Road trip

Sales calls with my dad, finding a new home, clinical updates

PAST

My big, strong dad

My dad was a sales representative for a series of companies which make walk-in freezers. His customers were restaurants and fast food chains. He worked for Bastian Blessing, Vollrath, Frigidaire and Masterbilt. After my mom and dad divorced when I was ten years old, summertime visits with him usually included several days on the road as he made sales calls in the Northeastern United States. At the end of those days we would go out for dinner, check out a local attraction, and sometimes stay in a motel overnight if we had traveled as far north as Maine.

Driving was second nature for him, and he was attentive. This made him a good driving instructor for me. The summer before I turned seventeen (my Pop pop wouldn’t let me get my license when I was sixteen), it was my dad who taught me to drive on one of those summer sales trips. One close call occurred when I tried to get on a highway via the exit ramp. Dad got pretty excited, but not angry, and I never did that again.

Because he grew up around a service station—which my Pop pop owned and ran— my dad knew cars pretty well. He could readily distiguish a 1967 Chevy from a 1968, and certainly one make from another. There were always antique car catalogues around when I was a kid, and as an adult who has been reading Consumer Reports auto issue for thirty years, I can identify a lot cars myself.

Pop pop’s 1976 Chevy Caprice Classic

My Pop pop wanted me to focus on my school work, and not get into the vicious cycle of working a job to pay for a car, and then repairs, since I would only be able to afford a junker. And he certainly didn’t want me driving one of those “Japanese roller skates.” So he kindly let me use one of his cars, and I paid the insurance. It was a metallic blue 1976 Chevy Caprice Classic. It drove like a ship floating on clouds. It was so solid that once, when I backed up at a friend’s house on a moonless night and hit his stone wall, the wall fell over and there was not a scratch on the bumper.

Back to my dad. Conversations with dad had a limited menu. He was an introvert who had pushed himself to be more comfortable in social interactions, which was ironic when you consider his line of work. We would talk about cars, sing along to music on the radio (he had a good voice and a hilarious falsetto that would show up with certain Beach Boys songs), share commentary about the attractive women we saw, and not a lot else. This reparte about women was an oddly uncomortable ritual we shared. I wasn’t really into sports; if I was, we probably could have engaged in this pseudo-language that so many men use as a proxy for meaningful conversation. I’m sorry, but it’s always seemed like a farce to me. Rather than talk about what is really going on in their lives, some guys can just spend hours talking about teams, players and plays.

It was instructive for me to see and know what it was that my dad did for work. I admired him for it, even if I didn’t aspire to it myself. I could tell that he was good at it, and that his customers liked and respected him.

The physical memories I have of being in the company of my dad are of being small, and feeling myself a boy, even when I had grown into adulthood. He was a solid six feet tall, held himself with good posture (some would say a military bearing), and always took care to stay fit with tennis, volleyball, and weightlifting. Near the end of his life, when he had been ill and lost a lot of weight, I saw more of myself in his thinner physique. When there were opportunities to help care for him, I was able to take them because of the friendship and support of my wife. These were poignant moments which matured my sense of self. This twilight time let us both see each other with clarity, an openness that came with approaching death, and speak words of acknowledgement about each other’s goodness, and the good women we had each married.

RECENT PAST

Before my father died, my wife and I had been considering moving out ofPhiladelphia, our home of the time. Violent crime had touched our lives multiple times, which was its own travail, but there were petty crimes that wore us down too. We’d had a beautiful Ficus plant in the courtyard we shared with five other neighbors, and when workman were doing repairs on one of the houses, it disappeared. Or early one summer morning I heard sounds below our bedroom window which were unexpected; the garbage truck had been by around 4am, and this sounded like more garbage can rustling. I got out of bed in time to see our sole garbage can, which had our house and street number spray painted on it mind you, being loaded into someone’s trunk before he took off.

Dad left us some life insurance money, and we decided to make a break for it. While we kept working, we began diligently researching new places to live. We lived in what Philadelphians call a Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Ghost) which is essentially a tiny house with three floors—or rooms— stacked on top of each other, and a narrow winding staircase. They were popular with ship’s captains and their families in the 1800s. The walls of our first floor were covered with newsprint lists of what we were looking for in a new home. Then the day came that we quit our jobs, hired a teenage neighbor to watch the cats, and hit the road. We covered a lot of territory in the next month, on both coasts of the US and plenty of places in between. Ithaca, NY was one of our first stops on the list, and ended up being the last as well.

Thinking about our travels and the many stories I could tell, I landed on one which relates to our visit to Boise, ID, and a spectacular dessert. If you’ve never been to Idaho, I highly recommend it. Some of the most beautiful vistas in the entire United States are in Idaho. My only words of caution are that if you have a car festooned with progressive liberal bumper stickers, you might not want to be driving through the Snake River Valley after dark. The gun racks in the cabs of those pick up trucks have real guns in them, and the drivers may not be fans of Brandon—or Prius owners.

You don’t have to be from Philadelphia to know what a Tastykake is, but for many a Philadelphian, it has been considered haute cuisine for more than a hundred years. I certainly enjoyed a butterscotch Krimpet in my day, but my wry reflection is that any product which substitutes a K when common English would call for a C is…suspect.

So, we were exploring Boise’s potential for our future, and on our first night in town we went to a nice restaurant. It had high ceilings and timberframe interior, with the trophy heads of many big animals on the walls. After an exceptional meal, we ordered the dessert special. When it arrived, I paused in reverence. There was a handmade ginger cookie of sorts, like an upside down hand with delicate fingers spread open, holding a scoop of vanilla ice cream with a dark chocolate drizzle, probably a few strawberry slices and a leaf or two of mint. It tasted even better that it looked. When I came up for air and wiped my lips with my napkin, I met my wife’s eyes, and she uttered words that shall live in infamy. “You know, that was beautiful, and tasted amazing, but sometimes…you just want a Tastykake.”

