The Story Of Uncle Iggy

This is a story about uncle Iggy. This is also a true and scary story of how uncle Iggy became a zombie. This is also a story on how uncle Iggy got away from being a zombie only to be attacked from a different direction by those who made him a zombie in the first place. So fill up your coffee mug get comfortable make sure you have your teddy bear and a warm blankie to keep you safe and I will present to you a modern day medical horror story.

A brief note: To the government agencies who are likely spying : Greetings! To the rest of you who are reading this I am not even beginning to tell you to stop taking meds or to ignore your doctor. I am giving you the story of uncle Iggy's decisions. Secondly while I may sound a bit tough on the doctors, the problem is not so much them, it's the fact that there are too few to go around and so they have to do things much quicker than they might actually like, having said that there is still no reason to be rude to a patient. End of Note.

Chapter One: In the beginning.......Isn't that a lovely way to start a story? Sounds almost biblical.....

There was a quiet humble man named Iggy, OK that’s not quite true because Iggy is a Marine and there is nothing humble about a Marine in full plumage. Iggy is a family man with a wonderful wife,gorgeous, intelligent, ( yes she is reading this) and crazy enough to put up with uncle Iggy. He has three children, one who is grown and gone and two at home that fearfully remember the days of him being a zombie. Some clarification, his wife was working in those days so the two youngest ate a lot of tuna and mac, NOT because he tried to eat them ,or anything quite that weird. They all lived happily ever after.....oops getting ahead of myself.....they all lived in Vermont just before the turn of the century,( I have always wanted to write that phrase), and all was well until Iggy got the bright idea to go back into the Marines. In all fairness that was prompted by a sudden lack of employment and a certain need to eat and see to it that the family had clothes and what not because ,as liberal as Vermont is, they still don't let you wander around naked, though if you do it in the winter they might just let it go just for the entertainment factor. So at the advanced age of mid thirties Iggy put on his nations uniform once again and took his family off to a new adventure in foreign lands such as California and North Carolina and all was well for a while.

Chapter Two: The attacks of 9/1/1

Leaving all humor for the moment, the attacks literally and figuratively rocked the world. Uncle Iggy's work load, as a platoon Sgt., tripled and as a result he became very sick, spent quite a bit of time in the hospital, and started the first of many medications. Things were not good. The government made sure that he was just well enough to send off to war and, just to make sure that he was really well protected, gave him various vaccinations, none of which had been actually approved by the FDA, and some of which he had had as a child, and sent him off to play in the biggest kitty litter box in the world. Spring break 2003 was about to start! They failed to mention that the “vaccinations” had side effects and possible complications. Uncle Iggy was not aware of any of this at the time he just knew that he hadn’t felt well since they had given them to him but being a good new zombie he didn't question it until several years later.

Chapter Three: War is hell but drugs are great!

Uncle Iggy, as you can Imagine, came back from war a very different man. Setting aside injuries and illness, he had to spend his time remembering all that he had seen and experienced and deal with a population of people who treated him like he was from Mars. In all fairness those who really mattered still treated him well, but having returned back to Vermont it really wasn't in his best interest to tell anyone that he had gone to war because the good and peaceful anti war demonstrators had already demonstrated just how much they loved military people by attacking national guard troops in uniform and ripping up flags. He didn't sleep much because of the rather intense nightmares and there really being no one that he could talk to that would understand. So uncle Iggy, as many veterans do, checked into the VA healthcare system and the zombification started in earnest. After going through a battery of physical and mental exams it was determined that what he needed was lots of drugs and that would take him to happy land where there were rainbows and unicorns. I know this to be a real place because the gummy bears told me so. Iggy, being rather tired and in pain, also being curious about unicorns and talking gummy bears,complied.

He had so many medications going at the same time that to this day he can't remember them all. He had meds for pain, for arthritis, to help him sleep, for stress, (there were several of those) and for various side effects that came along with the all drugs. It was total Zombie time. Uncle Iggy doesn't really remember a lot about went on at that time because he was so highly medicated but he did manage to pack on 50 lbs and his children got to learn about various combos of mac and tuna. His wife will tell you that his days were basically simple; He would get up have some coffee take his meds and by 10 am would be sound asleep on the couch. He would wake up just before she had to go to work and kind of muddle through the rest of the afternoon and almost be human just about the time to take another dose and go to bed. Now granted he wasn't a true zombie in that he didn't go out and eat brains, he didn't even know where his own were never mind having the ambition to go looking for any others, but his life was just about as close as you could come to it with out Will Smith showing up at the door to try and cure him.

Chapter Four: The wife intervenes and there is less zombie.

Uncle Iggys' children were finally saved by their mother. She somehow got through to that muddled, zombified mind that the children needed to eat something more than tuna and mac and that he needed to get off the meds and try something different. He listened. Out went the drugs, in came herbs and other more holistic remedies, and the zombification process stopped. I would love to tell you that the nightmares had all gone away along with the pain and illnesses, but life is rarely that kind to people, and so you have to make a serious choice, either live with what your dealt or live as a zombie, granted the zombie world did have unicorns and rainbows, but instead he chose to deal with it. Unknown to Uncle Iggy or his wife was that the next wave of zombification was about to begin

Chapter Five: The disease zombification.

