The pandemic was rough on us “right-wing anti-vaxxers.”
(Who knew being consistently right would be so exhausting?)
You might have felt alone at times—but you never were.

Meet your tribe.

Yankee Doodle Soup is a collection of essays by a diverse group of writers with one thing in common: something positive to say about the pandemic. (Really! Those were the rules and the collaborators obliged enthusiastically and expertly.)

Contributors range from well-known doctors and scientists to speakers, podcasters, authors, attorneys, and editors. There’s an Emmy Award-winning former news anchor, a bridal gown designer, a whistleblower, a rock band, and one “pissed-off, childless, married woman of a certain age who didn’t do anything meaningful in her life until [Covid].” The essays are warm, witty, wise, wondrous, and exactly what the world is hungry for right now.

The book was conceived and edited by Jenna McCarthy (co-author of The War On Ivermectin, by my practice partner, Dr Pierre Kory). She has written twenty books, given two TED talks, spoken to groups across the country, served as a staff writer and editor at top women’s magazines in New York and LA, ridden in the back of a pickup truck in a lawn chair, filmed a book trailer in the bathtub, and gone scuba diving with sharks (on purpose). If you ask her daughters her greatest accomplishment, they’d probably say “being interviewed by Khloe Kardashian on the Today show.” Despite this, Jenna would say her daughters are her greatest accomplishment. Yankee Doodle Soup is her first anthology. It may or may not be her last. 

Submit your tin foil hat photo to info@bellalunapress.com to be featured in the gallery and for a chance to win a free book!

Please consider buying the paperback or e-book using my contributor code MARSLAND. I contributed an essay titled “Where is God?” Go to https://yankeedoodlesoup.com

Books will ship the first week in June. (That’s when ebooks will be available for purchase as well.) Paperbacks will ONLY be sold through the yankeedoodlesoup.com website, proceeds from which will go to hard working writers like me. Use my contributor code, which is my last name, MARSLAND. If you have enjoyed my Substack, Lightning Bug, over the last six months, please support my work by purchasing this book from the website. Ebooks will be available through Amazon and Apple, with ZERO royalties to the writers. 

CONTRIBUTORS

Laraine Abbey-Katzev

Margaret Anna Alice

Alyosius Barton

Cammy Benton, MD

Erin Cole

Sarah Cook

The Defiant

Sheila Dempsey, PhD

Tamara Dorris, MA

Angela Doss

Will Falconer, DVM

Harry Fisher 

Brit Galvin

Jenny Glick

Just Think Podcast

Laura Kasner

Karen J. Kolberg

Pierre Kory, MD

Karen Lorre

Scott Marsland, FNP-C

Jenna McCarthy

Maureen McCarthy

Brenda Miller

Mel Meyer

Alina Niemi

Zoey O’Toole

Bill Rice

John Richardson, Jr.

Tara Ricketts, MS

Jessica Rose, PhD

Barbara Rush

Frances Scott

Zahra Sethna

Isabel Shaw

Noelle H. Sproul

Kevin Stillwagon

Helena Summer

Candace Lynn Talmadge

Ben Tapper, DC

Leslie Taylor

Dave Thimmel 

Alexa Tuttle

Brad Young

Taking a break from writing Lightning Bug every week since October 2023 has been helpful, in order to rest, ponder and organize ideas in my mind.  I like noticing what bubbles up to the top.  Today’s post is a nod to one of my favorite Beatles songs, but also a hypothesis that sharing how I have personally implemented a lifetime of learning could be instructive, and even invite thoughts and questions from readers regarding their own experiences and strategies.

From A day in the life by The Beatles

Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream

MORNING

When the alarm goes off at 6:10am, I snuggle up to my beloved for some spoony physical closeness.  Our orange and white cat, Renny, who will have spent the night on one of our pillows, settles back onto our heads.  After two snoozes, Renny gets up, we role away from each other, I turn on my left side, kick out my right leg, and push myself up to a sitting position.  I take the Arc Microtech device I wore during the night off my ankle and set it aside to recharge.  I then use my fingertips to perform a percussive self-massage up, down and across my chest.  This  was a lesson from Jovanna, née Joan Perna, the mother of my friend Larami.  

Jovanna was a hot-blooded Sicilian, masseuse, nudist, and pursuer of many things alternative.  Never mind that I was a little squirmy touching and being touched by this beautiful woman, twice my age.  It was a hot July summer morning and she was visiting us in the third-floor walkup apartment we were sharing in Philadelphia’s Center City.  Jovanna explained that this massage technique helps brings blood flow to the lungs and thus the brain and rest of the body, which eases and speeds one’s waking.  Lesson learned, I never stopped, and have done it every morning for the last thirty six years.

As we make the bed, I straighten out the cord to the grounding pillow cover underneath my pillow case, and straighten out the grounding sheet on top of the fitted sheet at the foot of the bed.  Grounding, which can also be accomplished by walking on the earth in our bare feet, or touching soil and plants with our bare hands, is a manner of accepting negative electrons freely donated by the earth.  This negative energy helps move the charge of our cells back towards negative polarity, which the Substack writer A Midwestern Doctor discusses as the Zeta Potential.  Spike protein, lipid nanoparticles and other pathogens disrupt the Zeta Potential, and adversely impact the permeability of our cells.  EMF also adversely the Zeta Potential, and grounding sheets are a simple way to push back, which helps weaken the energetic attraction of platelets and red blood cells (RBCs) to each other in aggregates, thus reversing flocculation.

“In certain circumstances, the particles in a dispersion may adhere to one another and form aggregates of successively increasing size, which may settle out under the influence of gravity. An initially formed aggregate is called a floc and the process of its formation flocculation. The floc may or may not sediment or phase separate. If the aggregate changes to a much denser form, it is said to undergo coagulation. An aggregate usually separates out either by sedimentation (if it is more dense than the medium) or by creaming (if it less dense than the medium). The terms flocculation and coagulation have often been used interchangeably. Usually coagulation is irreversible whereas flocculation can be reversed by the process of deflocculation.” https://www.research.colostate.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/ZetaPotential-Introduction-in-30min-Malvern.pdf

Within minutes of rising from bed, ten at the most, I drink a thirty-two ounce glass of roomish-temperature distilled water, and then pour another, to drink within the next half hour.  Mohit Bali taught me about water upon waking.  Mohit, a reclusive computer geek from Eastern India, was a quad-mate my freshman year at Susquehanna University.  One day he completely surprised me—and slightly creeped me out—by offering this observation.  “Scott, I think that you need to drink more water.  You should do this every morning when you first arise.  Every human being wakes dehydrated, because our body has been repairing itself during the night, which uses fuel and makes waste.  This is an ancient teaching of Ayurvedic medicine.  Here is a mason jar.  Fill this and drink a glassful of water every day upon rising.”  Mind you that he rarely came out of the dark lair of his room, let alone conversed.   Then he disappeared back into his room, leaving me standing there with the mason jar in my hand.  Weird.  Crazy weird. But, I took his advice and still do to this day.

Why distilled water?  I’m betting that this is where the first alternative perspectives, questions and strenuous objections will arrive, such as, we should add trace minerals or a pinch of Celtic sea salt to our water.  Well, there was this older African American man.  He had a riotous head of grey hair, and he smelled like basement and oil furnace.  I would encounter him sometimes in the grocery story where I worked while attending nursing school in Philadelphia about thirty years ago.  I’m not sure why or  how we hit it off, but we both lived within walking distance of the store, and on more than a few occasions he would stop by our little Trinity house and we’d sit on the steps and visit.  One day he brought me a book called Water Is Life, which laid out the argument that the inorganic minerals and elements, including limestone, which were dissolved in water, accumulated over time in our bodies and led to the development of atherosclerotic plaques and decreased kidney function.  He was preaching, and this was his sermon to me.  It made enough sense and Philly tap water tasted terrible.  We were spending money from our limited budget on spring water, so we pivoted and purchased a water distiller from Waterwise in Florida.  With occasional postal trips to Florida for maintenance, that first distiller lasted more than twenty years.  We are now on our fourth generation….

