Help Activist See 1st Grandchild!
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"WELCOME TO NUKED RADIO..."
That was me, in better days. All that changed a year ago, when an insidious event took me to another place entirely. An event, to this day, which still hasn't been fully explained.
"At 3:00 am on December 2nd of 2015, I woke up to the most surreal experience of my life. I woke up, and thought I was dead. I wasn't breathing, and I couldn't remember how to, or if I needed to. Then I started sneezing and vomiting, simultaneously..." This is how every single visit to a new doctor starts. A scene which has repeated itself probably 50 or 60 times in the past year, if you count specialists, EMS workers, and ER physicians.
I didn't even tell my family about this event, I was so freaked out by it, until about 2 weeks later, when I realized there was way more than just 'the flu' going on. I knew something was really wrong, when I developed a rotational nystagmus... my left eye began moving in circles I couldn't control. I started to see black bubbles on the ceiling, yellow paint across the floor, and when planes flew over the house, my hearing was so amplified I thought they were going to crash into it. My vision would change from diplopia to hyperstereo... seeing things first in double, and then in excessive 3D. My eyes would get hot, I felt if I was in a heat ray or thermal lift, and then boom - I would pass out. The first few months of this, after 3 hospital visits and a range of diagnoses; encephalopathy, malignant hypertension, lax ligaments, and an atrial fibrillation event... we were still no closer to figuring out what was going on, or how to stop it from getting worse. My symptoms kept changing over time. A retina specialist confirmed I was missing 'parts' of my vision, which change from day to day. I had trouble remembering these episodes, and have had to write everything down. Transcribing my symptoms became 40 pages long, typed, by May. At that point I stopped, since no one was ever going to read it, and I was too tired to continue. Problems with reading, writing, and cognition overwhelmed me. I had dreams of being electrocuted, and some of my pains have actually felt like electric shocks. Even after giving birth to 4 children, I never knew what a "10" was on the pain scale, until this happened.
In June, my family managed to pull together enough resources to get top-grade insurance, at a price costing more than most mortgages I know. This allowed me to see specialists across almost every realm of my affliction, from eyes to heart to head, because we knew it was super-serious. Sometimes these visits were helpful, sometimes they were not. It would seem we would be handed one small peice of the puzzle, which then another specialist would disagree with. I bounced around, from specialist to specialist, for months. Hallucinating. Passing out. Going from being normal to looking sh*tfaced drunk, on the floor, in literally the blink of an eye. And no one could tell me why.
Also, it became somewhat predictable, that during a consultation with a brand new doctor, that 3 or 4 minutes into 'my story' you can see them growing visibly uncomfortable with the history I am giving them. They figet, scribble notes, or type into their laptops, and you can almost see them picturing themselves in this position. They didn't like hearing about the shots I got in my neck, 2 days before this all happened. They also don't like being confronted with something that they can't explain, and what they know is going to be super-tough to figure out. My symptoms present as TIA's, seizures, torticollis, narcolepsy, autonomic neuropathy, and brain stem disorder - an unlikely smorgasborg of neurological wackiness. The narcolepsy has been proved, and the TIA's, but the electrical component is where everyone seems to get hung up. They know it isn't a weird psychological glitch or Somatoform, because the first thing Mayo did was rule that out. And the fact that these things occur intermittantly, has made testing for it more difficult. Permanent damage has occurred in the 'circuit board' in my brain, that controls all the things I do not. Like breathing. Blood pressure. And temperature.
Others doctors have done some serious investigation. Followed up with me. Become more interested in time because they probably want to publish about it, provided they ever find out what 'it' is. Or, because they actually care, and are genuinely intrigued. That seems to be very hard to find these days. Medicine is a numbers game, like anything else. All practices keep track and encourage competition, as to how many patients a doc can see in an hour, and how much revenue that doc brings in. It's standard, and unknown by most patients, unless you have worked in the field of medicine. As you can see from this dissertation so far, I am not an in-and-out type patient. I walk into every visit with a bag full of films and records. I am every doctors nightmare, if they are under the clock.
But in all fairness, I've seen some really outstanding ones also, of late. Doctors who have sat eye-to-eye with me, and said "How can I say this nicely... we don't know everything in medicine. We like to think that we do, but we don't. I'm sure you have been told already, you will probably never find out why this happened to you." She, an infectious disease specialist, was right; another doc, a cardiologist, had told me almost the exact same thing a week before. He also said: "You are a Mayo or Cleveland case" after witnessing one of my attacks in his office. Not something, as a former medical professional, you ever want to be. Because you know that's where you send people because no one can figure out what's wrong with them, or their case involves extreme complexity. As a patient, and sometimes it happens the way it happened to me: You wake up one day, and everything is different. Way way different, and way way worse. Worse than you could have ever imagined. As I processed this information, the cardiologist actually hugged me, because he said he knew I needed it. Then, he hugged the rest of my family.
My timeframe of life-events are now all classified in my brain of before/after the event. BB = Before Brain. AB = Afterbrain.
But 5 years ago something else had happened, something that was also worse than anyone could of imagined: The Fukushima Nuclear Accident in Japan. At that time, my timeframe of life-events became before/after Fukushima classification; I knew it was that significant.