PRESENT

2011 Volvo C30

Tomorrow I’m going on a road trip to Selden, NY, after a ferry ride across Long Island Sound, where I’ll meet a fellow named Zee, and try to take an old Volvo C30 off his hands. If there are any C30 enthusiasts out there, please give us a little shout. The C30 was made from 2006-2013, in two generations. Volvo made about 220,000 of them, and it was meant to be an appetizer to Volvo ownership, leading buyers up the food chain after they got the little coupe experience out of their system. That worked in a sense, because 3 out of 4 people who bought the C30 were first time Volvo buyers. It’s not as sporty as your little Mazda Miata, but it’s classy—and cute. Five cylinders of tranversely installed inline horsepower makes it go vroom! No, I’m not having a midlife crisis. Yes, I’m channeling my Pop pop and dad…it’s my inner Marsland motorhead coming through.

While I’m on a road trip, I hope that you’ll be digesting three clinical updates. The first is courtesy of a patient who wrote a very detailed summary of her response to the clinical interventions we have tried to date. In particular, she credited Baobab with a wide range of improvements including decreased joint pain in previously injured areas, and return of hair growth and luster. When she attempted to reach the 1 Tbsp dose in 16oz of water, sipped over at least eight hours which I had suggested, all mayhem ensued. This could be interpreted as provocation of her MCAS, in particular provoking her paresthesias. Fortunately, she didn’t give up on Baobab, and with some trial and error, discovered that by dosing as little as 1/8 tsp, and no more than a flat 1/4 tsp daily, she could get marvelous benefit without any adverse effects.

The second update to share is the name of a product for heartburn which has been very helpful to patients trying to wean off of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs). Reflux Gourmet is a clean product made with sodium alginate from brown seaweed or kelp. It has two flavors: Chocolate Mint and Vanilla Caramel. I like them both, but particularly enjoy the Vanilla Caramel, as it reminds me of the Werther’s caramel chews of my boyhood. Once taken, the alginate forms a protective coating in your throat, esophagus, and stomach that can help relieve or even prevent manifestations of reflux. When the alginate reaches your stomach, it forms a protective gel “raft” that floats on the top of your stomach contents. This raft effectively blocks off (or “corks”) the esophagus, physically blocking the reflux of your stomach contents into your esophagus.

Reflux Gourmet was recommended to me by our dear colleagues at Vitahealth Apothecary in NY, NY. It is widely available, and the cost is about $25-37 online. Each tube contains forty seven doses, and it can be used up to four times a day, after meals and at bedtime.

The last update is about a type of medical device on the market which delivers microimpacts. I spent a mind-blowing two hours in conversation with Peter Simonson, President of Juvent, a company which makes a very high quality and safe form of microimpact device. Our visit was revelatory, because of what I learned about bone as an endocrine and metabolic organ. Bones are so much more than the structure on which we hang our meat suit.

Pierre and I both have one of these devices and use them personally. FDA approved use of the Juvent is to reverse osteopenia and osteoporosis, but the clinical applications are much broader. This device has been on the FLCCC Alliance protocol as third line therapy called low magnitude mechanical stimulation. Page thirty two of the I-RECOVER protocol reports:

Low Magnitude Mechanical Stimulation (LMMS or Whole-Body Vibration). Low magnitude (0.3-0.4G), high-frequency (32-40 Hz) mechanical stimulation has been demonstrated to increase bone density as well as indices of general well-being in patients with a variety of medical disorders. It is postulated that this intervention recruits bone marrow stem cells in addition to having metabolic and immunologic effects. In humans, low-magnitude acceleration is applied through the feet by standing on a platform oscillating at relatively high resonant frequency. These parameters are very safe, painless, and easy to administer. This therapy is offered by Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Centers, or a device may be purchased for home use https://www.juvent.com/health/) similarly with noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS).

A study referenced by the protocol is:

Mogil RJ, Kaste SC, Ferry RJ, Hudson MM, Howell CR. Effect of low-magnitude, high-frequency mechanical stimulation on BMD among young childhood cancer survivors. A randomized clinical trial. JAMA Oncol. 2016;2:908-15.

What I want to say about this therapy is that there are many knock-offs on the market, and most of them are likely to harm you. They are the equivalent of standing on one of the machines in Lowes or Home Depot which is used to shake up paint. While our bones are designed to handle mechanical vibration at this level, the rest of our organs, including our brain, are not. Juvent operates at very safe 0.3 – 0.4 g’s of energy between 32Hz-37Hz, and detects the user’s resonant energy to use this energy effectively. Since I have delved into the science behind this product, two of my patients bought knock-offs, one at the recommendation of her Physical Therapist, and I had the bad luck of having to tell her she wasted her money for something that would probably hurt her.

The Juvent is an expensive piece of equipment, costing $6,000. It is also made in Tennessee by well-compensated American workers, using aerospace grade aluminum, gold-plated microprocessors, and strongly patented technology which cannot be easily imitated. It is my hope that with future case studies exploring some of its potential uses for patients with post-acute sequelae of COVID (PASC), vaccine injury, and cancer, that we will find ways to increase access through shared facilities.

P.S. I do not have a financial interest in Baobab farms, Reflux Gourmet, or Juvent—just an intellectual one!