Each morning with that first glass of water, I take one capsule of NAC Augmentata from Italy, which breaks the disulfide bond between spike and ACE-2 receptors, along with 500mg of esterified (Ester) Vitamin C.  There is synergy between NAC and Vitamin C such that together, they have more antioxidant and immune-supporting action than either by itself.   Each acts through different mechanisms.  Vitamin C can directly scavenge free radicals, while NAC boosts the level of glutathione, another powerful antioxidant.  Vitamin C can also help regenerate oxidize glutathione back to its reduced form, thus maintaining higher levels of active glutathione in the body.  NAC Augmentata is made by ZeroSpike in Italy, a small non-profit start up which is trying to save humanity, and at at dose of 200mg is exponentially more effective than other forms of NAC.  We source it from our trusted colleagues at Vitahealth Apothecary in NYC, which has been the primary U.S. distributor, although there may be a few new U.S. suppliers at this point.

My introduction to esterified Vitamin C was very personal.  I met Chef Robert Lehmann (pronounced LAY-man) at The Commissary Restaurant in Philadelphia, where I was a busboy in the summer of 1989.  He later become the Executive Chef of MANNA, a meals-delivery service organization for homebound people with AIDS in Philadelphia. As such he developed diet and nutrition standards for people who are HIV positive. He wrote a book: “Cooking for Life: A Guide to Nutrition and Food Safety for the HIV-positive Community.”  When I next returned to Philadelphia during Winter break 1989-1990, I would volunteer with MANNA, where Rob would supervise food preparation and occasionally I delivered those meals to the beautiful gay men who were languishing during what some call Fauci 101. Rob taught me that esterified Vitamin C could deliver much needed nutrition and immune support to these fragile people without upsetting or harming their stomachs.  I took note.

While in the kitchen finishing my second glass of water, I light the burner under the old English-made copper teapot, and when it whistles, I fill up my thermos and leave the lid off to let it cool a bit before making green tea with loose leaves.  As the tea steeps, I stir two tablespoons of Baobab powder into a cup of water, and divide this into two other thermoses, which I then fill with water; one for my wife and one for me.  Both the green tea and the Baobab have EGCG, which blocks spike entry into cells.  The Baobab has many other benefits, but serves to promote a robust and diverse microbiome in the gut.  I bring the green tea, Baobab and half gallon of distilled water to my office, and drink these three beverages over the course of the day.

Meanwhile my wife has made her way to the back, lifting shades, opening curtains, and turning the Wi-Fi back on as we start the day.  Some time ago we made it a habit to turn the Wi-Fi and all of our electronic devices off at bedtime.  This routine was inspired by Dr Robert O Becker, a Veterans Administration researcher and orthopedic surgeon who studied  how energy can be used to heal—and whose research provided the scientific basis of the Arc Microtech device we use with more than three hundred patients.  Given his (now quaint) concerns in the 1980s re: CB radios and FM radio towers, it is a short skip and a jump to realize that nothing good will come of the barrage of EMF we live in on a daily basis.  The very least we can do it dial it back when we are trying to sleep. 

I then head for the sauna with Malcom, the big black cat with soulful eyes who we adopted in January.  He likes to join me in the Sauna Space near infrared (NIR) sauna for some chin rubs and warmth.  I get naked as the day I was born, sit on the towel-draped stool, and over ten minutes, do two 360 degree rotations of exposure to the lights.  Ten minutes is the sweet spot to help repair mitochondrial function and increase ATP production; not five, and not fifteen, but ten.  Thanks for the tip on timing Dr Been!

While I’m in the sauna, I will often pray, or chant.  As Quakers say, I hold others in the light.  This is when I will seek sustenance, clarity and direction in my care of our complex and chronically ill patients at The Leading Edge Clinic  during the upcoming day.  When I say “or chant”, I refer to what I learned from our Japanese neighbors Hiro and Akiko Uhuru when we lived in Philadelphia.  I remember them taking me to a gathering and chanting session of their Buddhist organization, and really not knowing what to think about it.  After we left Philadelphia, they sent me a book which gave me some insight.  Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō (南無妙法蓮華経) are Japanese words chanted within all forms of Nichiren Buddhism. In English, they mean “Devotion to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra” or “Glory to the Dharma of the Lotus Sutra”.  It is a vow, an expression of determination, to embrace and manifest our Buddha nature. It is a pledge to oneself to never yield to difficulties and to rise above one’s suffering. At the same time, it is a vow to help others reveal this law in their own lives and achieve happiness.  I can get behind this.  For those of you who have seen The Life of Pi (one of my top ten favorite movies ever), you may appreciate the main character’s curiosity, embrace and practice of multiple spiritual practices in his joyful life.  It is one thing to pray, but quite another to chant Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō the hour and a half home from a twelve hour COVID shift in the Emergency Department (ED).

Our time in the sauna complete, Malcom and I step out, and I drink my second glass of distilled water.  This glass of water is accompanied by 4,000FU of Nattokinase and two capsules of Flavay.  Both are used to help breakdown the amyloid fibrin micro clots which we all have secondary to the spike protein in our bodies.  Flavay  is small molecule pycnogenol, using a patented formula which not only decreases platelet aggregation to other platelets and the walls of our blood vessels, but also has an antihistamine effect within the blood vessels.

Next stop is the bathroom where our little Manx cat, Sophie, is waiting for me on her cat mattress, taking second shift following my wife’s shower.   Near the end of the shower, I take a deep breath and as I’m blowing it out, turn off the hot water.  For sixty slow, deep breaths, I turn as the cold water falls on my body.  More than a year ago, I developed reservations about using cold water exposure in post-acute sequelae of COVID (PASC) and vaccine injury, as I understood how prevalent micro clotting was, and constriction of blood vessels in cold water was concerning.  My personal experience was that an old surgical site in my groin would start to ache in the cold water, and the numbness/tingling in my toes and feet would worsen.  Since February of this year however, my appreciation and treatment of mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) in my patients has grown by the day.  Knowing that cold exposure can be helpful in dampening MCAS, I’ve revisited this intervention.  It’s worth noting that summer is the ideal time to initiate this practice, as it gives us time to build up brown fat cells so that when the weather turns cooler, we will better be able to tolerate the cold.

Brown fat cells, cold exposure, and the Wim Hof Method were introduced to me by my cousin Danny more than five years ago during a Marsland family vacation at the Jersey shore.  These days, Danny is working as a welder and helping to build a nuclear aircraft carrier for the US Navy…so, not a medical professional.  But, I’ll say that he has been years ahead of the curve on a number of health-related topics.  He was the first person to ask me about IVM at the beginning of the pandemic, back when I thought vaccines were a good thing and that I could trust my ED pharmacist colleagues.  Boy was I wrong!  Brown fat cells came up in two continuing education lectures I watched pre-pandemic, when the topic was medical and about scientific developments around managing obesity.  Yes, I was thinking, “Damn, Danny was right about this too!”  We were all born with brown fat cells, and quickly lost them, because we are modern creatures of comfort, with central heating and air conditioning in our homes, our cars, and workplaces.  Brown fat cells, unlike the white fat cells that adorn our bellies and buttocks, burn energy and can produce heat.  This is how/why earlier humans could withstand the elements with greater tolerance than us pampered modern folks.

After my shower, I apply a roll-on deodorant which is made by the German company Weleda.  It is essential that no one use a deodorant which has aluminum in it.  The aluminum will be absorbed through our pores, and into our lymph glands as well as, ultimately, our blood stream.  The aluminum will promote flocculation (mentioned above), a nasty aggregation of platelets, red blood cells and fibrin, which will make a sludge in our blood stream and further impair our circulation.  

I get dressed and head into the kitchen where I unplug my Arc Microtech from the charger and put it back on my ankle for it’s first cycle of the day.  This device was introduced to us by our British colleague Dr Tina Peers, who at that time had seen tremendous benefit in more than 140 people.  This included her father, who went into heart failure after COVID shots, and whose cardiac pumping function recovered from 40 to 55% with use of the device.  The Arc is a genetic repair tool.  It systemically decreases inflammation, repairs mitochondrial damage so that ATP production returns, and  influences genetic expression to limit pathology and encourage cellular repair.  

Sophie and Renny are both standing by, hoping for a lick of butter from my fingertips as I prepare my breakfast.  For many years I would make toast with Hazelnut butter, nutritional yeast, and then prepare oatmeal with flax seeds, prunes, dates, apple and Silk soy milk.  Recently I have shifted to a lower carb routine, with free-range eggs, sausages with local pasture raised pork, and a single slice of Vollkornbrot rye bread with butter and nutritional yeast. 

