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percy-l - re: source of quote?

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Subject: Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion on Walker Percy

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  • From: Wade Riddick <riddick AT mail.la.utexas.edu>
  • To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" <percy-l AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: re: source of quote?
  • Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 17:01:25 -0600



Does anyone know what happened to Wade?


I finally do.

Unlike the better angels of our nature, I was listing unduly to the right but I'm feeling better now. Corporate America will have to throw more than yeast, mercury and apnea at me. You can read about my condition in the Yeast-L archives <http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/yeast-l.html>.

This unholy trinity has been affecting me for between ten and twenty-five years and was entirely missed until six months ago when things were most acute. To say the least, I am not happy with the overall medical community. I can only wonder how other individuals with fewer resources manage to navigate our current morass of a medical system and actually get better. There is nothing more arrogant than an ignorant doctor with bureaucratic myopia. Permit me to endorse doctors with compassion - compassion in that oldest sense of the Christian word - someone who tries to understand suffering and doesn't get uncomfortable and transfer it out of their jurisdiction when what they see doesn't exactly fit what they're told to see.

The two knee surgeries I had at sixteen proved to be related to compression taking place entirely in my jaw jopints. My allergic rhinitis and food allergies were caused by simple candidiasis. I'd encourage everyone on this list to read my account and examine these simple problems. Offhand, I'd have to estimate about a third of the population suffers from a yeast problem and something like ten percent of men are affected by apnea, even if they don't snore. I've come across several relatives and friends with similar issues. The research on it is relatively recent, so be sure you get somebody just out of medical school if you can't find a qualified older expert.

This has had an impact on my political views. I used to support the offshore oil industry, but no more. I can't fish or eat seafood now because of the contamination caused by the use of mercury-rich drilling mud. The problem originally started with my fillings. I had four amalgams put in by a dentist who never examined me for bruxism - grinding of the teeth. The inevitable followed. I'm now overly sensitive to even small amounts of the metal. That's what you get for living in the cesspool that is Louisiana.

We talk about on this list (at least we used to) not putting your faith in secular salvation - but it certainly helps. When I was deprived of Vitamin B complex due to my digestive problems, I quite literally couldn't understand sitcom jokes until a half-hour after I heard them. My speech would often halt in mid-sentence - along with anything else cognitive going on.

I hate to sound like an apostate Scientologist, but there's some truth to fast food and modern diets poisoning our highly-evolved digestive tract. Maybe the explosion of attention-deficit, violence and other behavioral disorders of the 20th century have real organic causes. Maybe there's a reason channel surfing provides such a good fit for our thought processes - and not just from the abuse of recreational drugs. Maybe "sickness unto death" is less metaphorical whan we'd like to think. I, for one, have come to realize how pervasive and destructive the sin of gluttony really is. We should eat for nourishment. Eating for pleasure ought to raise eyebrows. (Decadent capitalist advertisers of the world, stop holding down our eyebrows!)

Lest I be accused of ingratitude, I do have my family and two good doctors to thanks for pulling me through this.

Oh. The World Trade Center bombing, by the way, prompted an adrenal crisis. There's apparently only so much the poor glands can take.

Speaking of adrenal crises, does anyone else think the reaction to the latest Mike Tyson episode is peculiar? The incident at the press conference seemed to me vintage pro-wrestling, which I understand does quite well in the cable ratings. Are they upset it wasn't properly choreographed? Does that make it somehow "inauthentic?"

Wade Riddick




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