiae, perivascular infarct). Bilateral necrosis of the globus pallidus is the characteristic lesion of carbon monoxide toxicity. Other vulnerable areas of the cerebral gray matter include the substantia nigra, hippocampus, cerebral cortex, and cerebellum. These histopathological changes are indistinguishable from other causes such as hypoxia, cardiorespiratory arrest, hypoglycemia, and cyanide poisoning. Rarely, a postanoxic demyelination occurs that follows an initial recovery and progresses to irritability, confusion, coma and death. A 'moth-eaten' appearance characterizes this anoxic leukoencephalopathy in which most of the damage appears in the gray matter of the cerebral cortex, pallidum, thalamus, and cerebellar cortex.

I suggest you get a copy. It’s a real page-turner.

Here’s some more from the above two scientists writing in the same monograph as above:

Neurologic sequelae include visual loss, dementia, retardation, constructional apraxia, temporospacial disorientation, memory loss, dysphasia, personality changes, concentration deficits, and frank psychosis. Parkinson's disease does occur after acute carbon monoxide exposures but is very rare. After initial recovery from carbon monoxide exposure patients may develop neurologic symptoms (apathy, mutism, amnesia, urinary incontinence, headache, irritability, personality changes, confusion, memory loss, visual changes) within 2 to 4 weeks of exposure.

I could go on and on, but I’m sure you studied all this stuff in your cartography 101 class years, ago.

Note that the neurological sequelae (that means after effects) INCLUDE the symptoms above, but never in the literature that I have researched, have I found a patient exhibiting every one of these symptoms all at once. CO exposure seldom impact’s one’s long-term memory – not very severely, anyhow. Nor does it necessarily impact their over-all intelligence – although mine has dropped to my dismay.

I can read a scientific paper (taking notes all the while) because I have a BA and a Master’s degree in biology. While you were writing papers on contour mapping and urban geography, I was studying mitochondria, synapses, embryology, chemistry, and physics. I still have that knowledge even though I don’t know what day of the week it is, get lost going places I’ve been 10 times before, forget faces, have severe panic attacks, and can get irritable as hell out of nowhere. These things make it damn hard to hold down a job no matter how smart or stupid you may be.

Now, if it is your scientific hypothesis that I gave up work I loved that paid decent money, and decided to be homeless for a while and then live a life of terror on how I’m going to survive on the SSDI I paid into for 30 years; I suggest you check yourself into your own institution for thorough testing. Don’t forget the neuropych eval.