Renny volunteers to clean up the egg yolk from my plate when I’m done.   If it isn’t too hot, he’ll settle in for a post-prandial nap by my side while I read a few pages of a study or clinical book while I’m eating.  Morning is probably the best time for our brain to take in new and complex information such as this.  I try not to turn my phone back on until this time, allowing at least two hours of electronics-free time from when we first woke.  Our nervous systems need regular pauses and vacations—fasts if you will—from our electronic devices.

After washing the dishes, I take 4.5mg of LDN liquid, and 1.5mg of Ketotifen.  Then I wash down three fistfuls of pills with water containing 25mg of Lugol’s 5% iodine, and 50 drops of Boiron Ribes Nigre gemmotherapy.  The pills include Eliquis 2.5mg, Plavix ¼ tab, Aspirin 81mg, IVM 18.5mg, Bacopa 500mg, Lithium 5mg, Dr Wilson’s Adrenal Stress and Adrenal Rebuilder, a B-complex, Resveragen, Ester-C 500mg, pre-natal DHA/EPA, Antronex, and Bromelain 500mg.

I head to the bathroom and brush my teeth.  A recent arrival in our routine is a water flosser.  Where has this been my whole adult life?  It would have saved us a lot of money in dental bills for sure.  When it comes to dentist visits,  I’m like a little boy, wanting to get the gold star because my gums don’t bleed when probed, and I hear that I’m one of “the best” patients.  Dr Richard Oberly is my dentist, and has become a friend over the last twenty four years.  He was the second person, after my cousin Danny, who asked me about IVM.  I give him a gold star for persisting in teaching me, as an adult, over a period of years, how to correctly brush and floss my teeth.  Gold stars aside, good oral hygiene is key to optimal health, as chronic inflammation of the gums and its causes have been associated with heart disease, diabetes, and dementia.  We simply must take the time to gently and thoroughly clean our teeth, gums, and mouth before we carry on with our day.

Moving to the kitchen, I put on my backpack and call out to my wife that I’m leaving.  I move into the mud room, where our youthful and bright black cat Charlotte is swishing her tail as she watches the morning attendees at the bird bath, including birds, groundhogs, red squirrels, grey squirrels and chipmunks.  Kerrie and I hug, there are kisses to lips, left cheek, right cheek, lips, and wishes to each other for a good day.  And up the hill I go….

P.S.  I opted to leave out the nitty-gritty re: the fistfuls of pills I swallow, and will take this up in my follow up piece(s) to A day in the life.

PAST

Today I have a facility with numbers and finances, but that wasn’t always the case. When I was a boy, I delivered papers for the New Britain Herald. It was an afternoon paper, back when there were such things. In my substack Capital C Characters, I wrote about the “bionic” man who was one of my customers. I had about 60 customers. Depending on the weather — and how many stops I made for socializing— it took me anywhere from a half hour to an hour to bicycle around delivering their papers after school.

On Saturdays I needed to collect payment. Some customers had subscriptions through the office and mailed in their monthly checks. Most of my customers paid on a weekly basis. I had a little flipbook with tiny, dated coupons that I would tear out and give to the customer when the payment was made. I think this was good practice for life because it meant handling money on a regular basis and, by extension, that means dealing with people’s idiosyncratic quirks around money.

Most customers were home and answered the door on Saturday, knowing I would be there to collect. But there were always a few who either weren’t home or didn’t answer, even though I suspected that they were in there somewhere. This gave me an early lesson in persistence.

Weather in my area of Connecticut at that time could still deliver extreme conditions. Winters were marked by bitter cold and plenty of snow. Flash rain storms with thunder and lightning, gale force winds, hundred degree days with high humidity, not to mention the ferocious dogs that wanted a piece of me: it was all part of the mix. There was one day that I just didn’t feel up to delivering papers and so I didn’t. I delivered Tuesday’s paper with Wednesday’s paper. There weren’t a lot of complaints, but the ones that I did get stung. This was my introduction to providing good customer service while managing extreme dissatisfaction.

At least three times a year my family would leave town on a road trip. This was usually to spend Thanksgiving and Easter with both sets of grandparents in Pennsylvania, and sometimes a week at the shore with the Marsland clan. My parents weren’t micro-managing my affairs, and so this meant that it was up to me to find a substitute to meet my obligations, and pay him well enough that he found it worth his time and effort. This was the upside of my not having helicopter parents. I had to figure this stuff out on my own as early as fourth grade.

Zhivago Velasco and Larry Lebatique became my go-to guys to cover my route. They were both classmates, first generation Americans of immigrant Filipino families.  With a memory that astounds me today I was able to easily recall the street names and house numbers for all of my customers and write a list from which Zhivago and Larry could deliver the papers.  If I was lucky and most people paid their weekly bill, I would net about $10 a week, which wasn’t bad for 1976. I think that I paid $15 to Larry and Zhivago. I intuitively understood that they didn’t have the relational capital or emotional investment in this enterprise that I did and accordingly I would have to compensate them with more financial reward.

On the other end of things, I would have to hand over the payments to my handler, the nameless adult who dropped off the bundle of newspapers in our driveway six days a week. Every Sunday evening, I would be sitting at the kitchen table with a pencil and eraser doing long addition, subtraction and multiplication to determine the amount of cash and coins I needed to leave in an envelope taped to the storm door for the handler to collect every Monday morning.  I never got it right. I never left enough. I tried and tried and tried to understand the formula. I’m pretty sure that I called the main office more than once to try and get some insight. The experience which I had around paying my handler, probably planted the seed for me to become a union agitator and organizer many years later. 

What I knew for sure was how hard I worked. And that it felt like I was being cheated. Even worse was that I couldn’t crack the code and challenge my handler, so that his skimming capitalist enterprise could and would exploit my cheap labor. It’s not like I had a mortgage to pay, but I did depend on that money to buy the model planes I liked to build and the candy of which my mother disapproved. I wanted to buy the sugary Fruit Loops and Applejacks cereals that would never make it into our family shopping cart.  I even ventured out into more “exotic” cuisine like yogurt, and the stir fried rice from the local Chinese takeout. I acquired an appreciation of the scent of incense from the New Age store, and bought some Phillies blunt cigars, and Malboro cigarettes.  So, I continued to ply my trade, knowing that I was being exploited, but was getting some reward that definitely improved my quality of life.

RECENT PAST

When the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, Japan melted down in March 2011, I felt despair which landed on top of my feelings at following the prolonged war in Iraq. I determined that the most achievable and sensible way to counteract that despair was to put solar panels and solar thermal tubes on the roof of our house. My wife certainly didn’t stand in my way, but she never had— and still doesn’t have— the same enthusiasm which I did, which was necessary to pull it off.

We needed to replace the roof around the same time.  My wife had been working in construction for 6 to 7 years at that time, co-owner of a small residential building company. Their preferred roofing material was corrugated metal, and some of their customers from the Ithaca community and its environs would install solar panels on their roofs. This meant drilling holes through the corrugated metal which not infrequently led to leaks—and call backs!

At the time, New York State had generous rebates for solar electric, solar thermal, and reflective roofing material. My wife and I are generally inclined to pay more for something that’s built well and will last longer, and we decided that installing a standing seam roof would be the best investment of our money. The racks for the solar panels and tubes could be attached to the seams without compromising the integrity of the roof.  Of course, standing seam metal roofs are only slightly less expensive than slate.

We obtained a home equity loan, borrowed more than $10,000 from our stepmother Betty Ann (who took this out of her retirement in order to bridge the expenses until the NY rebates came in) and signed contracts for a roofer and solar installation.

That was thirteen years ago. Given that the roof hasn’t leaked, gas and electric prices have increased exponentially, and the solar thermal tubes paid for themselves by 2019, I think we made a good choice. My wife might still disagree. Her partner in residential construction was very critical in 2011, quipping that “You’ve got a Cadillac sitting on top of your house.” I’m curious, but only slightly, what he would say today.

What I didn’t know back then, but I know now, is that solar electric panels are no bargain for the global economy and environment. The harm to the environment from mining and processing the raw materials to make them, exploitation of cheap labor, and rebates which ultimately serve bigger corporations that finance installation of PV panels on fertile farmland, taking it out of commission… these are all concerning and give me reason to pause.

