At least I think they do.

I returned a few days ago from spending a week with my parents in Florida. My mother is in a “Memory Support Center” — a too-hopeful title for a place where people who suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias can benefit from assisted living and nursing care, plus daily activities for supporting what memory they still have.

Mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease about nine years ago. It’s been a very long and sad road, especially for my dad who has been at her side, on and beyond what most caregivers, even spouses, provide. He has been there for her through too much thick and even more thin. My sisters and I have worried that her debilitation would be the death of him.

What do you do for a mom who has Alzheimer’s disease and apparently has no memory of even her children?

You do the same as you would do if she remembered every moment of your lives together. Because honoring her and loving her doesn’t change, just because she doesn’t seem to get it. So my sisters and I sent flowers. And when I visited last week, I gave Mom a teddy bear with angel wings and a halo.

And then you do what you need to do to support prevention or cure for this “long good-bye,” so others won’t suffer the same way. To honor Mom, my sisters and I donate to the Alzheimer’s Association, and we walk in the annual fundraising walk each year. We’re doing what we can do.

I hope your family is never touched by this horrible disease. If it is, you may be interested in some of the material found on this blog. If you’d like to share more information about your experience with it, feel free to leave comments in the Alzheimer’s section.

And if you don’t deal with it — count your lucky stars.

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Over the years, I’ve had conversations with a handful of health conspiracy theorists. They claim there is a cure for the common cold, but the makers of symptom relief medicines block that cure from making it to the marketplace. OR, they claim certain cancers can be cured, but the cures have been developed by the companies that manufacture the machines and drugs that keep it at bay, and more money can be made over time by keeping someone partially sick instead.

I have no idea who is right or who is wrong. I do believe that these kinds of coverups take place. I’ve read about them and written about them. And I had my own experience with an oncologist who wanted to make money from putting me through chemo when I didn’t really need it.

Several months ago, I blogged about a treatment for lymphoma patients that is kept secret by most oncologists. Since it can only be offered at academic medical centers, meaning most oncologists can’t profit by it, they don’t tell their patients about the treatment which could save their lives. Instead they offer an inferior treatment option that provides profits to them, but doesn’t do as much for the patient as the unmentioned drug administered at another center.

The big problem, of course, is that there are charlatans across the globe claiming to have developed treatments for any malady large or small. Patients diagnosed with a lifelong or life threatening disease or condition seek any small piece of hope, and spend money and waste their time to pursue that hope, only to have their hopes dashed. It’s a sad fact of medicine. And it becomes difficult to weed out who is being truthful.

A few days ago, I was contacted by a physician scientist who asked me to alert you about a cure for kidney disease if it’s caught in the early stages. Now — I’m not a health professional, so I’m very VERY reluctant to showcase these kinds of things, or to comment on them. But I did ask for an explanation of how it works, and it turns out that it is a treatment that is based on genetic code.

It’s based on the concept of personalized medicine. In this case, the genes responsible for kidney disease are reviewed, and, according to David Moskowitz from Genomed, the company that has applied for a patent for this treatment, if the patient is in the earliest stage of kidney disease, then it can be reversed. That’s been documented with more than 1,000 patients, published in a peer-reviewed journal, and the basics are available at PubMed.

Reversed? Good grief — that means cured, doesn’t it? So if that’s true, then why don’t we hear about it in the mainstream press?

The answer, for those who buy in to conspiracy theories, is that the info doesn’t make it to the mainstream because too many others stand to make too much money as long as patients are tied to kidney dialysis, surgeries, drugs and other profit-producing treatments.

I can’t tell you whether this approach for reversal of kidney disease works. But I can tell you that they have applied for a patent — not FDA approval, but a patent. Also, they don’t administer any treatment. Instead, they work with your doctor to help you. It does sound on the up and up, doesn’t it?

So if you are in the early stages of kidney disease, or if you are at risk because others in your family have suffered from kidney disease, you might want to take a look. The same holds true for people with COPD or high blood pressure. They’re developing life saving treatments for those diseases, too.

Conspiracy theories? Just because we’re all paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to make money from us.

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A few months ago I told you about an addiction psychiatrist from Naples, Florida who is a bully. Well — he is still bullying. I heard from him again today.

At that time I shared with you a story about a comment that had been made about him by someone who had read my blog. Nothing I had said, rather, commentary by someone else about how she felt she had been sexually harrassed, stalked and mistreated.

