I dedicate this post to my Grandma J--she was a wonderful woman, and as I have been baking through her recipe cards, I have felt closer to her this year, closer than I've felt in the past 10 years since she left us.
Oddly enough, as I have been thinking more about Grandma, as well as mind-body stuff (how they are interconnected) I have been pondering why it was that she suffered from a heart attack. From the little I have gathered on spiritual causes of illness, the heart is often associated with joy and love--two things I thought my Grandma had. So from that point of view I have been a bit confused about what was going on with Grandma when she had a sudden heart attack, especially since she was pretty healthy and never had heart issues before.
Well, I recently found out that my Grandmother was on a drug for her back pain for many years, called Darvocet. She was probably on it since the 1980's. As of November of 2010 this drug has been recalled by the FDA and has been pulled off the shelves in the U.S.
Besides the many side effects this drug has (like all drugs), the final straw was that the drug could cause "potentially fatal heart rhythm abnormalities" (US Recall News), and the drug interferes with "the heart's electrical activity" (Darvocetrecall.net).
Since this medication was banned in the U.K. in 2005, it is estimated that between 1,000-2,000 people have additionally died from this drug in the United States the past five years.
With this news, I am convinced that my Grandma may have been another death associated with Darvocet. She passed away in 2001 after suffering a sudden heart attack. I remember the phone call to our home like it was yesterday. I was so shocked at the news, but I was under the impression that heart attacks happen to people for no reason, and I just accepted that fact, like many of us do. They said something went wrong with the electrical in her heart. I didn't know what that meant. I think we were all too shocked to think about an autopsy.
Now that I am 10 years older, and a student in a program that focuses on a whole systems approach to health and well-being, I am learning that heart attacks and cancer are not as mysterious as the American Cancer Association and medical doctors make them out to be. There are some causes that are just starting to surface in our collective awareness, and I believe if we pay attention they will only continue to come to light.
Now I warn again, here is my diatribe that I have to write in honor of my grandmother. I would feel sick inside not to do this for her and anybody else who has been or will be affected by the impact of drugs:
Believe it or not, but I think drugs are one of the causes of many of our health problems. I know this is hard for people to swallow with the current medical paradigm we live within, but I personally believe that while drugs do help MAINTAIN and keep certain people alive, one cannot argue with the fact that these drugs do not CURE/ADDRESS the real problem. In most cases they mask the pain that our wise bodies are trying to send us to alert us that something is wrong. While we go pain free with our new drugs, whatever mechanism that is off in our body that is causing the pain is finding other ways to wreak havoc in the body. Instead of taking a pill to hide and surpress this pain, why not pay attention to it and try to figure out what is causing it in the first place? In most cases, the problem will never really go away if we treat it with drugs.
My grandmother was on this drug for a number of years, and as I said, she suffered a sudden heart attack. The doctors said something happened with the electrical activity of her heart and just like that, she was gone from our lives.
Ten years later, I uncover this piece of Grandma's story. And then I wonder, this drug, Darvocet became available to people in 1957. The FDA banned it in 2010. While I commend the FDA for doing so, why does it take thousands of deaths to get us to this level of protection? And how come it took 53 years for it to happen? How many generations were impacted over the years? How many more people were affected? I am thankful people have spoken up, because had it not been for this collective awareness, my family would never have come to this conclusion on our own.
I am upset today because our system is flawed, our checks and balances are imbalanced and the people who pay the price are the consumers, you and me. For more expansion and details on how I came to this conclusion, please read Marcia Angell's The Truth About Drug Companies for an alarming account of the histories and operations of drug companies. See how you feel about drugs after that book.
All I ask of you is to please think twice before you take a pill. Think first, do I really need to be doing this? Because chances are there have not been enough studies to prove that the drug is safe. And let's just face our limitations: it is impossible to know if the drug is safe until humans have taken the drug for enough years to see what may develop. We are the living case studies.
We don't even know how these drugs impact generations to come.
"For instance, fruit flies exposed to a drug called geldanamycin show unusual outgrowths on their eyes that can last through at least 13 generations of offspring even though no change in DNA has occurred (and generations 2 through 13 were not directly exposed to the drug)" (As mentioned in Time). Do we really want to commit to unnecessary drugs that may impact the health our future generations?
Bottom line: Don't do drugs. We learned this from grade school. I remember when the D.A.R.E. program came to visit my elementary school, and funny enough I recently read my little paragraph on how I planned to stay drug-free. I believe it was my pledge.
What worked for me in 5th grade is worth a read:
"I have plenty of ways to say No."
Like:
"I'm saving all my brain cells for science."
"Chocolate and alcohol don't mix."
"If I wanted the high life I'd rather go skydiving."
"Just plain NO!!!!"
While things have changed for me on a superficial level--wine and chocolate definitely work for me now that I am of age, and I am slightly cooler now than I was in 5th grade, I still strongly believe that we should say NO to drugs when it's possible. That is my conclusion.
And, Grandma, I love you. This post is for you. My dedication to the field of health is for you. I think about you all the time, and I'm doing my part to see if there is anything that can be done about what happened to you.
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