Mirror, Mirror on my Car by Robert S. Swiatek - HTML preview

that they swallow, some with each meal, some once a day and others not so frequently. This combination can be lethal, and because of the different doctors per patient, one may not know what the other is doing. Perhaps the pharmacist can come to the rescue, but don’t count on it. And yet, with technology today, why is this such a problem? In many cases, the lowering of the dosage or even being completely free of the drug can result in improved health for the patient. This is not very surprising.

We can’t ignore the possibility that some drug won’t work or may even be harmful and make matters worse. Before proceeding, I think we need to consider some of the myths about drugs. The first is that one little pill will solve all of our health problems. The second thought is that if it’s over the counter, we need not consult a pharmacist or a doctor. The next belief is that what a doctor prescribes is exactly what the patient needs. Finally, it’s an accepted fact that side effects are to be expected. In each of these statements, some truth does come about, such as the knowledge that a drug does offer an alternative to pain. While visiting a hospital unexpectedly in 1998, on awaking in my hospital bed, I experienced the feeling that I had just been run over by a truck, even if it was only a Datsun pickup. I look back a decade later and think that maybe I should have avoided the painkillers, but that’s not your feeling just after surgery. The Darvoset and Demerol helped, but I recall one side effect that I experienced after I came home that wasn’t too pleasant. It was the worse case of constipation I have ever gone through. However, the side of the bottle of the painkiller stated exactly that possibility.

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When it comes to choosing between the pain and the side effect, that’s certainly not an easy decision. I doubt that too many side effects of drugs are desired. To make matters worse, a side effect may not appear for years. On the bright side, a drug could alleviate a particular problem – for which it was prescribed – and simultaneously and miraculously heal some other malady.

The situation is worse when a drug is to be taken off the market and yet somehow remains on the shelves until the last package is sold. Why would any manufacturer want this to happen? Apparently the answer has to do with profits. This is irresponsible behavior on the part of the pharmaceutical companies, indicating their concern for the bottom line, rather than for the consumer. It also indicates missing intelligence since that one pill that should be nowhere in sight may result in a huge lawsuit that could forever close down the corporation. This pain should never have been fostered on the patient, no matter when the drug was used.

The drug alternative may be the only way in certain instances, but not the way society utilizes them – as a way of life. As far as I am concerned, illegal drugs have a place for alleviating pain, but that’s only in a few cases. For any kind of drug, there are too many side effects. One specific drug causes other problems that require even more drugs, with their own set of bad results. What we have is a society of senior citizens hooked on drugs, rather than phonics. My dad died shortly after his eighty-seventh birthday, but the last four years of his life were in pain and suffering. It seemed like his visits to the hospital at that time should have come

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with a free shuttle service and his body weighed less than a hundred pounds when he left us. This was the result of drugs, which prolonged his life, but at a huge cost. Too many drugs render a patient unable to taste food or even to have a normal appetite. That was the main reason why he couldn’t keep up his weight – he wouldn’t eat much, because he didn’t want to.

Other facts that all can agree upon is that drugs are addictive and can change people’s lives. Daphne du Maurier has written a gripping novel on both these issues. In The House On The Strand, our hero Richard experiments with a few drugs that his friend Magnus feels might lead to some great scientific discoveries. It doesn’t take long before Dick travels back in time to fourteenth century Cornwall and he is addicted. He has a difficult time overcoming these desires to continue on his adventure with the past and his life is changed forever. Ms. du Maurier has painted a horrid picture of the downward descent into a world that too many experience and can’t be freed from. Each of us has seen friends or family members succumb to alcohol or drugs, illegal or prescribed. We may have felt saddened because we thought we hadn’t done enough in the matter, but our input probably wouldn’t have made a difference. Our society compounds the difficulty by offering assistance only if the troubled person checks into a facility on his own, something he is not capable of doing.

Most drugs are made known to the public by means of advertising. It doesn’t matter how effective the pill is – all the producer cares about is cash flow. Television sells huge quantities of drugs, such as prescriptions for alleviating some

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kind of problem – in some cases, even before it arises. Drugs are overpriced in order to benefit the pharmaceutical companies. Consumers don’t complain if they wind up paying five dollars for a prescription and the HMO chips in the rest, which could be hundreds of dollars. Perhaps someday the United States will have a single payer system. This possibility will mean so much to so many people, if only corporations would embrace it and the PACs butt out. Each of these leeches would still wind up with plenty of cash in their pockets. It just wouldn’t be as much as they are siphoning off now. This new health program will also be welcome by struggling companies, especially small businesses – the good ones. They’ll be able to survive. Amazingly, it would cost less than the mess we have today.