Fast forward a few years and we find uncle Iggy getting better. He still has his aches and pains and still has to deal with the nightmares, though less frequently, and from time to time his magical mystery disease lays him out for a bit but over all he is doing better. He has tried to stay away from the VA as much as possible, opting instead for local witch doctors if at all possible while still going to the VA whenever absolutely needed. I am guessing that they don't really like that when you do this and that they must keep track of your absence because, in the words of uncle Iggy, “ when you do go to see them they seem to go out of their collective way to find something wrong with you, beyond what is already there.” The proof? New diseases coming out of literally no where. About 2 years ago uncle Iggy went in for his annual visit to the VA, it used to be every few months then six months and now it's usually about a year, got to love that government health care ( you knew I was going to say that somewhere) and in the course of things they did blood work on him. This was not a “fasting” batch of blood work, no this was right after a meal and after a rather interesting weekend of bonfires, food and beverage. Yet when it was done, even after he had told them of his maniacal weekend, they still listed it as fasting. Amazingly enough the blood sugar level was normal but they decided that there was something troubling about the liver enzymes and suggested that perhaps there was some kind of liver disease going on and that they needed to do more tests. Panic ensued ,the unicorns ran away and the rainbows faded. This is where the new attempt at zombification began.

Chapter Six: What the bleep is going on?

So now uncle Iggy is concerned. Who wouldn't be? You can't live with out your liver and so ,as you can imagine, he worried. For several weeks he got to sit and stew over what might be wrong and his views of worse case scenarios made the movie 2012 look like a quiet stroll on a Sunday afternoon. Finally the time for the new round of testing arrives, an MRI, but before they can begin he has to have his blood pressure taken and more blood work. His blood pressure is through the roof so much so that they decide that the one med he is taking for “hypertension” is not enough and he needs to take another one along with it. Uncle Iggy is damn near in panic mode at this point because he is watching his body fall apart. If you had told him that his ears were going to fall off next he wouldn't have been surprised.

They ran the next set of tests on the liver and send him home and when the new med arrived, for the blood pressure, he eagerly took it thinking that the doc prescribed it and so therefore it must be necessary. Please keep in mind, dear reader, that uncle Iggy has no desire to die and wants to live to see his great ,great grandchildren so with that in mind he started taking the medication. It was a mistake but he didn't figure that out until just recently. Going back to the liver issue for just a moment, it turned out that uncle Iggy has a much larger liver than the average person and that it was perfectly fine, the enzymes were nothing more than a result of it's unusual size.

Chapter Seven: Another attempt.

Uncle Iggy was in trouble. Unbeknownst to him the newest zombie attack attempt had already started but he didn't see the warning signs. I suppose his first clue should have been the severe urge to wander around aimlessly and eat people brains but he seemed to miss that part and the part that showed he was gaining a lot of weight back that he had previously lost. Enter another blood test. This time it was for a arthritis clinic so there was no fasting needed however they treated it as such and out of no where suddenly uncle Iggy was now a diabetic because the blood glucose reading was high. Now just imagine if Uncle Iggy had a wife who was any less beautiful and intelligent, yes she is reading this, and who didn't have a memory that a computer would envy. He had forgotten the fact that they had eaten lunch just before that set of tests and might have been suckered in completely. As it was he was concerned enough so that when the new med came to try to lower the blood sugar he took it. It caused him severe headaches. That’s when his beautiful, intelligent wife remembered that they had eaten before the test so rather then going back to the VA for a med for the headaches he stopped taking the med and went herbal again. Meanwhile the weight gain was continuing.

Chapter Eight. It's all my fault?

Uncle Iggy wound up moving to another state and had to go to a new VA and was assigned a new doctor. O gentle reader please understand this is an example of government run health care at it's finest, while they may share information they don't actually READ the information. So rather then ask Iggy what had changed that might be the cause of the a fore mentioned weight gain, or checking to see if perhaps the medication might be having an adverse reaction, he immediately decided that Uncle Iggy must be sucking down copious amounts of Twinkies and Mountain Dew, which admittedly has it's appeal, though Uncle Iggy is more of an ice cream kind of guy, but if he had been doing that he would have literally been seeing the rainbows and unicorns mentioned earlier from a caffeine and sugar overdose. And so the doctor proceeded to chew Iggy out for gaining weight and suggested that if he wanted to get off of meds that he needed to change his ways and he wanted more blood work to be done to prove that uncle Iggy was indeed diabetic. He also upped the dosage in the newest med. So basically without checking all factors the doctor assumed and suggested that all the gain was nothing more than his fault. Upon leaving Uncle Iggy was furious. It not good to tick off uncle Iggy not to mention his wife.

Chapter Nine: Vindication

Upon arriving at their illustrious mansion uncle Iggy and his intelligent ( did I mention she is beautiful as well?) wife started to research the meds that he was on and low and behold they can cause weight gain and cause a rise in your blood sugar levels! Even better, when mixed with the diabetic medicine they wanted to give to him, it would cause all sorts of other adverse effects such as massive headaches! Now to me this is an amazing thing that two low educated people who are not being paid to research these things can find this information in short order, while the paid professionals can't or won't. So uncle Iggy stopped taking that medication as well and not only has he lost some of the weight that he had gained, it's only been a few weeks after all,the lab results came back and showed that there was nothing wrong with the blood sugar levels or enzymes or anything else of a blood work type nature. Vindication.

There is a moral behind this story, and it is rather simple: question everything. Don't assume that because you are dealing with a doctor, especially one being paid by the government, that they have your best interest in mind or that they know everything. Many of them do, many of them are good and honest people but it seems that the VA ( government run) has a highly disproportionate amount of doctors that treat you like you are nothing but a number and just try to hurry you through so they can get to the next patient. Second thing though, especially if your a doctor, make sure your patient doesn't write blogs, especially if you intend to insult them or belittle them in any way with out checking all the facts, because we will tell and loudly.