I told you how, behind my back, he had pulled my Wordpress blog offline and had contacted my About.com colleagues to ask them to make me pull THIS blog offline — but he had never even contacted me! He never asked me if I would remove the comment, which — if I had known there was a problem — I would have. The comment was a he-said, she-said type of thing. I don’t know either of the parties. I would have pulled the post. All he needed to do was send me an email to request it — and as you can see — my email address is front and center on every page of this blog. I’m a reasonable person. No excuses for his bullying tactics.

In frustration, this Naples psychiatrist finally sent me an email DEMANDING I remove the comment. Aha! He did find my email address! He cited all kinds of federal laws and trademark infringements he thought I was violating. At that point, I replied to him, and told him I don’t respond well to bully tactics. He had found my email address just fine at that point — so why didn’t he contact me before contacting my colleagues?

And then, I asked him for an apology. I just wanted him to take responsibility for all his bullying. With an apology, I would removed the post and that would be the end.

The apology was never forthcoming. Nope. Instead he threatened me some more — so I published my first post which you can find here.

You can imagine then how I felt about another email arriving from the bully psychiatrist today. Here’s an excerpt — copied and pasted — the typos are his:

Subject: YOU ARE BEING SUE

PLEASE BE ADVISED IF THE FOLLOWING CONTENT IS NOT REMOVED WITHING 3 WORKING
DAYS, I WILL ADVISED MY ATTORNEY TO INCLUDE YOUR WEB COMPANY AND
AFFILIATES IN A LIBEL SUIT FOR $1,000,000 DOLLARS FOR DAMAGE AND EMOTIONAL
HARM. YOU CONTINUE HAVE METAGS THAT APPEAR AS FOLLOWS IN GOOGLES AND OTHER
SEARCH ENGINES

Hmmm…. so the question is…. what happened to all those cyberstalking laws he cited in his first contact with me? Now — who is stalking whom? All I asked for was an apology from the bully. He can’t handle an apology — so now he’s stalking me. Never mind that I live more than 1,000 miles away.

But — what he doesn’t know is that I spend quite a bit of time in South Florida — not far from Naples, Ft. Meyers, Marco Island… I have family there and I’m there several times a year. In fact, I’ll be there within the next few weeks, so while I’m there, I plan to make a trip up to the Naples police department to see what kinds of restraining orders or other paperwork there may be on him. If he contacts me again, I’ll add a restraining order to their records.

I will not be bullied.

And what does it mean to you, the reader of this blog? Patients need to be able to protect themselves from dangerous doctors, whether those doctors are addicted to alcohol or other substances, bad surgeons, guilty of making mistakes with their patients — or even bullies.

Here is a good way to do it:

Sometimes all it requires is a general google search to get the information you need. If you know the doctor’s name, then search on that first, plus the word “blog” or the word “problem” or even “malpractice.” You may need to use your location, too, because there may be more than one doctor who has the same name.

Even if you don’t know his or her name, Just input your location, the type of doctor you seek (family practice, orthopedist, whatever) — and then those words: blog, malpractice, problem, even “error” or “mistake.”

Be sure to look down through five or six pages of google results — and you have a better chance of finding the information you need. Even if there haven’t been lawsuits, you can get general impressions of a doctor if someone has had a very good or very bad experience and chose to share that information online.

Bullying is never acceptable. I’m still waiting for that apology. I refuse to respond to bullying tactics.

I hope you will follow my lead.

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Kim Witczak, a fixer supreme, who has worked hard to protect others after losing her husband to prescription drug-induced suicide, has posted the second Every Patient’s Advocate Guest Blog Post — see it here.

Kim’s husband Woody was having trouble sleeping. His doctor prescribed Zoloft. Woody took his own life, and only later after doing some investigative work, did Kim learn that Pfizer, the manufacturer of Zoloft, knew that suicide was an adverse side effect of Zoloft. In order to get FDA approval to sell the drug, Pfizer covered up the studies that showed the suicide risk. Kim sued Pfizer and won the lawsuit.

Now it seems that drug companies are using FDA approval to stand between them and law suits. A recent ruling says patients who suffer from adverse events, even when they could not have known about possibilities because the drug companies withheld that information, cannot sue if the FDA gave approval.

So let’s think this through a minute…. the drug manufacturer lies by covering up patient deaths. The FDA approves the drug, because it doesn’t know the drug causes deaths. A patient takes the drug — and dies. And when a lawsuit ensues, the ruling is “sorry — since the FDA approved the drug, the patient has no case.”

Does this make sense to you? Read what Kim has to say about it. Then be outraged.

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