KIDNEY COMES WITH A BRACING DASH OF DRY WIT AND CANDOR
By Fred Dickey Originally published December 24, 2012
Tomorrow, a family in Chula Vista will enjoy an American Christmas dinner blended with a small taste of Mexican tradition.
In charge of the kitchen and the turkey will be Lilia Lappinga, the matron of the house. Around the table will be her husband, three children and four grandchildren. What will be especially joyous this year will be the absence of a dreaded burden that has shadowed her every other Christmas.
This is not a traditional Christmas story of the “Deck the Halls” variety, but I like it because it’s about friendship, love and sacrifice — what we should want Christmas to be about.
It’s a story of a woman giving the gift of herself — right down to the scalpel and the blood of the operating table — so that her friend, Lilia of the paragraph above, could enjoy her family without the weight of a creeping disease on her mind.
There are two women involved here: Lilia and Laura Backe, her benefactor, friend and co-worker. They are social workers for the San Diego Regional Center for the Developmentally Disabled and have been friends for 22 years.
Lilia, now 62, knew from childhood that a genetic condition called PKD (polycystic kidney disease) might be in her future. Sure enough, that future arrived 23 years ago. Since that time, Lilia’s health became increasingly precarious. This year, her doctor told her to get ready for dialysis.
Faced with the prospect of unending blood-cleansing treatments, her only other solution was a kidney transplant. She first had to find a willing donor in good health, then the donated kidney had to match, and then her body had to accept the foreign kidney. A lot of things could go wrong or fail to happen.
Enter pal Laura. She stepped up, was tested and declared a match, and then it was nonstop to the operating room. That was in September. Today, each woman is walking around with one healthy kidney: Laura’s is her own, and Lilia’s is a gift.
“Laura is a lovely woman, a funny, loyal friend and a sincere social worker. I will be forever thankful to her,” Lilia says.
Now, it’s time to get to know Laura, one of the more compelling people I’ve met in a long time. If you don’t find Laura interesting, you’re either too narrow or I can’t write to do her justice. If candor means life as an open book, then Laura’s is an overhead projector. She not only will tell you how it is, but what it has been and what it should be. She’s as upfront as a headlight.
She’s the type who will disarm with a quip or a laser observation. And if she’s on her game, it’ll be dry as week-old bread. I can’t imagine anyone more fun to have a beer with, but I get ahead of the story because beer is a big part of it.
Laura, now 44, was raised in Chula Vista, the only daughter of four children, with a mother she was close to and a father with whom she was not. “He was a quiet man, very closed in. I never felt he would open to me. I never felt I had his approval.” Her father died when she was 16, which meant the tie could never bind.
Laura was a kid who felt she didn’t fit in, which made her a member of a very large teenage club. Her escape was alcohol, and she became a problem drinker from age 16.
She drank her way through college, which included too many years in and out of classes while she became a “career” worker at McDonald’s. She was adrift on tossing waters.
I asked if she drank in the parking lot at college. “No, I had it in my backpack.” Between classes, a stop in a washroom booth was for a quick one. “I was a functional alcoholic. I was able to drink a case of beer at night and then get up the next morning and go to work.”
It’s been said that some people drink because that’s where the party is, but Laura says, “I drank because it allowed me to join the party. I was introverted and shy, so when I drank I found I could talk and be like everybody else.”
I asked if drinking made her more social. “Well, I was just hanging around with a bunch of other drunks, if you want to call that being social. Toward the end, though, I was mainly just drinking by myself.”
I mentioned having read that alcohol is tougher metabolically on women than men. “I don’t know about that,” Laura replies, “but I could drink most of the guys under the table. I was proud of that.”
In addition, she developed another self-destructive trait, one that is a cousin to eating disorders. “I was a cutter. After I’d get drunk, the alcohol would lift my inhibitions and I’d get so depressed I’d cut myself with razors, scissors, knives, anything handy.” She pushes her sleeve back to show me scars on her arms, some that obviously required stitches.
“Self-mutilation, they call it. It’s a form of relief, of being able to act out the pain you feel inside and to punish yourself for it. When I stopped drinking, I realized I didn’t have the courage to keep cutting myself, though I wanted to. It’s a hard thing to stop. But when you’re sober, you realize how stupid it is. I became embarrassed that I had these scars.”
Sixteen years ago, positive things happened in Laura’s life: mainly a loving mother, Alcoholics Anonymous, stays in detox, a sobering DUI and probably many other things she can’t identify. Whatever it was, Laura got on the water wagon and hasn’t left it since. “I had hit bottom. [Alcohol] just wasn’t working for me anymore.” After 12 years in love with a bottle, she smashed it in the trash.
Today, she lives in her own home in National City and has taken charge of six rescue dogs. She is an active volunteer with several animal-rights groups.
“Dogs give unconditional love. When I was depressed, dogs were a reason for me to keep going because I had something to take care of. People get on me because they suspect I love animals more than people, but …”
Do you?
She laughs. “I think I do.”
You couldn’t convince the disadvantaged adults of that, the ones she watches over.
“I work with people who are ‘different’ and I found I have more in common with those people than my peers.”