In the spring just before Jay Leno left prime time television, one of his last guests was the NBC news anchor, Brian Williams. I’ve always had a great deal of respect for Brian, and that evening, he showed another talent as a humorist. Brian went on to comment on a commercial for Flomax, which was hysterical. I won’t go into the details but I wish I had thought of this commentary. The reason why I didn’t is due to the fact that I don’t watch much television, let alone those awful commercials. Nevertheless, in my eyes, Brian’s thoughts pointed out that the marriage of the drug companies with the corporate world of entertainment was a union that looked quite shaky and doomed for failure.

Despite all this bad news, other branches of medicine that are ignored by many health care professionals deal with alternative ideas for good health. Exercise and avoiding fast-food restaurants may seem extreme to some

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people, but they really make good sense. Vitamin supplements and the use of herbs is not an idea to be ignored. After all, drugs are produced from herbs, so if one lambastes the use of the latter, doesn’t that very thought say the same about drugs? People accept drugs but too often come up with some excuse for not accepting the use of herbs. Recently I was emailed a reply to a comment that I sent concerning just such common alternatives. The sender may have been more supportive of drugs than herbs, saying that a particular combination of herbs had been tested for a specific malady and showed no beneficial effects. Information I found indicated that the combination of herbs I was mentioning not only had great potential for healing, but they had some miraculous potential for curing cancer.

Essiac is credited to the Canadian Nurse René Caisse, who lived in the early twentieth century. Her name spelled backwards is essiac, for those of you who aren’t dyslexic. In the 1930s, doctors entrusted to her care a few cancer patients that they had given up on. One – maybe two – of these died, but all the rest survived to a ripe old age because René gave them essiac, which is a combination of four herbs: sheep sorrel, burdock root, slippery elm interrbark and rhubarb root. You can read about this in Calling Of An Angel by Dr. Gary Glum of Los Angeles, which I haven’t read. I did read another book about essiac, given me by my ex-sister-in-law, via my brother. I returned the copy but purchased another. At present, it’s not in my home, so I don’t have the title. If you have something that you really want to get rid of, giving it to the right person – one who loses it or never intends to give it back – will be your way of recycling, and that’s the truth.

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On Thursday, February 3, 2005 I attended a meeting of a support group for prostate cancer. At that time I met a few gentlemen who used essiac and they all touted its benefits. Russ, a man in his seventies, had some time ago been diagnosed as a terminal prostate cancer patient. I think that first adjective has something to do with the airport. He was treated for cancer and afterwards had been taking the combination of the four herbs, and has been free of the malady for years. He had a cane, but looked fine and was convinced of the benefits of Caisse’s formula. He also related the story of a Jehovah’s Witness who was diagnosed with cancer in East Aurora. Since their beliefs don’t allow surgery to save a life, she was told she only had a few months to live. She took the herbs and has been cancer-free ever since. I should add that some of Russ’s friends also commented that he increments his intake of the herbs with a shot of alcohol, so maybe it’s the whiskey that is working. Nonetheless, if the combination works, why not go with it?

When I heard about this alternative to drugs and the stories, I was impressed and I bought some of the product, which you can obtain in health foods store as a tea, already brewed. The gentlemen at the support group told me that it was better to brew your own, which is not that difficult. You buy the pre-measured herbs and can do a gallon at a time with what’s in the packet. I split it into four parts and only make a quart at a time. Each evening before retiring to bed, I drink an ounce of essiac with an equal amount of hot water, so one batch lasts about a month. Besides what I have pointed out, Russ also mentioned that since he began using the herbs, he has not had a cold in years, which I consider

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remarkable. That alone may be reason to drink the brew, but my source of information also lists a few other maladies that essiac can cure, or at least minimize symptoms. Much of what I have written in these previous paragraphs is also available at the link, “cancer cure” on my web site, bobcooks.com.

Drugs are touted for their healing properties, but I mentioned that they are produced from herbs. You may ask why the herb would be effective while the drug made from that same herb has to be recalled as toxic and dangerous to anyone’s health. Perhaps the reason is because of what is added to create that pill. Nicotine may not be good for you, but now add a few ingredients to make it addictive and it’s much more dangerous, even when doctors praise it and smoke themselves. In the case of the herb as well as the drug, testing needs to be done to assure the public that what they are about to ingest is safe. This is not an easy thing to do and it takes time, as I pointed out.

