About Me

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This blog is a personal space where I can post some of my photos and talk about some of my favorite things. I have many interests, including, but not limited to: The Western Mystery Tradition, Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism, Modern Chinese Medicine, Photography, Music, Chess, Computers, ad infinitum..... I love to read, hate television, but do enjoy good movies. Newest entries are always posted on the top of page.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

A Bit Of A Flareup Today

Feeling rough again today, very achy, fatigued. Overall though I’m much better than I was during the volcanic flare up of the viral symptoms, which began about 6 weeks ago when I experienced marked RUQ abdomen pain and tenderness, nausea, vomiting as well as episodes of unexplained vertigo, which lasted for about 10 days.  I still have good days and bad days but the RUQ pain and vertigo have almost all but disappeared. I received an appointment today for my first consultation with Dr. Zhang, scheduled for Tue., November 8th.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Percy Takes Stage For Hurricane Relief

On October 5 at the Chicago House of Blues club Robert Plant and The Strange Sensation joined Pearl Jam for a benefit show for the victims of Hurricane Katrina - with tickets at $1000. Alongside a 45 minute opening set, Robert joined Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam for versions of Going To California ,Little Sister, Money, Thank You and Neil Young's Rockin' In The Freeworld. Vedder and Plant also offered up a unique duet performing Led Zeppelin's Fool In The Rain - a number never ever performed live before. Videos are available online, the quality is not great, looks to be shot by a member of the audience with perhaps a cell phone camera. Going To California can be seen here and Fool in the Rain here.

Friday, October 21, 2005

Possible Alternative Treatment For Hepatitis C

I have spent the last couple of days studying the book, “Healing Hepatitis C with Modern Chinese Medicineby Qingcai Zhang, M.D. Dr. Zhang graduated from Shanghai Second Medical University in 1962, he then worked as a physician at Reijing Hospital in Shanghai, conducting clinical and research work to integrate Chinese and Western Medicine.
In 1980, he was awarded a scholarship, which supported a two-year fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1984 he worked in research at the Wakai Clinic in Nagoya, Japan. A year later, he received a one-year appointment from the University of California at Davis as a professor.
Beginning in 1986, Dr. Zhang was the primary researcher at the Oriental Healing Arts Institute, where he conducted research on treating AIDS with Chinese medicine, designed herbal formulas for AIDS patients, and wrote two books on AIDS and Chinese medicine.
He started his private practice in 1990, first in Cypress, CA, and then in New York City. He is the founder of the Zhang Clinic in New York. Since 1987, his focus has been viral hepatitis, AIDS, Lyme disease, and autoimmune diseases.

Why use Chinese medicine to treat hepatitis C?
A third of all hepatitis cases worldwide are found in China. Chinese doctors treat most of the world’s hepatitis patients. A survey was done in China to compare Western and Chinese medicine for treating chronic viral hepatitis. It questioned 188 doctors. Among them, 88 were Western medicine practitioners, 80 were Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners, and 20 were like Dr. Zhang, practitioners of integrative Chinese and Western medicine. All 188 doctors agreed that Traditional Chinese Medicine and Integrative Chinese/Western Medicine produce better therapeutic results in treating chronic viral hepatitis than does Western medicine.

What are the clinical outcomes of Dr. Zhang’s protocols?
As of 2000 when he wrote this book Dr. Zhang had treated more than 600 hepatitis C patients. More than 80% have seen their conditions improve. Patients usually see their liver enzyme levels-especially ALT-improve or normalize in about two to three months. After two or three months, biopsies usually showed a reduction of inflammation. All of these things are quantifiable by Western medical lab results. All of this without the side effects produced by Western medicine’s protocol of interferon and ribavirin. Subjective symptoms, such as fatigue, achiness, nausea, and poor appetite, improve within three to four weeks.

In a newsletter written by Dr. Andrew Weil he wrote;
“Doctors in China have a great deal of experience treating hepatitis with Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Chinese studies show that their herbal regime has a much higher sustained response rate than the Western drug interferon, and has no serious side effects…”
This from an M.D. from America trained in Western Medicine.

