Create a Firestorm in Your Blood
As noted previously, I was homeless for nearly six years. I left out of Georgia on foot in January, hiked and caught rides until I was in Port Aransas, Texas where I spent like a month to try to avoid freezing to death while homeless my first winter and then continued on across the country to San Diego, California.
In the course of traveling from one side of the continent to the other, I was up above 6000 feet ASL three times and once I was up above 7000 feet ASL.
At least once, we hiked down the mountain and at least once we caught a ride down. I would come down in altitude and feel like I was going to just flat out DIE I was SO SICK.
My son, who knows vastly more science than I ever will, said that most likely the trypanosomas were coming out into my bloodstream at altitude to feed on the red blood cells in a low oxygen environment because they are known iron scavengers and then essentially "catching fire" when I came down in altitude and suddenly had a lot more oxygen in my bloodstream.
So he felt that I was literally creating a firestorm in my blood and burning them to death in large numbers and this is why I was so very sick that I felt concerned I might really die, especially when we came down in altitude rapidly by catching a ride.
This involved camping at altitude, so they had time to sense that it was a low oxygen environment and flood my bloodstream. I wasn't just at altitude for an hour or two. I was at altitude overnight or longer.
And then we got to San Diego and I want to say I had no period for the four weeks we were hiking cross country, walking for six or more hours a day and catching rides, and then had no period for another six weeks after arriving in San Diego. I think I had no period for a total of ten weeks.
When my periods resumed, they were "periods from hell" and for the next five or six months, every single time I had my period, I needed a change of clothes the first day and sometimes the second because no matter how hard I tried to prevent it, at some point I bled all over my clothes.
I also spent some weeks when we first got there sleeping up to eighteen hours a day while running a really strong all-body fever and at some point my son talked at me about that and told me that the kind of powerful fever I had was typical of what happens when the body combats parasites and we talked about this likely being kicked off by our stints in the mountains.
Historically, people blamed Malaria on "the bad air" in swamps and one recommendation was to live up in the mountains to be away from "the bad air" and I assume this kind of anecdotally had a track record of helping. The obvious answer is if you lived away from the swamp, you were less likely to be bitten by an infected mosquito and catch malaria, BUT maybe going up and down in altitude ALSO tended to keep the infection more under control and people recognized that even without knowing the exact mechanism.
So this was a really, really major turning point in combatting my trypanosomas infection and after that it was much easier to make progress. I also spent some time throwing out my clothes every day or two while I lived in downtown San Diego where I was running bad fevers and having bad periods because whatever I was sweating out was so bad that if I kept the clothes after showering, I stayed sick.
Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties. I have to wonder if this is related to undiagnosed trypanosomas being more widespread in the US than is generally recognized.
Trypanosoma die off can cause depression and a sense of hopelessness. If you do not KNOW you have trypanosomas or you do not know that a change in altitude can trigger die off of trypanosomas or you do not know that die off of trypanosomas can trigger deep depression and a sense of hopelessness, I can well imagine it leading to suicide.
In the course of traveling from one side of the continent to the other, I was up above 6000 feet ASL three times and once I was up above 7000 feet ASL.
At least once, we hiked down the mountain and at least once we caught a ride down. I would come down in altitude and feel like I was going to just flat out DIE I was SO SICK.
My son, who knows vastly more science than I ever will, said that most likely the trypanosomas were coming out into my bloodstream at altitude to feed on the red blood cells in a low oxygen environment because they are known iron scavengers and then essentially "catching fire" when I came down in altitude and suddenly had a lot more oxygen in my bloodstream.
So he felt that I was literally creating a firestorm in my blood and burning them to death in large numbers and this is why I was so very sick that I felt concerned I might really die, especially when we came down in altitude rapidly by catching a ride.
This involved camping at altitude, so they had time to sense that it was a low oxygen environment and flood my bloodstream. I wasn't just at altitude for an hour or two. I was at altitude overnight or longer.
And then we got to San Diego and I want to say I had no period for the four weeks we were hiking cross country, walking for six or more hours a day and catching rides, and then had no period for another six weeks after arriving in San Diego. I think I had no period for a total of ten weeks.
When my periods resumed, they were "periods from hell" and for the next five or six months, every single time I had my period, I needed a change of clothes the first day and sometimes the second because no matter how hard I tried to prevent it, at some point I bled all over my clothes.
I also spent some weeks when we first got there sleeping up to eighteen hours a day while running a really strong all-body fever and at some point my son talked at me about that and told me that the kind of powerful fever I had was typical of what happens when the body combats parasites and we talked about this likely being kicked off by our stints in the mountains.
Historically, people blamed Malaria on "the bad air" in swamps and one recommendation was to live up in the mountains to be away from "the bad air" and I assume this kind of anecdotally had a track record of helping. The obvious answer is if you lived away from the swamp, you were less likely to be bitten by an infected mosquito and catch malaria, BUT maybe going up and down in altitude ALSO tended to keep the infection more under control and people recognized that even without knowing the exact mechanism.
So this was a really, really major turning point in combatting my trypanosomas infection and after that it was much easier to make progress. I also spent some time throwing out my clothes every day or two while I lived in downtown San Diego where I was running bad fevers and having bad periods because whatever I was sweating out was so bad that if I kept the clothes after showering, I stayed sick.
Footnote
This post brought to you by:Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties. I have to wonder if this is related to undiagnosed trypanosomas being more widespread in the US than is generally recognized.
Trypanosoma die off can cause depression and a sense of hopelessness. If you do not KNOW you have trypanosomas or you do not know that a change in altitude can trigger die off of trypanosomas or you do not know that die off of trypanosomas can trigger deep depression and a sense of hopelessness, I can well imagine it leading to suicide.