I can see Laura dealing effectively with disadvantaged people and having them think, “She’s good, but she doesn’t think she’s better.”
I comment: “Many people think of social workers as … the derisive term is ‘bleeding hearts.’ You don’t seem like that.”
She purses her lips for a moment. “Well, I am, but I don’t gush.”
Once in a while — not often enough — you meet a person who throws open her psyche and says: “This is me. This is who I am.” The reason such people are rare is that it requires an honesty that most of us don’t dare embrace.
During her zigzag through life, things happened to Laura that gave her a steel backbone and a soft heart, though she doesn’t gush about it. She can leave the gushing to Lilia Lappinga, who doesn’t spare the praise for the friend who gave up part of her body so Lilia could be whole on this Christmas.
If you called Laura an angel of mercy, she’d scoff and say you were crazy. But I’m not so sure you would be.
Fred Dickey of Cardiff is a novelist and award-winning magazine writer who believes every life is an adventure. He welcomes column ideas and other suggestions; contact him at [email protected].
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Here is an example of how people defend dental amalgam from www.livestrong.com:
“MERCURY
Mercury is also toxic to the nervous system. The leading source of mercury exposure is consumption of seafood. Developing fetuses are particularly sensitive to mercury exposure and the exposure may have severe consequences, such as cerebral palsy. Shark, swordfish and mackerel have high mercury levels, while shrimp, light tuna, salmon, pollock and catfish are low in mercury and serve as good sources of essential omega-3 fatty acids.
OTHER SOURCES
Other sources of mercury include some exterior paints, thermometers and other medical equipment, and some industries. Dental amalgams may contain mercury, but studies show that no toxicity results from them. Thimerosal, a preservative once used in some vaccines, has been blamed for numerous toxic effects; however, studies have shown no link between thimerosal and health problems, including autism.”
Dr. Kennedy exposes this fraud. It is very common for official many different “authorities” and organizations to defend (lie about) mercury in dental amalgam. Much like fluoride mercury amalgam fillings has been lied about for decades. The ADA CDC and FDA are culpable.
This video is anicdotal evidence, but darn good evidence it is. Dr. Kennedy speaks on the link between mercury fillings and fertility.
]]>“I sent these comments to the newspaper page just now and it accepted them all.
Richard”
Analysis:
“Farran is incorrect in most statements. Fluorosilicic acid is a distinct chemical species that can be observed spectroscopically in solution, but it cannot be isolated free of aqueous solvent because this causes the complex to re-dissociate back to HF and SiF4. The original correlation by Trendley Dean that fluoride might affect teeth caries has been disproven in vast studies (Teotia; Hileman; see Thiessen reports to EPA and HHS, 2012, among others), even when the Dean data are included, which was found to be scatter among the complete population of cities in detailed analyses by Ziegelbecker (see Connett, 2011 textbook for brief description of that work). Calcium builds strong teeth, not fluoride, which is not a mineral nutrient of any kind (NRC, 2006; FDA), and the water in Hereford, Texas where the false correlation was introduced contained over 300 ppm calcium and magnesium.
Calcium minimizes fluoride assimilation from ingestion and any fluoride found naturally in some fresh waters is always accompanied with much caicium from which it ionizes. Maximum solubility for calicum fluoride is only 8ppm fluoride and if calcium fluoride had been used as a fluoridating agent then we would not have had the Hooper Bay, AK fluoridated water poisoning disaster with 302 life-flighted victims of an overfeed and one fatality (Gessner, New Eng. J. Med. 330, 1994). Calcium fluoride is not a listed toxic on poisons registries, but all industrial fluorides lack calcium and are listed toxic calcium chelators with a low LD50 of 125 mg/kg single oral dose in test mammals. For Farran’s information the lethal level of fluoride in the bloodstream which causes blockage of heart contraction due to reduction in calcium activity is a mere 5 ppm. Blood levels of consumers in 1 ppm fluoridated cities averages 0.2 ppm but varies widely because waters in the U.S. vary widely in calcium content (7 ppm in the Pacific Northwest, 50 ppm U.S. average, 500 ppm in areas in Texas).
It is calcium which determines the toxicity of ingested fluoride. For example, the Columbia River salmon collapse in the 1970s was caused by only 0.3 ppm industrial fluoride from a smelter, where fluoride narcotizes salmon brain and prevents navigation. Fluoride in sea water does not bother salmon in the slightest because of the massive levels of calcium in the water preventing assimilation. The salmon returned after the discharges were halted. South Sacramento began fluoridating in 2007 and in 2008 there was a salmon collapse, the first since the 19th century. The rest of the city became fluoridated later and salmon runs still do not exist anymore here. This seems to not matter to dentists who are intent on protecting teeth at any cost, who traditionally have overlooked facts that bone is weakened when fluoride accumulates to 3,000 mg/kg (NRC, 2006) during lifetime consumpton of 1 ppm fluoride water average in humans, and brain degeneration is slow and progressive in animal studies at similar low levels (Varner, Brain Research, 1986, Reddy, 2011, etc.) and tooth fluorosis is abnormal enamel hypoplasia due to systemic fluoride blockage of protein removal during enamelization that is now endemic in the U.S. with 41% of teens having this ugly condition as of 2004 (CDC).