But let me tell you, when I see neighbors whose 30 year asphalt shingle roof is being replaced after 10 years, I count myself lucky. It gives me great pleasure every time I come down to the basement on a sunny day and see that the domestic hot water has been preheated to more than 100° by the sun. We resell our excess electricity to our utility company. It’s delightful to see the drop in both the charges for supply and generation of electricity sold to us at retail by NYSEG, now a Spanish conglomerate, but retaining its New York name.

These investments would not still be useful if there were not several passionate men who arrived in our moments of need to help troubleshoot and maintain the electricity, plumbing, and various components of these complex systems from which we benefit.

It is here that I can write about one of the finest human beings I ever had the pleasure of knowing.  Bob Nape and I first met in 2005 when we were both helping to start the Ithaca Free Clinic (IFC). He had serious carpentry skills and together we put up partition walls and drywall to build out the internal exam rooms of the IFC.  The thing is that he didn’t just bring his skills, he brought his warmth, humor, and love of humanity, which made it a joy to be around him.

Bob was a man of long-standing passions. He became keenly interested in solar hot water back in the 70s in Philadelphia. He was also an enthusiastic and probably very good basketball player. He certainly had the height and the speed for it. He was more faithful in living his Catholicism and doing good in the world than the Pope, as exemplified by his perspective and actions from the moment he woke every day. Years after we met through the IFC, Bob started his company Solar Is Hot, through which he helped legacy solar thermal systems dating back to the 1970s, as well as newer ones such as ours, remain functional. I cannot take a hot shower without giving thanks to Bob.

We connected around our mutual challenges with heart disease and arrhythmias, which in my case kept me out of competitive sports, but in Bob’s case never kept him from his basketball games. During the pandemic, he developed complications following acute COVID, had a stroke, and ended up at SUNY Upstate, my previous employer. His loving partner Elizabeth, who also helped start the IFC, attended to him faithfully during his last days, and was at his bedside when he died January 2nd, 2021. I count Bob as one of the many great losses of the COVID era, who I think could still be alive today, but for the war on Ivermectin and all repurposed drugs. An odd twist to our story is that when I signed up for a post office box for the Leading Edge Clinic, it turned out that the one assigned, #6834, had been Bob’s.

Another person who has helped us over the last twenty years of home ownership is David, whose last name I don’t know, but who is the constant presence behind the service counter of an old-fashioned plumbing supply business in Ithaca. I have literally carried in a four foot section of twisty plumbing that I cut out of it’s place under our utility sink, and he helped me identify and assemble the new pieces I would need to replace it. He would guide me with patience and humor every time. And so, for good reason, I trusted him.

In September of 2021 our solar thermal system had a problem, and I didn’t have Bob. There was a puddle of the glycol fluid, which was supposed to be circulating in the system, but was instead pooling beneath the expansion tank. Because I didn’t have a choice, I started reading and watching videos, ordered a new tank, and went to David for advice on a fitting. He gathered what I needed from the warehouse, out of my sight, while I waited at the counter. I paid him and drove home to begin my project.

Eight hours and a lot of cussing later, I was unsuccessful. I had depressurized, disassembled, reattached and re-pressurized the new expansion tank six times, and each time there was a leak around the fittings. My kind, loving, patient wife, was trying to have a productive day in her stained glass studio on the other side of the basement, and it wasn’t going well, because as the hours went on, the number of f-bombs coming out of my mouth was increasing.

I had one lifeline which I hadn’t used…Paul Czarnecki, who was mentioned in my Capital C Characters substack. Via phone and text, I explained my predicament, but even Paul couldn’t get me out of this jam. And it was then, after eight hours of blood, sweat, tears and a blue streak of foul language, that I finally understood what went wrong. My dear trusted David had sold me this:

But he didn’t tell me, it was a combination of these two pieces:

As a result, there was not teflon tape or paste between the threads of these two fittings, and under pressure, the connection was leaking. By the time I figured this out, I had put so much torque on the original two pieces that there was not chance of getting them apart, and David’s store was closed. Off to Home Depot I went, purchased the two pieces, came home, wrapped Teflon tape around the joints, reattached the joint and tank, repressurized, held my breath, and turned the circulating pump on again. I swear that on the other side of the wall, my wife was holding her breath too! This time—success— there was no leak!!!!

To this day, that damn fitting sits on my home office desk, to remind me that if we persist and approach challenges with an open mind, questioning our assumptions, we just might sometimes come up with a solution. We just need time to let the little grey cells of our brain work on the problem.

PRESENT

With the author’s permission (my own), I’m going to reiterate part of what I wrote in my subtack Hot Mess Express, in which I discussed the use of Lithium as a trace mineral.

What about Lithium Orotate? Dr Michael Nehls, the neuroscientist from Germany, has been talking a blue streak about Vitamin D and Lithium Orotate to protect our brains from the onslaught of spike. Pierre and I had the pleasure of a private meeting with Dr Nehls nearly two months ago, and he helped us understand that Lithium Orotate was a key tool in the fight to reclaim our brains in general, and the hippocampi in particular. If therapeutics such as Vitamin B6 (as P5P 50), or 5-MTHF, or L-Theanine are useful to rebalance specific neurotransmitters, then Lithium Orotate is a general tonic which helps rebalance all neurotransmitters, because it reestablishes neuronal connections, decreases neuro inflammation, and enables the brain to start making new neurons. The particulars for inidividual patients have proven to be nuanced. I generally start with 130mg, but India Scott FNP-C prefers to start with 20mg of Lithium Orotate and work up to 130mg, stopping if clinical benefit is achieved earlier. Dr Nehls strongly recommended 130mg for symptomatic patients, dropping back to 20-30mg for maintenance when stability has been achieived. It’s important to note that 20-30mg of Lithium Orotate equals 1mg of active Lithium and 130mg of Lithium Orotate equals 5mg of active Lithium.

Because most health professionals — and many laypeople — have preconceptions about Lithium as solely the province of psychiatry and bipolar schizophrenia, it’s important to note that we are talking about Lithium as a trace mineral. Would you be concerned about toxicity from a pinch of Celtic sea salt in your water, or 25mg of Vitamin C? No. Neither should you be concerned about trace amounts of Lithium which are many times less than the doses used in psychiatry. You can get 1mg of active Lithium by drinking a pricey bottle of San Pelligrino mineral water, or eating a lot of seafood, but you’ll also quickly empty your wallet, and in the case of seafood, there are so many toxins in the ocean that you’ll poison yourself with mercury before you reach therapeutic levels of lithium. And it’s cheap, cheap, cheap. Horbaach makes a 130mg capsule of Lithium Orotate which costs $15 a bottle, including shipping, and provides six months worth of the supplement.

The Leading Edge Clinic has several dozen patients in Canada, and together we find ways to get lifesaving supplements and prescription medication to them, in spite of the totalitarian and life-threatening restrictions which the Canadian government continues to impose upon its citizens. Thanks to one of these patients, this week I came to understand that I was somewhat befuddled about the dosing and active Lithium content of the supplements I was recommending. It is my hope to bring light to this topic, as there is ample potential for confusion.

The form of Lithium which Dr Nehls recommends is Lithium Orotate, and that is primarily because of its bioavailabilty and affordability. The trouble begins with how the different supplement manufacturers label their products, and then how the supplement vendors (we use FullScript for a 30% discount for our patients) catalogue the supplements. From my perspective, Horbaach does the best job in their labeling, as the front of the label states “Lithium Orotate 130mg”, and the back states “Lithium 5mg (from Lithium Orotate).” What follows below is correspondence from three other suppliers of essential Lithium as Lithium Orotate: Vital Nutrients, Pure Encapsulations, and Doublewood. First, Vital Nutrients:

Vital Nutrients – Support 
From:support@vitalnutrients.co
To:X
Mon, May 13 at 4:42 p.m.

Good afternoon,

Thank you for contacting Vital Nutrients.

There is 500mg of total lithium orotate and 4% is elemental. So 20mg of elemental lithium and 480mg of orithic acid. (for round number purposes)

This is the highest we do carry. We are unable to do a comparison as other companies may source raw materials from other vendors. It would not be an accurate comparison.

If there is anything else we can do today, please let us know.

