Question for Wuapinmon on CJD

[Katy Lied]

You've mentioned several times your father died of CJD, so I hope you don't mind if I ask several questions about it. My curiousity is getting the best of me here. I apologize in advance if I am offending.

1. When your father first started exhibiting symptoms, did the family at first think it was Alzheimers?

2. Along the path to diagnosis, did his doctors ever think it was mad cow disease?

3. I read that the disease progresses to death in about 4 months to 1 year. Is this what happened here?

4. Do you have any idea how your father might have contracted CJD? Short of serving a mission in Papua New Guinea, or going donner on someone, or taking Human Growth Hormone, what are your speculations?

Again, if my questions are insensitive or ignorant (in the non-Utah definition), I apologize.

[Babs]

Hold up. Did you just suggest that wuap's late father may have been a cannibal?

[Katy Lied]

Hold up. Did you just suggest that wuap's late father may have been a cannibal?

I was T R Y I N G to slide it in C A S U A L L Y.

No offense meant; just an offhand reference to a major causality of CJD.

[Babs]

I was T R Y I N G to slide it in C A S U A L L Y.

No offense meant; just an offhand reference to a major causality of CJD.

I don't let anything slide.

And I'm sure he's not offended in the slightest. If there's anything we know about wuap, he's not one to take offense. And surely not when it comes to something as silly as a little accusation of familial cannibalism.

[Donuthole]

And I'm sure he's not offended in the slightest. If there's anything we know about wuap, he's not one to take offense.

That made me snort.

[wuapinmon]

As far as I know, my dad didn't ever commit anthropophagy. I'll be happy to answer any and all questions about Johnny Mac later this weekend. I have to drive a bus full of students to Savannah tomorrow morning, and I need my beauty sleep.

His was the sporadic kind, the brain just started folding proteins the wrong way. We had him tested. It wasn't variant or hereditary (THANK GOD). He started showing symptoms, truly, about four months before, though he had been a dickhead for the last year of his life, on and off. He was manic depressive, and we originally thought he was having a prolonged manic episode, like ALL of August 2007. In June he drove our moving truck from NOLA to South Carolina. In July he was making up lies about everything he did. In August he began the fatal insomnia phase, with us still thinking that he was manic, or faking. In late August he quit speaking in normal sentences. By mid-September he was in the hospital, by late September he was in a persistent vegetative state....by mid October, kidney dialysis and a ventilator. Around the middle of October _I_ told the doctors it might be CJD, but they wouldn't do a spinal tap, because he was on dialysis, to confirm.

10-29-07 he had a subdural hematoma on his brain and he quit "tolerating dialysis." 10-30-07 we slowly weaned him off life support. About 2 hours after he was breathing on his own, bradychardia and repeated apneas overwhelmed his heart and he slipped away.

The worst fucking thing about the disease was his eyes were open and he startled at any sound...like any sound would give him a full on startle, throw-out-his-arms reflex.

He got repeated blessings that he would be healed. When I got to the hospital on 10-29, I gave him one and we released him from all previous blessings and this life. Hardest thing I've ever done. After he died, about an hour later, I went back in to say goodbye one last time. I reached out to touch his hand, and I recoiled at the chill of death.

[wuapinmon]

I don't let anything slide.

And I'm sure he's not offended in the slightest. If there's anything we know about wuap, he's not one to take offense. And surely not when it comes to something as silly as a little accusation of familial cannibalism.

I can't decide whether to be offended or to thank you for your pyrrhic compliment.

[Katy Lied]

I'll be happy to answer any and all questions about Johnny Mac later this weekend.

Merci.

Seems like every time I watch House, somebody proposes that the mystery diagnosis of the week is CJD. For a bug that strikes once in a million, they sling the term around rather loosely.

Did the prion thingey just start prior to his initial erratic behavior? Or do you think in his case it incubated for 50 years?

[TripletDaddy]

I can't decide whether to be offended or to thank you for your pyrrhic compliment.

I am impressed that you are not letting her comment eat away at you.

[wuapinmon]

I am impressed that you are not letting her comment eat away at you.

Another such "compliment" and I am finished.

[ERCougar]

I am impressed that you are not letting her comment eat away at you.

WTF? Sometimes the joke's just not worth it.

[Babs]

Another such "compliment" and I am finished.

Yep. You seem calm and triumphant enough now, but it's only a matter of time before you hit the roof.

[wuapinmon]

Yep. You seem calm and triumphant enough now, but it's only a matter of time before you hit the roof.

That's called goading. I won't bite.

[wuapinmon]

Did the prion thingey just start prior to his initial erratic behavior? Or do you think in his case it incubated for 50 years?

Man, who knows. Prions are unknown quantities still. They have a solid idea of what goes wrong, but not what causes it. It can be hereditary, Familial Fatal Insomnia. It can be variant, which comes from eating animal prions (Mad Cow Disease). And then we have sporadic, which is what the medical professionals use as the necessary catchall for "we have no frickin' idea what causes it."

I'm grateful that there are people willing to risk their own lives to research diseases like this one. Because, man, when you see someone dying from it, and you can see your own face in theirs, it's spooky. If I knew I had this, and that I was a goner. When I felt like the end was near, I'd OD on narcotics and slip away peacefully, because this stuff is nasty, infectious, and will wreck your loved ones as they watch you slowly become a twitching vegetable. My dad was this massive powerful man, and he was reduced to nothing in a matter of weeks.

[Babs]

That's called goading. I won't bite.

No; it's a reference to the rather ignoble end met by the once-valiant Pyrrhus.