Hope springs eternal and drowns in muck
I would have thought that most of me was beyond hope but still I harbored the faint dream that I could have been wrong. For a few days now I've been popping zinc tablets in the vain hope that it would have some beneficial effect upon my condition. Truthfully, it might be too soon to conclude that there is no effect at all, but any flights of fancy involving marked improvement have probably been put to rest.
There have been times in the past where I've strayed from medical journals in my readings about my conditions and strayed into the back alleys of the internet where people trade stories of snake remedies with one another about what vitamin or bit of tree bark showed a positive effect. Born equally of desperation and delusion, I usually avoid the entire enterprise for one of two reasons. The first being that I think most of this hippie herbal alternative medicine bullshit is unmitigated bunk, mostly driven by the placebo effect and dreams of the damned. Second, my condition is more advanced than that of the vast majority of people so that even if these remedies have some beneficial effect, it's unlikely to be something that would really help me. I guess it's like the difference between telling someone to put aloe on a paper cut and telling someone to apply it to a disemboweling. Because of this, it's actually been years since I've taken any initiative to actually try something bandied about online as a possible treatment. At this point I've gone through two different drug treatments which both showed promise in various medical studies only to find they had no effect for me. So when science fails you, why not give the equivalent of voodoo a whirl, right?
So it was with more hope that I would have expected that I decided to give zinc a whirl. There have been posts online for a couple years now that some people have had a remission of symptoms by taking large doses of zinc, and most of them quite quickly. Since zinc is easily obtained over the counter, it meant that I could also bypass any tedious doctor's visits and simply give it a whirl. The initial downsides for taking it were reports that it may exacerbate anemia by interfering with iron absorption and that it's been known to cause gastrointestinal distress. The anemia bit is troublesome since I'm already anemic and have been for years. It's hard not to be when you lose blood like a hemophiliac. I wasn't too worried about the stomach upset since mine has been able to take anything I've thrown at it over the years dispute warnings of only taking medicines with food. For that reason the zinc came as a real surprise with abdominal pain and nausea that has now made me a believer in taking it with some yogurt at the least.
And so for the past not quite week, I've been chomping down 100 mgs of zinc a day to no noticeable effect thus far. That's not to say that maybe it won't have some beneficial effect in the end, or at least that's what I try to tell myself. Even in the happy-happy-happy-joy-joy accounts online by people with milder conditions than my own, they usually reported taking it for a solid two weeks before they reported remission. Still, I can't help with having hoped that it might have been some sort of miracle cure where I could at least see progress right from the start. It just seems that I get less and less functional every day and without some intervention, it's a road to hell.
There have been times in the past where I've strayed from medical journals in my readings about my conditions and strayed into the back alleys of the internet where people trade stories of snake remedies with one another about what vitamin or bit of tree bark showed a positive effect. Born equally of desperation and delusion, I usually avoid the entire enterprise for one of two reasons. The first being that I think most of this hippie herbal alternative medicine bullshit is unmitigated bunk, mostly driven by the placebo effect and dreams of the damned. Second, my condition is more advanced than that of the vast majority of people so that even if these remedies have some beneficial effect, it's unlikely to be something that would really help me. I guess it's like the difference between telling someone to put aloe on a paper cut and telling someone to apply it to a disemboweling. Because of this, it's actually been years since I've taken any initiative to actually try something bandied about online as a possible treatment. At this point I've gone through two different drug treatments which both showed promise in various medical studies only to find they had no effect for me. So when science fails you, why not give the equivalent of voodoo a whirl, right?
So it was with more hope that I would have expected that I decided to give zinc a whirl. There have been posts online for a couple years now that some people have had a remission of symptoms by taking large doses of zinc, and most of them quite quickly. Since zinc is easily obtained over the counter, it meant that I could also bypass any tedious doctor's visits and simply give it a whirl. The initial downsides for taking it were reports that it may exacerbate anemia by interfering with iron absorption and that it's been known to cause gastrointestinal distress. The anemia bit is troublesome since I'm already anemic and have been for years. It's hard not to be when you lose blood like a hemophiliac. I wasn't too worried about the stomach upset since mine has been able to take anything I've thrown at it over the years dispute warnings of only taking medicines with food. For that reason the zinc came as a real surprise with abdominal pain and nausea that has now made me a believer in taking it with some yogurt at the least.
And so for the past not quite week, I've been chomping down 100 mgs of zinc a day to no noticeable effect thus far. That's not to say that maybe it won't have some beneficial effect in the end, or at least that's what I try to tell myself. Even in the happy-happy-happy-joy-joy accounts online by people with milder conditions than my own, they usually reported taking it for a solid two weeks before they reported remission. Still, I can't help with having hoped that it might have been some sort of miracle cure where I could at least see progress right from the start. It just seems that I get less and less functional every day and without some intervention, it's a road to hell.