Omar
Customer Care Representative II
888.328.9992 | vitalnutrients.co

On Mon, May 13, 2024, at 08:41 PM, X> wrote:
To follow up on my previous question…I think the confusion has arisen from the fact that it doesn’t say Lithium Orotate on the front of your bottle, just Lithium. So I read it as 20mg of pure lithium. If it’s not correct, and 20mg is the amount of lithium orotate, then what is the actual amount of pure/elemental lithium in your supplement? If the opposite is true and 20 mg is the amount of pure lithium, what is the amount of lithium orotate per capsule?

On Mon, May 13, 2024, at 08:29 PM, X> wrote:

Hello, could you please confirm the amount of active/elemental lithium in your supplement Lithium 20mg? My health care provider thinks it’s 1mg of active/elemental lithium, but it looks like the label says it’s 20mg. Is this the highest amount available in North American market? Could you please also compare your Lithium 20 with Horbaach Lithium Orotate 130mg, in terms which supplements contains more active/elemental lithium? I am attaching the link below. Again, my provider thinks Horbaach contains more of active lithium, but I think it’s the opposite. Please advise. This is very important for us to sort out, so thank you in advance! X.

Second, Pure Encapsulations:

And third, Doublewood. I actually found their answer more confusing. But doing a quick calculation clarifies it. 9% or 0.09 x 57mg of Lithium Orotate = 5.13mg of active Lithium.

Here is my translation:

1. Horbaach delivers 5mg of active Lithium from 130mg of Lithium Orotate

2. Vital Nutrients delivers 20mg of active Lithium from 500mg of Lithium Orotate

3. Pure Encapsulations delivers 5mg of active Lithium from an unstated amount of Lithium Orotate

4. Doublewood delivers 5mg of active Lithium from 57mg of Lithium Orotate

5. Pure Encapsulations also has a 1mg Lithium product, which delivers 1mg of active Lithium, ideal for titration in very sensitive patients.

Clinical reports of symptomatic benefit from our patients indicates that the Vital Nutrients product is either not as effective, or too high a dose in some people. Dr Nehls recommends daily dosing with 5mg of active Lithium for symptomatic patients (active brain fog, neurological symptoms), and 1mg for maintenance. However, we can use up to 40mg twice daily without toxicity in severely symptomatic patients, and so people can titrate under medical supervision.

Normal Lithium dosing for adults with Bipolar disorder is 300-600mg of Lithium Carbonate, two to three times daily, with long-term control using up to 1200mg daily. Lithium Carbonate has 18.78% active Lithium, so that typical daily dosing in psychiatric treatment delivers between 113mg to 229mg of active Lithium. It is for this reason that Dr Nehls writes and speaks of Lithium Orotate as a trace mineral, as 5mg of active Lithium is 4.4% the psychiatric dose, and 1mg is 0.8%. At 40mg daily, which is the highest we have gone in any of our patients, we are still at only 35% of the lowest psychiatric dosing.

P.S. I have no financial interest in any of the supplements which I am discussing.

P.S.S. If you enjoy Lightning Bug, an edition such as this takes at least five hours of my time to conceive, write, and edit. I pay an editor to minimize my typos and deliver a better finished product to you. The recommended annual subscription is $50, but the settings should permit you to make a choice for a smaller amount if you want to demonstrate your appreciation, but like most of us, are on a budget. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, and share Lighting Bug with others who you think would enjoy it. Peace, Scott

PAST

A refrain which I heard frequently as a child was that I was “just looking for attention.” I had some intuition that this wasn’t a bad thing, but it was framed as just that by some of the adults around me who had other interests besides paying attention to a little boy.

Fortunately for me, there were other adults who were happy to pay attention. This included dozens of grey and white-haired customers on my paper route, my paternal and maternal grandparents, and my godparents. There was enough collective attention among them that I emerged from childhood without getting picked off by some predator who could smell the attention-starved boys and girls like a fox smells the rabbit.

When I was fourteen years old, my friend Larami’s parents sponsored me to go to a weekend workshop for young people. It was my first introduction to Re-Evaluation Counseling or RC, was held in a big old house in West Philadelphia, and led by an RC leader named Blair Hyatt. Larami was there too, as was another high school classmate named Tracy, and about a dozen other teenagers. That weekend changed my life, and how I thought about people—and attention.

The way these workshops go, each person gets a turn, if not multiple turns, in front of the group with the leader paying attention to them. Even the leader takes a turn. This last piece is important, because, unlike most conventional therapies in which the therapist is positioned as the knowing one, within RC, the leader has the opportunity to share their struggles with their community. It’s a different model of leadership, which has pluses and minuses, and doesn’t necessarily translate to the non-RC world.

One thing which I learned that weekend was that no matter how confident and together someone looked on the outside (e.g. Tracy), everyone had an interior emotional life, insecurities and old hurts that they were handling. This became clear to me as we took turns listening to each other in small groups as well as the entire group. The stunning moment was when Tracy was in front of the group with Blair paying attention to her in a light and playful way, and she burst into tears. I remember thinking, “What the hell just happened?” I didn’t expect this, and somehow the attention of Blair and the group made the difference. Tracy showed herself in a way that I hadn’t seen in the two years I had known her, and it made me care more deeply about her.

Another very important thing which I learned that weekend was that we all want and need attention, but that things go much, much better if we take turns. This immediately made sense to me. How many times have we been in a conversation where everyone is chomping at the bit to speak, and not necessarily listening to what the other people are saying? RC explicitly circumscribed this approach, by using timers, with each person taking a turn as client and counselor. You could begin to let go of formulating what you wanted to say while someone was still speaking, because you knew that your turn would come.

Perhaps the most important thing I learned that weekend though, was that I was a good listener, and that my listening could help another person to heal. People at that workship, and in RC over the years, showed me how to use attention to examaine what has been hard in life, with the aim of moving through it and moving on from it. I felt like I had discovered a superpower. We all have a need to be loved, but I would assert that our need to demonstrate our love for others, is far greater. RC presented me with a way to do this regularly, and skillfully.

RECENT PAST

One of the best decisions I ever made was to get a vasectomy in my mid-twenties. (I didn’t yet know that vasectomies don’t prevent you from adopting large numbers of cats, but that is a story for another day). For a year and a half I had been living together with the woman who would become my wife. I was still swearing that I would never get married, but was even more certain that I didn’t want to have children. She wasn’t as fervent on the issue of kids, but we both had come from broken homes, and had serious doubts about our capacity to be good parents. And so we came to an agreement that I would get fixed. So out-of-the-norm was this desire, that it took another year for my primary doctor to agree to sign off of the surgery, as he wanted me to take a year to “think about it.”

At this point in life, I don’t doubt that my wife and I could be good parents, if only because we have spent so much time raising each other into adulthood, and becoming relatively balanced human beings. But I’m still glad that we didn’t become parents. What we have had as a child-free couple is fewer financial constraints, more time, and freedom.

Parenthood doesn’t have to be the death of romance in coupledom, but it sure seems to be a common side effect. You can read romance to mean not just a sex life, but also closeness, connection and a fighting chance at finding intimacy, whatever that elusive relational state may be for you.

As a child-free couple, we have been able to step up during some very important times in the lives of our extended family. When my sister-in-law was in the hospital for a major surgery, I was able to take time off from work to help watch my three nieces while my brother worked long hours at a demanding job in finance. When my father was dying of metastatic kidney cancer, we were able to regularly drive five and a half hours to his home, and provide respite to my stepmother during the last months of his life. We did this at a time that we were both working retail jobs, didn’t have a car (we would rent one) and with finances that were very tight. When my paternal grandmother was dying from colon cancer, and had burned her bridges with my aunts and uncles, we were able to take her into our home and care for her during her last month of life. Each of these experiences was deeply meaningful and had its own intrinsic rewards for us, but I know also made a big difference for those receiving our time and attention.

My wife learned RC when we first moved in with each other in 1994, and quickly became a skillful counselor, better than me in fact, even though I had been at it a decade longer. We tried to use our super powers of attention to elevate the emotional lives of our nieces and nephew. We’ll never know what impact those efforts had, but we quickly understood the limitations of our influence, as parents often seen their children as their private property, and can quickly perceive competition and threat from other adults who have relaxed attention for them.

One summer we had two of our nieces come to visit us in Ithaca, NY and had a memorable week hiking, camping, and exploring together. My brother and sister-in-law expected the girls to be homesick, and were miffed when they didn’t get a call which affirmed this. The week was not without its challenges, as our nieces tested us and used our attention to show some of the struggles they had, but couldn’t get air time on at home. I think that all of us had a sense of closer connection to each other by the end of the week, and my wife and me were looking forward to another visit the next summer. When we later asked about having the girls come visit again the next summer, we were told that they would be going to camp. I suspect we did not get that opportunity again because my brother and sister-in-law perceived a threat to their parental exclusivity and validity.

