I never would have asked him if he wasn't on the street: "what happened to you?"
He told me his story tonight and a bit about his family. I gave him some money and returned home.
It was one of the better conversations I have had recently. What a life he has led!
He has lost some appendages and doesn't play the guitar anymore.
I wasn't sure what to believe but he said he had burger's something...well that is what I thought I heard. But he was actually saying BuErger's disease, which cuts off the blood flow to parts of the body which hurts like hell and can lead to gangrene and eventually amputation (23 times in his case).
Here is some information about Buerger's Disease and a website of a guy who got it really early. I hope that I am not exploiting a man that I met on the street. I hope that he can at least appreciate that he had an impact on another human being.
Wikipedia: Buerger's disease
Brandon Carmichael has Buerger's disease
And a lesson...
You know how in the movies they slam beer bottles and guitars onto people, well my buddy one time snuck up on his friend and slammed a guitar (acoustic) onto her head. It broke and twanged like nobody's business. She recovered and joked, "you always wanted to do that."
I hope that everyone can find someone who will understand the importance of slamming guitars onto other people, just to hear the sound. Not that I would ever do it...
Monday, July 16, 2007
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2 comments:
that is very interesting Tim, I am glad you were touched ... so how is rickshawing?
Well Tim....I have lived with Buerger's Disease for over 14 years now. I quit smoking for the first 3 years but after I started working again...I started up again. Human nature will see what he can get away with and what he can't. But I have a very interesting theory as to Buerger's Disease..and here it is.
Why is it that in the Middle East and Asia Burger's Disease is in epidemic preportions. About 1 in ten cigarette smokers get it there. In the USA it's more like 1 in 10,000. Why is that??? Well...I will tell you why. Plain and simple. It is the chemicals the manufacturers add to it to make it more addictive, etc. You see..here in the USA we have the FDA which regulates the amount of chemicals added. In Asia and such...there is no FDA calling the shots telling them what they can or can't add to them. So they just load them up as much as they can for the sake of selling cigs. One time I tried a Viet-Namese smoke called "Queen". After two puffs on that thing, I could barely walk.
Also look at it this way...American Indians have been using tobacco for centuries..perhaps even 1000's of years. None of them ever got "Buerger's Disease" or even Cancer. So...when the white man industrial machine got ahold of this product and mass produced it, then all sorts of bad things began to happen to smokers who were hypersensative to their chemicals they added. Dr. Buerger discovered this disease which he named after himself in 1903. That is about when RJ Reynolds started mass producing this stuff...think about it. And speaking from experience..When I was diagnosed in 1998, Marlboro reds were my brand. I still can't handle them. I switched to Camel filter and got away with it for 8 years until they changed to slow burning papers in December of 2010. That chemical made it impossible for me to smoke ever again.
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