The FDA ruled from 1963-1993 correctly that fluoride is not a mineral nutrient, does not strengthen bone (as promoters had hoped it would) and addition into water is an ucontrolled use of an unapproved drug. Hopefully the industrial fluoride-in-water ban petition or the petition to ensure that any proposal to take fluoride internally require a prescription, as required for Luride, will be honored by the FDA soon.
If the IQ deficits that occurred in the higher fluoride water Chinese village were due to waste emissions from another region, as suggested by Farran, then why did only the fluoride village become the one most affected?
Drinking water does not affect teeth caries by bathing teeth with fluoride. Toothpaste contains 75,000 times more concentrated fluoride (1,500 ppm) than the fluoride in saliva (0.02 ppm) from drinking 1 ppm treated water, that continuously bathes teeth topically. CDC dental officials were asked how it is justified to spend 300 million dollars annually in the U.S. to achieve only 0.02 ppm, 75,000 times less concentrated than in toothpaste, a level perceived to affect caries topically. The CDC responded that they would send the question to someone else to try to find an answer.
Farran never answered the public question on why we fluoridate water when pineal gland calcification is so high in the U.S. and fluoride causes calcification of the pineal gland. He implies that fluoride that accumulates in bone and brain is low enough to never affect anyone’s health, but the NRC reported that fluoride accumulates lifetime permanently into bone to 3-4,000 mg/kg and there is no doubt that pineal gland fluoride is very high at the same time bone fluoride is.
Sincerely, Dr. Sauerheber”
The Full Debate:
San Diegans for Safe Drinking Water steering committee members Dr. David Kennedy and Bill Zimmermann attended the Farran vs. Connett fluoridation debate held at the Bullpit auditorium at Pheonix College on August 5th 2012. The debate was orchestrated by Jodi Clute Phoenix campaign coordinator for the Fluoride Action Network and was attended by many physicians and notable businessmen like anti-fluoride activist physician Dr. Deborah Dykema of the Pheonix based Wellness Center and attendees like local business man Paul Reichert from AMS Health Clinic LLC. We want to thank them and especially event coordinator Jodi Clute of the Fluoride Action Network for bringing Dr. Connet and Dr. Farran together for this ground breaking debate on the eve of a city council vote taking place September eleventh. SDSDW wishes to thank the Fluoride Action Network staff and volunteers for your successful contribution the the national anti-fluoride effort.
The Event: The great turn-out of over 700 was a direct result of months of effort. Clute’s inspiration to San Diego For Safe Drinking Water’s members demonstrates how one person can influence policy and make a real difference. Ms. Clute and Dykema together made the final push to establish credibility of anti-fluoride sensibility in this beautifully orchestrated and extremely well promoted event. A clear win for FAN.
The Debate: There have been many debates concerning fluoridation but rarely will any A.D.A. dentist with a successful Phoenix practice and international lecture circuit business (financed by who?). Dr. Farran put his reputation on the line as did Dr. Paul Connett from the Fluoride Action Network last night. Dr. Farran’s defense of fluoridation education boasts “twenty years of research” and experience in the study and science of fluoride and fluoridation. Dr. Farran was clearly family orriented and was filled with rye humor which this writer believed to be below the dignity of the debate. Farran did however display a convincing appearance of concern for the health of the poor (people who can not afford dentistry) and that of children. Sincere and forthcoming he attempted to answer simple debate questions but when pressed for details and scientific fact his twenty years of study yielded answers which disappointed the crowd as each time he defaulted to government rhetoric, a “credibility” tactic often used by well trained pro-fluoride groups. In other words his lack of knowledge of the chemical makeup of hydrofluorosilicic acid was disappointing if not embarrassing. SDSDW set forth the question, the doctor rambled on, mentioned some substances that sounded like they were subsets of fluorine but he never mentioned the arsenic, lead or other toxic waste that comprises the larger percentage of the compound delivered to 75% of Americans. HE DID NOT KNOW WHAT WAS IN IT. Dr. Connett was swift magnify this fact by listing the chemical makeup of the compound in detail and went on to challenge Dr. Farran on all points, some more effectively than others. All in all we believe Dr. Connett won the debate. Dr. Farran sang the praises of the CDC Oral Health Division while Dr. Connett slammed them for maintaining decades of underdeveloped science and deliberately leaving large gaps in the “embarrassingly vague science” of fluoridation. In the end we counted seven audience applauses for Dr. Farran and sixteen for Dr. Connett. You can count them yourself when the video is released.
After the debate we joined Dr. Connett and other FAN members for a victory dinner with the FAN members and some amazing citizens of Phoenix who were also in attendance. Dr. Kennedy personally made a video of the debate that will be available exclusively on SDSDW.org within a couple days. Stay tuned.
We wish to thank Dr. Dykema for a lovely evening post-debate.
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www.FluorideAlert.org
www.FluorideFreeAustin.com
www.FluorideAction.net
www.IAOMT.org
www.ToxicFluoride.com ]]>