We are also aware of the placebo effect. This indicates that perhaps an herb or a drug works because of the expectations of the person who swallows it. We can’t rule that out, except that when we witness so much success, we must acknowledge the benefits of the drug or herb. The same can apply to vitamins, which we know are effective, even if not all of them. When sailors at sea were deprived of fresh fruits and vegetables for extended periods of time, the result was scurvy. Eating citrus fruit, a source of vitamin C, or specifically, ascorbic acid, cured it. We need a certain amount of vitamin C in our diet, but doubling the dosage may not provide any additional benefit except put more cash

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in pockets of the companies that sell the vitamin. We also know of the necessity of one vitamin to enable absorption by another as well as the fact that a single dosage of one vitamin might completely negate the effectiveness of another one. Numerous studies have shown that vitamin supplements enable us to have better health, although it’s more beneficial to obtain the vitamins directly from fresh fruits and vegetables.

I thought about writing another novel about deception and conspiracy, not unlike my first one. I had two possible subject areas. The first was a vitamin consideration, where it was discovered that all those vitamins that we purchase are nothing more than placebos. They seem to work, but then, isn’t that the way sugar pills affect some of those who use them? The second idea for a novel is about cancer. I mentioned the cancer conspiracy described in the book by Dr. Devra Davis, and my novel would deal with cancer as a creation of the health profession. We know of many illnesses that doctors treat – some successfully and others not so well. It may have to do with the different stages of the malady. It could come to pass that many of these situations fall under an umbrella of disease called cancer. Since there are so many people felled by sickness, in which no diagnosis is rendered, this idea for a novel may not be that farfetched.

Doctors know a great deal – they spend a great deal of time and money studying – but it surprises me when I mention certain non-drug cures, of which they are not aware. When a physician refuses to accept the use of a witch doctor – smile, but is this not so far fetched – I wonder if he isn’t being protective of his profession. I also believe in the power

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of prayer, a positive outlook, hope and laughter as cures for what ails us, even cancer. Aren’t these possibilities – which witch doctors practice – just what alternative medicine uses? You’re not laughing now.

Another aspect of health is what we eat. Some people stay away from meat and meat products – vegetarians and vegans. The real distinctions between the two classifications are slight, except that vegans have more restrictions and they can basically only eat fruits and vegetables. I’m not sure if they are allowed to eat produce that has been fertilized with meat by-product waste. In a way I applaud these people but somehow I’m not one who will make vegetarian dishes that we know as Hungarian goulash and sauerbraten. After all, these dishes need to have meat. When I was growing up, my mother cooked meat six days a week – Friday was fish for us Catholics. Even today, she still abstains from meat on Friday, despite the dispensation. When she cooked for our family, we also ate meat for lunch in the form of sandwiches, including baloney, summer sausage, ham, turkey – but not liver sausage for me – and of course, tuna fish and egg salad, which are the non-meat offerings. I also was forced to eat cold fried egg sandwiches, so apparently my mom believed in variety, even if her son didn’t care for it.

Today, I eat very few things with meat, but I’m not a vegetarian, nor could my cooking be classified as such. However, I prepare a host of recipes without meat – there is a difference. Check my web site for all those recipes. There are some really good ones there. Not that long ago I tried a dish with tofurkey sausage and wish I hadn’t wasted the money. It was truly disappointing and this meat substitute

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had no taste and almost no texture. I will never indulge in a toforkey Thanksgiving dinner. I subscribed to Vegetarian Times for a few months but I object to their substitution of non-meat products to simulate certain types of meat. You can cook some great dishes and you don’t need meat. In my cookbook, I described a fantastic pasta dish I had in Wales in the summer of 1983 that was nothing more than fresh tomatoes, olive oil, garlic and herbs – I surmise. Leaving out the meat is also healthier. I read a Buffalo News article on Sunday April 5, 2009 that advocated avoiding red meats and processed meat, such as cold cuts and sausages, as well as pork for different reasons. There is no need to forever stay away from these meats, but rather to use moderation and substitute fish and eat plenty of fruits and vegetables.

In the fall of 2003, I sold my house in East Aurora and moved into a condominium. I had lived in the house for over eleven years, at which time I grew my own vegetables and some fruit. Everything was organic, but not in the sense of what you hear about in the news and at the supermarket. My garden simply used no fertilizers – except for processed cow manure – and no chemicals. I did place a tablespoon of Epsom salts at the bottom of the hole and covered it with dirt before adding a small tomato plant. I’m not sure if that addition was a chemical, but I heard it increased the yield of the plant. I used mulch that I created myself from the peels and waste of fruits and vegetables as well as grass clippings, which also were chemical-free since my lawn was never treated that way. That in essence is what organic truly means.

