Lauren Axelrod is the daughter of Susan and David Axelrod. David works for Barack Obama. -- or it’s probably vice versa, as often the main media consultant wags the politician’s tail.
Back Story: (written relatively recently)
It’s been over 3 months since I first read the Parade Magazine’s article that motivated me to give a Chinese Medicine take on Lauren Axelrod’s Epilepsy. I have been reading a lot about Epilepsy and everything is the mainstream media discussing epilepsy from a Western Medicine perspective. I knew I could add an incredibly valuable perspective to epilepsy by viewing it from a Chinese Medicine vantage point.
After reading the Parade piece, I easily put myself into Susan Axelrod’s shoes. Well maybe not that easily, because unless you’re taking care of someone you love for 19 years and she is having up to 25 seizures in a day, then it’s impossible to really walk in their shoes. Nonetheless it was heartbreaking for me to read about the little girl with epilepsy and her caretaker mother.
I was surprised that the Parade piece provided me with a bunch of useful information to make a good stab at it. I knew epilepsy wasn’t my strong suit in Chinese Medicine but I felt with some research, I could explain a possible alternative to Lauren’s epilepsy.
I’m pretty focused on working on Chinese Medicine everyday. I love doing it, so why stop doing it unless there’s an insurmountable obstacle in front of me. Epilepsy wasn’t insurmountable but it started to become very heavy lifting.
If I just explained Lauren’s epilepsy, it would imply that all epilepsy cases are the same. They are not. And even if I clearly stated it in Lauren’s piece, I knew the message wouldn’t get across to my audience, who is trained to think in Western Medicine terms.
Western Medicine is always looking for the magic bullet, the one treatment, to be the gold standard to treat whatever disease. It’s a blindspot that prevents Western Medicine from taking great leaps forward in their treatment of diseases.
The magic bullet is a faulty premise that’s always assumed when finding a cure for a disease. It never seems to be the plural of cure(S), which people are seeking. It’s always a cure. It suits Big Pharma’s needs. Find one cure to lump all people with a disease into and watch the sales of The Drug (read Cure) skyrocket, and thus, improving the bottom line immensely .
Greed can be blinding, not only on Wall Street but on Big Pharma Street and Big Medical Device Maker Street. It’s a big blindspot. Even Barack Obama said he wanted to find a Cure for Cancer in his lifetime. And if I was in my grave, I’d roll over again restlessly. Hey Barack - maybe Cure should be plural.
It’s like insisting the world is flat, and wondering why new leaps in medical treatments are rare. Sure there’s a new drug doing new stuff each day. But wait about five years when the real data about real people actually using this “wonder” drug starts to roll in. In a lot of instances, it turns out to be only Oz behind the curtain. The drug emperor to treat this disease is deemed to be wearing shabby clothing. The once-magic bullet is proven to be unacceptably filled with toxic side effects that were buried, ignored or intentionally not looked for during the clinical trails, before being FDA approved.
At least the drug companies and medical device markers got great profits for a few years before the truth of their “wonder” drug were ultimately revealed. If these drug company executives ever get fired, they’ll have a bright future on Wall Street. They have what it takes to excel: short-term profits at the expense of intentionally misinforming the consumer of their product.
Meanwhile, the drug hits keep on coming and it’s back to square one with finding the magic bullet.
Hey don’t just take my word for it. How about what a Harvard doctor, who was the former New England Journal of Medicine Editor, thinks about the drug companies.
This simple assumption, at the core of Western Medicine, prevents them from looking at each case of a disease separately -- like epilepsy. It’s how Chinese Medicine is done and it still makes sense. Each patient is different with different related symptoms and signs to consider before coming up with a diagnosis and then a related treatment for that patient at that point in time.
Today I finished about a month of research on Lauren’s case. I just finished rereading the Back Story I wrote three months ago laughing a little bit but mostly breaking my heart again. Because these are real people suffering that Chinese Medicine could help.
Over the last few months a bunch of epilepsy cases came out of the woodwork. I read the articles or watched the videos on these cases realizing that they would be a great way to show how epilepsy manifests in different ways in different people. It would strengthen my weakest link in the Lauren piece, by showing different perspectives on epilepsy. I would provide the reader with a more complete picture of epilepsy from a Chinese Medicine perspective. Not a complete Chinese Medicine view of epilepsy but a better one, as there are many more perspectives on epilepsy than my cases present.
During my epilepsy research, a masterpiece of Chinese Medicine literature was released for publication. It’s a revised edition of a book that took the authors six years to revise. I personally studied with the two lead authors of this book and they’re a great model of Chinese Medicine mastery.
Anyway, I was waiting for this book to come out for a few years, and when it did I was tempted to go hide in a shack and just read it for the next two years and do nothing else with Chinese Medicine. But it didn’t feel right or practical given my financial state.
Also, my heart was breaking over people like Lauren and Susan Axelrod, who can’t wait until I cross all my T’s and dot my I’s, before voicing my viewpoint on epilepsy. During the last few months, I struggled between just reading this masterpiece book and on other days researching an epilepsy case using this book ineptly as a reference.