Dr. Zhang’s book carefully spells out the protocol to be used for each patient’s set of symptoms and severity of abnormal lab results. He doesn’t ignore Western approaches; he uses Western medicine’s diagnostics (lab results, biopsies) together with Chinese medicines herbal treatments. I am willing to give this a try at this point. The only major drawback is the price of the herbs used in his protocols. The protocol I will be using to start this program will have a cost of slightly over $200.00 per month. But after my last bout of illness I now realize more than ever the truth of the old adage, you can’t put a price on your health.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

More on Dr. Zhang

Another interesting link;
Healing Hepatitis C with Natural Approaches

RSS Feed

  As I said, this blogging thing has opened up a whole new world and I’m constantly learning as I go. For those of you who blog  and would like to add an RSS feed to your blog you should really check out FeedBurner.

  As I said this is all new to me but after exploring it I wanted to give a news aggregator a try. After reading several reviews I settled on BlogExpress. So far I really like it.  BlogExpress is so easy to use. Lockergnome praises it as "BlogExpress stands out as an invaluable tool for those getting started with RSS. "  And the price is right (free).

  By the way, this blog now has an RSS feed. Anyone wishing to subscribe can use the orange XML button on the left hand side over there, underneath “Links”.

Have felt a bit better today.

  Have spent a good part of the day trying to get caught up on my school work. I’m currently taking an online college course to obtain my Radiological Technologist Fluoroscopy Permit. Have found it difficult to concentrate and study the last few weeks due to illness, thus, have fallen behind in this course work. Oh well, study, study, study.  
  While searching for information online yesterday I remembered a website by Dr. Andrew Weil which I use to frequent. Dr. Weil’s books have been invaluable to me for a few years and have helped me with several different health problems. I visited his site and did a search for Hepatitis C which uncovered among other things, Looking for a Liver Cure?  One of the things he says in this article, is, I quote directly;

“I’ve known a number of patients who have reversed hepatitis C using milk thistle in conjunction with another natural remedy, Schizandra (Schisandra chinensis), the fruit of a Chinese plant. Schizandra berries, like milk thistle, are nontoxic and support healthy liver function. I usually recommend them as part of a natural treatment protocol developed by Dr. Qingcai Zhang in New York.”

  Needless to say, this definitely piqued my interest so I immediately googled Dr. Qingcai Zhang and uncovered the following book which he authored, Healing Hepatitis C with Modern Chinese Medicine.
Needless to say I immediately ordered a copy.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Rough Night

Rough night last night, symptoms returned, flu like achiness, insomnia. Very tired this morning. Don't let anyone tell you that Hep C is a symptomless disease. This common misperception is a myth, as can be attested to by the posts in the following discussion;
Why Do I Keep Hearing This?

BBC NEWS | Health | Websites bolster chronically ill

BBC NEWS | Health | Websites bolster chronically ill: "Websites bolster chronically ill"

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

JustBlogIt with a simple right-click.

JustBlogIt with a simple right-click.: This blogging has opened up a whole new world to explore. Just discovered this nifty little tool;

"What is JustBlogIt? JustBlogIt is a Mozilla / Firefox extension to allow easy right-click posting to a weblog. From any website your new blog post is only a right-click away."

Book Recommendation

Currently reading a book my Lady found for me several days ago;

Living with Hepatitis C: A Survivor's Guide, Third Revised Edition by Gregory T. Everson, Hedy Weinberg

I highly recommend this book, it covers many of the aspects involved in dealing with this disease in an easy to read understandable language. It answered many of my questions. If your interested check your local bookseller or I know it’s available online at Amazon.com    

Helpful Links

Over the last few days have discovered some very helpful resources on dealing with Hepatitis C. I have added these to the Links section to the left, under Recent Posts and Archives. I will continue to add to these links as I go along.    

A Dark Lens

Unfortunately right now my lens onto the world is a bit dark. I was diagnosed with Hepatitis C around 6-7 years ago. Have had two liver biopsies in the interim the last one almost 3 yrs ago. At that time I was told the biopsy scored a one, on a scale of one to four. Was told that since the damage was minimal it would be ok to postpone interferon treatment in the hopes of the development of other drugs that may be more tolerable and effective. This I readily agreed to since I did briefly try interferon when initially diagnosed around 1998 or 1999. I only gave the treatment about a two week trial and then discontinued it since I found I was unable to work while admininistering the interferon injections. Over the last 5 years I have experienced periods of extreme fatigue, achiness (almost feels like the flu but different) and even RUQ abdomen pain. These symptoms have increased in severity and frequency, so much so that my Doctor has taken me off work for several weeks this past month. This last bout has been so severe I am seriously now considering requesting interferon treatment. I am waiting for a referral to a hepatologist in a metropolitan area near where I live, should be seeing him in the next couple of weeks.