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they’re high priced and probably not truly organic. A farm that grows crops the way I did but then applies a fertilizer made from the waste of a huge meat facility in North Carolina can’t be classified as an organic farm. It’s similar to the writing on a box of cereal that advertises low sugar, but fails to add that the sodium content is high, or a product that is low-fat but high in cholesterol, which is not mentioned on the package. Truth in advertising is a huge dilemma, but the concept does sell the product.

Fruits, vegetables and meat all provide nutrients and necessary health for consumers. Liver and spinach are both rich in iron, which we need in our diet, but I’m not fond of either – in fact I avoid liver at all costs. I have started to eat spinach – it’s just a matter of how it’s prepared. Thankfully, we can obtain iron and other necessary vitamins from many sources, so we are not limited.

Along with all the means we have of recovery – drugs, surgery, herbs, vitamin supplements and the rest – we have a few more tools at our disposal. Besides hope, we can also take advantage of a good outlook, prayer and one of my favorites, a good sense of humor. I truly believe that laughter is the best medicine and it’s available even without a referral. You need not have health insurance – something that too many people today in the United States don’t have. By the time you read this, I hope that this fact changes.

In the summer of 2008, I posted on my web site a great example of what laughter can do. I met a woman at a book signing in the fall of 2005 who bought my cookbook. Karima is a retired schoolteacher who works as a storyteller in different capacities, including visiting prisons. Soon after

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that autumn day of a few years ago, she sent me an email expressing her love of the book. In 2008, I asked her to write a review of the book on amazon.com, which she agreed to do. For her effort, I sent her a copy of the second book in the series on laughter, language and lunacy. She didn’t read it right away because her father was sick and she and her sisters were tending to his needs.

Karima’s dad was about to turn 92 in a few months, when he was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of laryngeal/pharyngeal cancer. Until that time, he was very active, playing golf, still driving his car, working around the yard and singing in the choir. All that suddenly changed and he was bedridden, relying on a walker to get around, which was difficult for him. One day, Karima had a chance to open the book and she laughed. Shortly thereafter, she started reading the book to her father. Two things he hadn’t lost were his mind and sense of humor. He joined in to keep up with Karima’s laughter, and before long he left to go to the bathroom – without the walker. You can see Karima’s review at Amazon – it’s also on the page I have for it at bobcooks.com – and her words about the miracle of laughter at her home can be found on the page I have for that book.

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11. That’s funny

On occasion, I’ve heard people say, “That’s funny.” However, they don’t laugh, unless they do it and I just can’t hear them. Maybe it’s an internal thing. This behavior almost seems to be hypocritical, which I will get into soon. And yet, one of the best things you can do is laugh so hard that you cry. You can’t beat a good belly laugh, which may have been produced by that person who replied with the two words that are the chapter title.

In the past, I would occasionally watch Late Night with David Letterman or The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Until it was replaced with Conan, I had been watching The Tonight Show every night. Actually, I taped and watched it the next night or two days later, even if only the first half of the program. One thing I noticed from viewing both shows was that for Leno, people would laugh, whereas there was polite applause for Letterman. They were clapping because the audience liked what they heard – all well and good. I prefer the uproarious laughter approach. Is it possible that by their response, the people in the studio at Late Night were really indicating, “That’s funny,” rather than “That’s uproarious”?

Then, there is the person who utters some bit of humor and follows it with something like, “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.” This falls into the same category as Naomi, the waitress who temporarily became Jerry’s girlfriend and had an unusual way of laughing, almost hyena-like. That was the reason why our hero ended the relationship even before she was partly to blame for burning down the cabin in one of my

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favorite episodes of Seinfeld.
In February 2008, I had a book signing at Talking
Leaves Books in Buffalo. The number of books I sold that
night was in the single digits, although it came very close to
being no digits – I sold a single book. I still had an enjoyable
time, and one individual mentioned that his son stated that
everyone is a hypocrite. If you really think about it, you’ll
tend to agree, despite any attempts not to fit into that
category. Some people feel that hypocrisy has to do with
religion, but it’s not solely limited to that. The definition of
the word hypocrite is simply someone who says one thing
and does the opposite. This covers a broad range of
possibilities.
They say that people don’t change and that seems to
be true. What someone was at sixteen will not be very
different from what he is at sixty-one. The change could be
that a teenager had strong feelings on global warming but
now forty-five years later he is a member of an organization
working to alleviate the problem. If someone was a petty
thief at an early age, she might expand to stealing higher
priced objects later. There has been a change but some things
haven’t been altered. Even people who seemed to have
modified their behavior over the years still remain their basic
selves.
This of course implies that there are quite a few
young hypocrites in the world and we’re stuck with them.
There is always hope that somehow they will change with
time. Along the way there are so many aspects of society that
almost make that impossible. When it comes to politics, we
are all aware of drastic changes in the presidency of the