Given what I have learned about attention, giving and receiving, and the healing power of it, I’ve long thought that many people shouldn’t become parents, or at least not as soon as they do. All humans need attention, but children especially. How rational is it that people become parents when they haven’t developed their capacity to pay attention to others? As far as I can tell, good parenting is more likely to flow from adults who have some capacity to meet their own human needs, including self-validation, without needing to extract it from the dependent little creatures they brought into this world. I have come to believe that developing our capacity to pay and share our attention can only improve our interactions with each other, and the children in our lives.

PRESENT

As a Family Nurse Practitioner, I was trained in delivering care to human beings from birth to death. If I had to, I think that I could do a decent job of delivering a child, but I’d rather not. I’ve cared for plenty of children during years of work in an Emergency Department which treated children and adults, but pediatrics isn’t my favorite. Yet, due to the uniqueness of thess post-Covidian time, there have been teenagers and pregnant women who have needed my care.

The most frequent appearance of pregnancy in my practice with the Leading Edge Clinic has been after a miscarriage or stillbirth. Women and couples who are seeking to understand what about COVID or the COVID shots is interfering with successful pregnancies seek out our counsel. I think that we have some insights into the pathology of the spike protein which have been helpful in those cases.

In one instance, a young woman who had started treatment for injury from the COVID shots, was due for a second visit, and became pregnant in the interim. During our second visit, I met with this patient and her husband, and the focus was on how we should modify her plan of care now that she was pregnant, and specifically, whether or not she should keep taking Ivermectin.

Medicine is perpetually an enterprise of risk vs benefit. What we witnessed in the last four years was the utter abandonment of informed consent, which cannot occur in any meaningful way without discussion of risks vs benefits of different treatment options. In discussing the use of IVM with this couple, I explained that there was some evidence of teratogenic effects (birth defects) of IVM in the first trimester, but at doses which were also harmful for the mother. We have been treating patients with IVM since February 2022, and I haven’t seen worse than blurred vision or GI upset in a minority of patients, despite doses as high as 0.6mg/kg. (There were two patients who were self-described as very sensitive to everything, who had what I would describe as Herx reactions upon initiation of IVM dosing, even at 1mg per day, but they were extreme outliers).

This particular patient had stopped IVM when she learned that she was pregant. She was taking only 2mg per day, which is far lower than I use in most patients, but she was also a self-described sensitive patient. Within three days of stopping IVM, the symptom of dizziness which had been plaguing her prior to taking IVM, returned.

To counterbalance our discussion, I asked the rhetorical question: “Have you been told that it is safe to take Tylenol (Acetaminophen) in pregnancy?” Yes, they had been told that it was safe. I then relayed my understanding of acetaminophen’s safety— or lack therof. For purposes of this Substack I’ll stick with the less impressive, but also less debatable numbers. According to the CDC, 1567 people have died from accidental Tylenol overdose between 2001-2010. During that same time period, annual acetaminophen-related deaths amounted to about twice the number attributed to all other over-the-counter pain relievers combined, according to the poison control data. A 2018 study published in a Scandinavian journal reported acetaminophen poisoning was associated with increased long-term all-cause mortality. The increased all-cause mortality was more prominent in the younger population, and in the first 12 months after poisoning. In July of 2009, an FDA panel of thirty-seven experts came very close to issuing a call for a ban on all over-the-counter sales of acetaminophen to reduce associated deadly overdoses and to eliminate the leading cause of liver failure in the U.S. They instead pulled back and called for only limiting the amount of Tylenol used in combination with narcotics such as Percocet. A 2023 study found that this decision saved many lives. This 2013 report from ProPublica does a good job of chronicling the sordid and deadly history of acetaminophen, and Big Pharma’s dodginess in response to decades of efforts to curtail its over-the-counter availability and use. However, it is still widely considered safe to use in pregnancy.

Now, let us again consider IVM. In 2021, a French company which had developed a long-acting, injectable form of IVM, commissioned a sweeping study of the medical literature on IVM by the well-respected French Toxicologist, Dr Jacques Descotes. He examined 82 chapters in multi-authored books, 249 original scientific papers, 74 review papers in peer-reviewed journals, 486 presentations and posters at scientific meetings on the preclinical and medical safety assessment, immunotoxicology and immunological safety, regulatory safety and risk evaluation of medicinal products and chemicals. In more than three decades of use, in hundreds of millions of people, there wasn’t even a solid case to be made that IVM was associated with a single death. He concluded that “…the safety profile of ivermectin has so far been excellent in the majority of treated human patients so that ivermectin human toxicity cannot be claimed to be a serious cause for concern.”

I know which of these two products I would feel comfortable recommending for use in pregnancy.

A 2020 systematic review funded by Unitaid (read Bill Gates) found: “There is insufficient evidence to conclude on the safety profile of ivermectin during pregnancy. Treatment campaigns should focus additional efforts on preventing inadvertent treatment of pregnant women.” I find it noteworthy that the recommendation is to prevent inadvertent treatment rather than more closely study its safety in pregnant women, and the authors take pains to point out the low quality of the studies used.

No evidence was found for increased risk of neonatal deaths, preterm births or low birthweight. Some evidence was found for spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and congenital anomalies, but the number of cases was too low to be conclusive – fewer than 100 women were exposed during the first trimester, when the foetus is expected to be more vulnerable to the drug’s effect.

Alternately, in its discussion of the Unitaid (Gates) review, the Barcelona Institute for Public Health spends a moment longer on the pertinent point that if IVM could be shown to be safe in pregnant women, that would be very important for public health. That is because IVM is not only used to treat the parasitic infections of onchocerciasis, lymphatic filariasis, Strongyloides, and scabies, but also has potential role as an endectocide to reduce malaria transmission by killing malaria vectors. The consensus of scientists and public health workers is that malaria kills up to 2.7 million persons each year. Nine out of ten of these cases and deaths occur in Africa and the vast majority of them are in children under the age of five years. If IVM got the green light for use in pregnancy, it could save many more lives.

The introduction to the Unitaid (Gates) review is worth quoting in detail; highlights are mine.

Before moving to the narrative description required by the 2015 labelling rule,⁹ the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had previously classified ivermectin as pregnancy category C—ie, “Animal reproduction studies have shown an adverse effect on the foetus and there are no adequate and well-controlled studies in humans, but potential benefits may warrant use of the drug in pregnant women despite potential risks”.¹ This classification is based on studies done in mice, rats, and rabbits during the original New Drug Application in the 1990s by Merck (appendix p 2).¹⁰ These studies showed adverse pregnancy outcomes at cumulative doses that are high enough to produce signs of maternal toxicity in animals, ranging between 20 and 600 times the human Mectizan single-dose target of 0·15–0·20 mg/kg. However, later evidence showed that the mouse strain (CF-1) used in the initial acute and developmental ivermectin toxicity studies was inappropriate, as it was later shown that CF-1 mice have deficient P-glycoprotein expression, which is an efflux pump key to preventing ivermectin toxicity.¹¹

My interpretation of the above is as follows. First, if we were to dose a pregnant human female at 20 to 600 times the typical single-dose use of 0.15-0.20mg/kg, for a 120lb (54.5kg) woman, instead of 12mg, we would use doses of 1090 – 6540mg. That ain’t happening. Second, the mouse studies which demonstrated teratogenicity to the fetus used a type of lab mice which have a genetic mutation that leaves them unable to avoid IVM toxicity. Hmmm.

I’ll report that in our clinical experience, whether a person has received the COVID shots or not, all of our patients have amyloid fibrin microclotting. If a person received two or more shots, they will typically have microclotting stage/grade 3-4 on a scale of 0-4. We know that microclots concentrate in the capillaries, where red blood cells (RBCs) are meant to deliver oxygen and remove carbon dioxide, but can’t due to congestion and blockage. We also know that the dense networks of blood vessels within the placenta are responsible for exchanging respiratory gases, nutrients, and wastes between the mother and fetus throughout pregnancy, which is essential for proper fetal growth. And we know that IVM is very effective at blocking the clot- provoking impact of spike on the platelets, RBCs, and endothelial cells which line the blood vessels.