To ignore this book for my research would have foolish, as it is a masterpiece. My acupuncture friend Ed taught me you learn by doing, so I just kept on doing epilepsy research in a disorganized fashion hoping a clear way to merge my two needs would emerge.
Then it slowly dawned me how to achieve both objectives at once. I would select an herbal formula or two from this book that was my best guess at what I would give Lauren Axelrod for her initial epilepsy attacks. I could do this for whomever for whatever ailed them. It was a simple and clear. Of course, I wondered why it took so long for the solution to dawn on me. I guess you learn by doing and doing can take time.
For the last month, I selected a herbal formula or two for each of the about 5 epilepsy cases. I have researched the different formulas and different cases using this masterpiece book along with a few other books. I analyzed how each of the epilepsy cases were similar -- like having a seizure. And how they were different -- like what other symptoms besides the seizure make each of them different from a Chinese Medicine perspective.
I was on a roll. I used the same approach for Julia Roberts slightly going off the deep end. I did the same for Alec Baldwin’s Anger Management issues. I learned a great deal and in the back of my mind I was always circling back to Susan and Lauren Axelrod dealing with epilepsy for years.
That was the most heartbreaking story to me. And the one with the most potential to achieve my ultimate objective of putting Chinese Medicine on the map. It’s the Kevin Bacon degrees of separation idea. It’s the Military-Industrial Complex idea. We are that close to the axis of power. Those levers of power that make me, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney salivate at the mere sight of. I love the smell of power in the morning.
However nowadays, it’s the Obama-Axelrod-Duncan Bermuda Triangle of whirling global warming hurricane power.
OK, I got carried away. Not really. It’s a win-win. We can further Axelrod’s cause of finding cureS to epilepsy. And they can further my cause of putting Chinese Medicine’s greatness firmly where it rightly belongs -- center stage in America’s health care and education platforms.
Then it’s world domination. Sorry, my inner alpha male/George W. Bush got the best of me.
Back Story: (written over 3 months ago...but still applicable)
Some people call me a hothead. I think it’s a bum rap, most of the time. Other times I have to admit it is true. I want Chinese Medicine on the map, as much as Al Gore wants global warming to be addressed on planet earth. Or Susan Axelrod wants a Cure for Epilepsy without any side effects.
So two days ago, I read the Parade Magazine piece on the Susan Axelrod’s daughter, Lauren, who has epilepsy. It was heartbreaking. For a Parade piece, it surprised me by having a lot of useful information to make a good CMG Take on their daughter’s epilepsy. I wanted more information to make an even better CMG Take, so I reread the article for more details.
I then wondered what it was like for Susan Axelrod to take care of her daughter for all those years. She reminded me of a long-term caretaker for an Alzheimer patient. Susan looks fit for her age but at age 55 her hair is completely gray. My initial take was that something was draining her resources for years resulting in the gray hair. The thing draining her was her daughter, even if she did it like Mother Teresa. (Mother Teresa always looked her age or more precisely --much older. For example, here’s, I think, Mother Teresa on her first day on the job.)
I wanted more information and in the Parade piece it said that Susan would be on the NBC Today Show to discuss the topic some more. I have mixed emotions about the NBC Today Show. On the one hand I love NBC Nightly News. On the other hand, Matt Lauer interviewing Mickey Rourke made me sick, as Matt attempted to rake Mickey over his past misdeeds coals. But I was desperate for more information, so I waited until this Today piece was streamed over the Internet to then decide.
Well, this morning I watched this piece and my head started to explode. I needed some Anger Management classes or maybe I need to vent. Al Roker interviews Susan Axelrod. The last time I remember seeing Al Roker anywhere was hosting the Macy’s Day Parade where his lack of depth seemed well suited for the task at hand. I watched the Today piece, and as I biked over to this coffee house, I daydreamed about how to best express my feelings about Al’s interview. Here’s what I came up with.
Al’s about as deep as a puddle in the Sahara desert. I then thought maybe this was a bad analogy because doesn’t it rain heavily a few days of the year in the desert so maybe the puddles have some depth there, albeit short lived. Then I thought that deserts have a lot of sand so they wouldn’t collect the water even after a heavy rain. The sand would allow all the rainwater to quickly seep deep down resulting in no puddles.
Thank God, I didn’t get run over on my bike as I thought through these daydreaming options. If I get hit, I’ll need someone to take care of me. I then thought of a few more analogies no more convincing than the desert puddle analogy.
I let it go. I wondered what questions Al should have asked Susan even if he wasn’t searching for relevant Chinese Medicine information. Al how about -- it’s been reported that your daughter had up to 25 seizures in a day. Day after day for about 17 years. It must of been hell to helplessly watch with no solution on the horizon. How did you feel? Or how about -- Susan, taking care of your daughter must have been an incredibly draining experience, you look fit now. How did you manage to take care of yourself during all those years especially when you always had to keep at least one eye on your daughter to make sure she didn’t seriously hurt herself?
But these questions would never run through a person named Al Roker’s head because he was made to host the Macy’s Day parade everyday of the week. Assuming Macy’s is still in business, with the economy cratering.
