Personal "X" Files - A Menu of Provocative Possibilities

1953 - radioactive rain from nuclear testing out west falls on NYS contaminating the milk supply. (age 1 & drinking milk ).

1950's-1960's - mass polio vaccinations in NYS schools.

1950's-1960's - my father was a doctor. His office was on the first floor of the house. Squatting in a dark niche between the exam room and the supply room was a post-WWII fluoroscopy unit, an unshielded, old fashioned X-ray machine in the center of the house, under the kitchen. Spent much of my childhood in that office. My girl- friend and I used to turn it on, stand behind the screen and look at our skeletons! (No - I don't turn big and green when I get angry - I just breathe fire :)

1981 - all hospital employees who weren't rubella immune were sent to the ER to be vaccinated. Five days later, back in the ER with stomach pain, diagnosis: mesenteric adenitis.

1982 - hunting - skinned a varying hare bare-handed, rinsed in stream, ate lunch. Two days later, left work sick.

1982 - finally went to doctor. In retrospect, it's classic: "exhaustion, night sweats, migraines, epigastric pain, joint pain, palpitations, epigastric pain, swollen cervical lymph nodes." (NOTE to skeptics: this pre-dates Mulder, Scully, the media's obessions with the "new age"; and I'd never heard of CFIDS)

1985 - "pleurodynia secondary to Coxsackie virus" followed later in year by hospitalization for 104 temp, severe headache. Abnormal spinal tap. Doctor's notes read: "some sort of bizarre virus."

1986 - cats terminally ill with feline leukemia, feline "AIDS."

1997 - symptoms have waxed and waned over the years, but there's one constant: I'm no longer the me I used to know. Something happened. Something crept up when I wasn't looking and robbed me of my self.