In a post-Covidian world, the risk of using IVM in pregnancy is inhibited by the inconclusive and weak body of evidence (per Unitaid (Gates)), and studies using mice which couldn’t avoid IVM toxicity at crazy high doses. On the other hand, we have a punctilious review by an esteemed toxicologist, basically saying that IVM hasn’t killed anyone over thirty years and hundreds of millions of doses. And our clinical experience reveals microclotting in everybody, which poses an imminent threat to the viability of a fetus. IVM is one of the most effective therapies to block that effect of spike to promote microclotting.

If it was my wife who was pregnant, after a detailed review of the above risks and benefits, I would opine that I think the risks of IVM at current dosing at 0.2mg/kg-0.6mg/kg for post-acute sequelae of COVID and COVID vaccine injury are not only safe in pregnancy, but likely to prevent fetal demise from microclotting. If my wife was especially sensitive and cautious, I would use as little as 1mg of IVM daily, but I would use it.

P.S. This Substack is not individual medical advice for you.

P.S.S. Happy Memorial Day!

P.S.S.S. Thank you to each of the paid subscribers who help support the long-term effort of writing.

PAST

This story takes us back to my adventures with the Brethren Volunteer Service (BVS), as recounted in Hot Mess Express. After my excommunication from the San Antonio Catholic Worker House, I became sick as a dog for a week. Physically recovered, I flew home to southeastern Pennsylvania and stayed with my Nana. For the next week she was loving, but firm and clear that she wasn’t going to tolerate a twenty one year old college graduate who was a failure-to-launch. She had spent too many years watching the shenanigans of the neighbor biker boy Donny who was still living with his mom and dad—in his forties!

In the meantime, the BVS decided to give me a second chance. The High Desert Ranch in New Mexico had decided that I was indeed a hot mess, and retracted their acceptance. But, there was a Church of the Brethren (COB) camp and retreat center in Hooversville, PA which would be glad to have me. Hooversville is a tiny hamlet in Southwestern, PA, and Camp Harmony was miles from the nearest neighbor, a dairy farm. The position was for a Maintenance Director, with on-the-job training.

And so I arrived in the middle of Winter via Amtrak from Philadelphia’s 30th Street station. Philadelphians tend to think that Pennsylvania is, well, Philadelphia. The fact that the state extends at least an eight hour drive westward, and has a snow belt in the southwest to rival midwestern winters was not part of this southeastern Pennsylvanian’s consciousness.

The Winter and Spring were long and lonely. There was a lot of work to do on the buildings and around the camp preparing setting up for weekend retreats and preparing for the summer. During the weekdays, the camp secretary and director would be in the office and available, but at night I was the only person for miles. The upside was seeing the starry sky in all its heavenly glory and without the light pollution from the city. 1992 was also a heyday for country singer Garth Brooks, and considering that the only radio reception I got was AM, and two stations—both country—it was a good thing. I learned to like country music out of necessity.

Sundays meant traveling with the Camp Director, Neal Harvey, to regional congregations of the Church of the Brethren to make a presentation about the camp and raise funds. Neal would play a recording of campers singing the folk standard “The Garden Song” —listen to this version by John Denver appearing on The Muppet Show. It was an ear worm and still lingers in my brain on the occasion that I think of Camp Harmony….

As the snow began to clear, Wednesdays were work days with a group of up to ten retired men. We cut down Black Locust trees to make new fence posts and strung them with barbed wire to keep the neighboring cows off the camp property. We also began clearing land to make way for a planned new retreat center, today known as Faith Hall. All of this involved a lot of work with an old John Deere tractor, and chainsaws, neither of which had been part of my upbringing.

We took care, and no one was hurt during out efforts—except for one incident. Howard Fyock was a retired “coal cracker”, Pennsylvanian for coal miner. Like many old time coal miners, he had black lung. Coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (CWP), commonly known as “black lung disease,” occurs when coal dust is inhaled. Over time, continued exposure to the coal dust causes scarring in the lungs, impairing your ability to breathe. Considered an occupational lung disease, it is most common among coal miners.

I shit you not that Howard would be out there driving the old John Deere with his oxygen nasal cannula and the accompanying portable tank slung from his shoulders. There was an old gravel pit which we would dump the huge stumps we had dug out as we cleared the land. One day, Howard had the bucket end of the tractor elevated, with a large stump suspended below from a chain. As he approached the top of the gravel pit, there was a little too much swing to the stump, left to right, and the bucket was elevated just high enough that physics took over and the tractor began to tip. What happened next remains a marvelous miracle, and testimony to Howard’s quick thinking and spryness, even at the age of 80. He leapt off the tractor, in the opposite direction from which it was rolling, with his oxygen tank no less, and cleared the moving machine before it could crush him as it cartwheeled fifty feet down into the pit.

Neal and I visited Howard later that day in the hospital, and aside from some extensive bruising and a few broken ribs, he was already agitating to be discharged. The John Deere was also banged up, but after a visit to the shop to straighten out the engine splash guard and replace the damaged hydraulic lines, it was back in action.

I remember Howard and the other men who volunteered every week with a swell of love in my heart. Being a decent cook, I tried to show my appreciation for them by eschewing the basic fare of sandwiches, chips and iced tea, for more complicated and filling meals such as lasagna with garlic bread and salad, or chili with cornbread. Neal raised an eyebrow about the added expense, but that didn’t squash my light. He had a decent appetite himself, so I’m sure that helped.

When summer finally arrived, so did a whole community of staff and counselors, followed shortly afterwards by the campers. I had to surrender my apartment to the camp nurse, and move down to the lodge used for staff; those quarters had women on one side, men on the other, with a common room and kitchenette in the middle. Some of the lodge’s residents were still minors and as a result, even though I was what in Philadelphia street language would be called “a grown-ass man”, I was now theoretically under the nightly curfew watch of the camp nurse, with the young‘uns.

Always on the lookout for love and romantic adventure, I became friendly with one of the kitchen staff, a pretty young lass named Dawn. We managed to have a nice snuggle on the couch in the common lounge without any objections from our peers. What I hadn’t counted on was the late arrival of a camp counselor from Russia. Her name was Julia Samsonova, pronounced sam-Soo-no-va. We had eyes for each other from the start, with hers being dark, penetrating, and conspiratory.

About a week after Julia arrived, we ended up in the common lounge together one evening; she asked if I could play chess. Yes, indeed I could—badly, but I’d give it a go. It was unlike any chess game I have ever played, before or since, with the banter, saucy looks and a rising tension that left me so stirred up that I could hardly get to sleep that night. But what is a guy to do in the middle of a Christian summer camp, under the watchful eye of the camp nurse? Try to behave; try being the operative word.

I would leave you hanging if I didn’t share one last bit. Despite Neal’s generosity of heart in taking a chance on my hot mess and offering me a volunteer position, at the end of the summer I left Camp Harmony, and my volunteer commitment, early. There were a number of factors which, combined, led to this decision. It turned out that this region of the Church of the Brethren was more fundamentalist in nature, and I struggled with that. I also thought that volunteer doesn’t equate to servant, and Neal’s expectation of my position was that I would work 60-80 hour weeks throughout the summer, because previous volunteers in my position did. I have a strong work ethic, but this felt like exploitation of my good -faith intention to serve, and that didn’t sit well with me. I needed to move on.

The morning that I left Camp Harmony, Neal’s wife Karen had come to pick me up to take me to the train station. At the same time Julia was sneaking out of the window of my room and headed around the side of the staff building, Karen arrived at the front door and they made eye contact. Ooops. Karen wasn’t dumb, and put two and two together. I later learned that this news scandalized the COB community and, typical for small town gossip, lead to quite the storm of grandiose stories about how the Devil had influenced me, corrupted Julia and who-knows-else and who-knows-what. After we briefly considered her coming to Philadelphia to join me, Julia headed back to Russia. I wasn’t anywhere near ready for marriage, and the daunting logistics of obtaining an extended visa were enough to end our romance.

RECENT PAST

In 2018, my wife and I traveled to California to visit her father and his wife. Curt and Jane were high school sweethearts, who reunited after more than twenty years, several children each, and divorces from their respective spouses. They had recently purchased a large RV trailer and we took a small trip together to the coast, traveling through the Russian River Valley. On our way to the coast, we passed Russia House #1 and it caught my attention. It was an odd-looking structure which sat near the edge of the Russian River, with a sign advertising traditional Russian food. I filed it away in my head and, on the return trip, I asked Curt to pull over so that we could check it out.