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United States because four years in the White House usually results in the occupant aging almost double what is expected. There is another kind of change that seems to grip senators, members of the House of Representatives, governors and anyone else in positions of power. A leader may have had high ideals before being elected, but on so many occasions corruption seeps in and one cannot fathom what this person becomes. All the scandals in the nation’s capital, including handcuffs on a lobbyist or jail time for a senator illustrate that power has the ability to corrupt. Shortly after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, we witnessed a few people declining positions in his government for various reasons, especially related to paying taxes. This was soon followed by the revelation that the new appointees just hadn’t bothered to make the appropriate payments required by the IRS. The truth of the matter is that much of this could have been avoided if there were an equitable system of taxation – what we have today is much too complicated, favoring the rich with their high priced lawyer thieves. Simplifying matters would be welcome by all taxpayers.

That’s hypocrisy, and I have illustrated numerous other cases of it, including the woman who went camping with her boyfriend but on her wedding day ended the camping thing as a way to see the country. We all know people who advocate healthy eating habits, but then go off to the one-price buffet and the servers at the restaurant have to put on riot gear. Politicians say one thing to get elected but then once in office, they don’t carry through with what was part of their campaign. It could be that the newly-elected president gave his or her best but the Congress and the

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lobbyists prevented legislation from being passed. On the other hand, one president twenty years ago made a promise which wasn’t kept, and not only did I use what he said in the title of the first book I had published, but he also failed to get re-elected. His son was more blessed in his pursuits, but the American people weren’t so fortunate. This has happened many times before that mess and it will happen again.

People who post “I support the troops” ribbons on the back end of their car while lambasting those who demonstrate against the war are hypocrites. The best possible scenario for the men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan would be to return home. It wouldn’t hurt the people of those two countries either. In my book on war, I commented on a few individuals who supported the war in Iraq, but when asked if they would enlist, came up with various excuses for not having a tour of duty in the Persian Gulf, choosing a round of golf instead.

Another type of hypocrisy was displayed by our youth during August 15th to August 18th of 1969 at Woodstock. In truth, the happening of music, love and drugs took place in the town of Bethel in Sullivan County about forty miles southwest of the town for which the festival is named. This group of people – many of whom could be classified as baby boomers – defied authority with their behavior. Somehow they depended on the establishment, since they needed to eat and drink. They may have brought sleeping bags and material for getting high, but left everything else home. No man is an island.

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– while secretly clearing their own portfolio of it. Many examples of this have landed individuals in the slammer, while others have managed to sneak off into the night unnoticed. When a sale is questionable and the seller comes before a judge, if the magistrate is a friend of the father of thief, don’t expect him to serve any time or pay any fine. It may not even be investigated. In recent years, banks and Wall Street have acted in cahoots, and one of the reasons for the economy tanking has to do with this behavior. The truth of the matter is that greed has become an overriding factor in their quest for riches and power.

When it comes to research at the university, there’s another concern about finding the truth. If a study shows a chemical to be ineffective, and if you’re the scientist making this discovery and turn it over to your boss, who is subsidized by a company that produces this material, you may be asked to moderate the conclusion of the study, ignoring the truth. This won’t help anyone, especially future buyers of the product – it may even kill them. The corporation may feel that it is in their best interest to have the drug produced, but could be wiped out completely by a lawsuit. The question I have is why would any company grant funds to a university for a study that they don’t like? Why not just lie and save all that money? If you’ve read a few of my books, you know that these companies seem to have less intelligence than a head of cabbage.

Being a part of the Cheektowaga Citizens Coalition brought forth challenges for both the people in the town as well as the workers at the quarry, landfills and asphalt producing plant. Many of the employees just didn’t see the

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harm their employer was fostering on the community – ignorance is bliss but don’t use that defense in court – or else didn’t want to lose their job, despite the toxic effects. Materialism plays a huge role time and again, as it does in the case of the citizens of Cheektowaga, who don’t want to make waves because it could cause a decline in property values. These peopl