When we pulled into the parking lot, there were no other cars, and when we entered the building, there were no other people. Just inside the entrance there was a room with an eclectic collection of puzzles and games. Further in, there were several large tables laid out with at least a dozen large crock pots, plates, and silverware. After a few minutes wait a rumpled-looking fellow came out from the back and introduced himself as the neighbor from across the street. He was watching over things as the three women who sponsored this culinary experiment were away for the day. He explained that we help ourselves, buffet-style, eat as much or as little as we want, and pay what we think makes sense. Hmmmm. What was the catch? I was both surprised, and a little suspicious, but when I read one of the postcards on our table, I started to understand what this was about.

Russian house#1 is a free cultural space, intentional community and an experiment in new economics. Russian House #1 is a unique Restaurant, where the food is being served like at Home. It means that we do not have menus, nor fixed prices. Our food is being prepared with an inspiration every day, considering our favorite Russian recipes and healthy local produce. We do culinary classes and we love to take best cooking practices from our guests. (Yes! You are welcome to cook with us or to cook for us ))) We have a great puzzle collection, intellectual clubs, meditations and breath work workshops .”

Everything smelled and tasted delicious, and some the food was familiar due to commonalities between Russian cuisine and Slovak dishes which my Baba would make. It was homemade Russian peasant food: hearty soups, stews, blini and salads were presented on a buffet table. Tea, fruit drinks and water were also available. The view of the Russian River Valley was lovely. Yes, I went back for seconds. I was grateful that my travel companions were willing to take a chance and explore this very special place together, and they all seemed to enjoy the food as well. I think I left $100 to cover the four of us.

Researching for this Substack, I learned that Russia House #1 closed in January of 2022, when the landlord declined to renew their lease. I’m betting that the inspired Russian women behind this culinary/intellectual/spiritual/diplomatic experiment will re-emerge in another location to continue their adventure. If you’re interested in more details, Russia House #1 was covered in these 2021 Washington Post, 2022 San Francisco Chronicle, and 2022 The Press Democrat articles.

PRESENT

Besides my Russian love Julia, and the yummy food of Russia House #1, I was inspired to write this Substack by my observations regarding a drug called Sulodexide. The only way I know of to procure this drug is via what I’ll call the “grey market,” as it is not available in the U.S. On websites which change from week to week, using similar graphics but different names for their business, people with names like Igor, Boris, Alexsandr and Dimitri bridge the gap between individual medical needs and the stupid greed of our Pharma-compromised FDA. I mention this at the start, because, as you will see, Sulodexide is not for the faint of heart, pardon the pun, as you will see.

What is reassuring about Sulodexide is that is has been approved by the European drug agencies and has been in use since 1972. When a drug has a long history of use, there has been plenty of opportunity to explore it’s pluses and minuses. Sulodexide is available as a generic medication, which makes it cheaper than comparable drugs such as Eliquis, an anticoagulant which is a factor Xa inhibitor. Eliquis has a good safety profile, and in our use of it to treat micro clotting-for more than 500 of our patients , there have been very few complications. However there is evidence that Sulodexide is safer than Eliquis. I would argue that it being cheaper and safer than Eliquis makes it very unlikely that we will see Sulodexide approved by the FDA anytime soon, as it would threaten the Pharma profits from Eliquis, Xarelto, and similar patented drugs.

Why am I talking about Sulodexide? First, the sheer scope of sulodexide’s clinical effects: it has anti-atherosclerotic, anti-coagulative, anti-fibrotic, fibrinolytic, anti-inflammatory, and endothelium-protecting properties. Second, I have seen noteworthy improvements in the symptoms of two vaccine injured patients who used a one month treatment of Sulodexide with 250LU (25mg) twice daily. I diagnosed the first patient with iliac venous compression (IVC). She took Sulodexide for one month before she had stenting with my colleague Dr Brooke Spencer in Denver, CO. She was noting improvement even before the moderate sedation was wearing off, and, among my growing list of IVC patients, has experienced one of the most rapid and dramatic improvements in her vascular system, chronic back pain, energy, and cognition. The second patient took Sulodexide for one month, and while he didn’t notice any tremendous benefit while taking it, his long-term recovery has been exemplary, as he has steadily improved in his reports re: ease of breathing, absence of chest pain, increased exercise capacity, and overall well-being.

From a 2014 review of Sulodexide:

Sulodexide (SDX), a sulfated polysaccharide complex extracted from porcine intestinal mucosa, is a blend of two glycosaminoglycan (GAG) entities, namely a fast-moving heparin (HP) fraction and a dermatan sulfate (DS; 20%) component. The compound is unique among HP-like substances in that it is biologically active by both the parenteral and oral routes. A main feature of the agent is to undergo extensive absorption by the vascular endothelium. For this reason, in preclinical studies, SDX administered parenterally displays an antithrombotic action similar to that of HPs but associated with fewer alterations of the blood clotting mechanisms and tests, thus being much less conducive to bleeding risk than HPs. When given orally, SDX is associated with minimal changes in classic coagulation tests, but maintains a number of important effects on the structure and function of endothelial cells (EC), and the intercellular matrix. These activities include prevention or restoration of the integrity and permeability of EC, counteraction versus chemical, toxic or metabolic EC injury, regulation of EC–blood cell interactions, inhibition of microvascular inflammatory and proliferative changes, and other similar effects, thus allowing oral SDX to be considered as an endothelial-protecting agent.

So, Sulodexide has two components, or fractions. The low molecular weight of both sulodexide fractions allows for extensive oral absorption compared to unfractionated heparin. The pharmacological effects of sulodexide differ substantially from other GAG drugs and are mainly characterized by a prolonged half-life and reduced effect on global coagulation and bleeding parameters. Translation: with Sulodexide there is less risk of bleeding.

We understand from our study and treatment of patients with post-acute sequelae of COVID and injury from the COVID shots, that endothelial (cells lining the blood vessels) injury occurred when the spike protein entered the blood and circulated. This happened to an exponentially greater extent from the shots, but can also occur in people who have had COVID, or who are experiencing shedding from exposure to vaccinated and boosted individuals. Therapeutics such as Sulodexide, which can counteract this endothelial injury, could be very valuable.

Sulodexide has been studied extensively in relation to venous ulcers, chronic venous disease, and diabetic neuropathy. There was one study of Sulodexide use in PASC patients with chest pain, which had positive statistical and clinical significance. One application which intrigues me, and which I will be exploring with patients, is its potential use in treating tinnitus, because that has been one of the hardest nuts to crack in PASC and vaccine injury. Sulodexide studies showed that when used in conjunction with melatonin, or as monotherapy, it was a viable treatment option for patients suffering from central or sensorineural tinnitus.

I expect that this brief exposition on Sulodexide will raise more questions among readers. Please remember that this is not individual health care advice for you. If Sulodexide sounds promising to you, please do more research on your own, as there are many academic articles to be found, and discuss it with your healthcare provider. I suggest starting with PubMed, the free online search engine available through the NIH. As with purchasing other medicine, such as IVM, from outside the United States, there are inherent risks which the regulatory structure of FDA approval is meant to protect us from (but which can also impede our access to safe, repurposed drugs). Personally, I obtained Sulodexide from abroad for a cost of ~$180 for a one month supply, and when I shared images of the package, medication blister packs and package insert with a Russian-reading pharmacist, he validated that I had the genuine article. Buyer beware, as I can’t speak for the ethics and quality control of the person on the other end of such transactions, and you would be purchasing the drug at your own risk.

P.S. Dr Pierre Kory and I are co-owners of The Leading Edge Clinic, a telemedicine practice. We work with a mission-focused staff of fifteen, including two extraordinary FNPs, India Scott and Laura Bevis. India and Laura also offer care in general medicine, and Laura specializes in geriatrics. We continue to study and learn in our treatment of PASC and vaccine injury. As one of five clinical sites participating in the five year FLCCC study using repurposed therapeutics as adjunctive treatment of cancer, Pierre and I are developing our expertise in this new realm. We will be joined full-time by another physician in August of 2024, who will focusing on cancer and which will significantly expand our capacity to help cancer patients. You can to go to our website at drpierrkory.com and initiate an application to become a patient in our practice.