Which has something to do with who I was, before this "new thing" happened to me.
For those of you who don't know me, I am a former health care worker and clinical researcher who had been following the nuclear fallout from Fukushima, and studying the subsequent health effects to Japan, the Pacific Ocean, and North America. I had been compiling research and images to assess whether the contamination from fallout is already affecting our plants, animals, and people, and had been doing radio and TV interviews to spread awareness about this complicated subject, since 2011.
At one time, I had 3 million people a month following my work through social media, thanks to some smart friends that taught me how to use it properly. As little as 1 or 2 posts a day would end up in tens of thousands of feeds. Anchors on the Weather Channel were emailing me, asking questions about nuclear fallout. I was offered my own radio show 3 times, and the third time, I accepted. The show became popular, even at just 2 hrs a week, and some articles I published went absolutely viral. I was extremely humbled by the fact that so many people followed me, and trusted me. And I was doing all of this, with a back injury, and a boatload of other health problems that I was told were fibromyalgia. I even interviewed with Russia Today on several occasions about the Fukushima accident, and had the great privilege of doing several co-interviews with world renowned radiation expert Leuren Moret, and even the late legendary environmental activist John Trudell.
The Smithsonian even became interested in my image collection. HBO and VICE contacted me, and wanted to do a story about my research too.
Then in late 2012, I got really, really sick. I had a couple of teeth that abcessed, I was coughing up blood from pneumonia, and I had to have emergency surgery to drain an abcess in my abdomen - all at the same time. The recovery took months, which reduced my ability to communicate, and little by little I had to back away from activism-type things to deal with mounting health, family, and the fairly predictable financial issues that followed. I still did occasional interviews, but they wore me out physically; it would take days to recover from them. I turned down offers to be interviewed by news outlets, because I couldn't make the trip, or I looked 'too sick' to even go on camera. So I worked on some projects to keep active mentally, taking months to put them together, as I could only work on them a little at a time. I felt dizzy a lot, and like my body couldn't hold up my spine. And I kept getting what I thought was the flu, over and over again. I started getting episodes of torticollis, and 'tunnel-vision' looking up in the shower to wash my hair. I constantly had to change doctor appointments, because I was literally too sick to get out of bed, or even drive a car. My docs, when I did see them, blew it off, suggesting 'pain shots' in my neck and down my spine, instead.
But both before and during the course of my research into Fukushima, I had been exposed to some of the many other issues facing us from an environmental standpoint, and about the tremendous force multipliers that occur when different contaminating vectors overlap during a persons lifetime. A force multiplier is where you take one thing thats bad, like radiation, and then combine it with something else, like benzene. The result on the body becomes hundreds, thousands, or millions of times worse had you been exposed to one or the other, alone. Some of it I learned from my late father, a well-known environmental activist in Canada, Nick 'Lucky' Malik; some from childhood friends that have stayed in touch and now work in nuclear and other industries. Most of it I learned from Leuren Moret, who was herself trained by a Manhattan-Project scientist, Marion Falk. And some of it, I think, may have happened to me. This was somewhat confirmed by one of the neurosurgeons I saw, and by a wonderful infectious disease doctor, who called it "Post Exposure Syndrome."
But once you really understand how force multipliers work, then the biggest concern with all of these environment issues we have, is how it will affect little kids, especially babies, as toxins and pollutants will affect them 1000x more than it would affect an adult... on top of any force multipliers that are introduced. I was taught about this extensively by my family of activists too - sometimes as my father would be changing out the water filter in my house - when my own 4 daughters were growing up. But most parents don't even have a clue what their children are being exposed to, or how to avoid it. There are many reasons for that I will not go into here - but I will drop some links below if you wish to check out some of these things I'm talking about.
This is who I was, or who I had been, anyway.
But one year ago today, things changed for the worse in a most dramatic and unexpected way. I had what even neurologists and neurosurgeons have had difficulty explaining - except to say it was a "really big event." Ever since, I have not been the same, and my life has not been the same. I don't know for sure, but I do suspect, that there are force multipliers at work with this, also. I have been restricted to managing my medical problems full time, and effectively neutralized from doing any kind of research or activism ever since. My days are spent trying to care for myself, and keep from injurying myself further because of drop attacks. I have legal pads in every room, as I no longer have short term memory. I will ask people the same question 30 seconds after I asked it already. I can not recall what transpired the day before, but I will remember bits and pieces in the days following. Some of it based on my notes, and some based on watching things like snapchat. It's no joke... snapchat is how I remember what happened yesterday.
But most important of all, in the midst of all of this bad news and uncertainty, something amazing, incredible, and also very unexpected happened: I found out I am going to be a grandmother. Which is a big. big deal.
My 1st grandchild is about to be born in Michigan in January... and I am in currently in Florida, 1200 miles away. In my video, I expain why I was down here when I had this acute event, and haven't been able to go back. More than anything in the world, besides the obvious healthy-baby wish every new grandparent has, is that I want to be there for the birth, not only beause I already love this child dearly - but to be supportive of the parents, who I also love dearly. Fortunately I have a very caring individual that will be driving me, and knows about my medical problems in great detail. My main neuro docs are all aware of this, and have encouraged me to go, agreeing to refill meds and refer me to local docs up there if anything crazy happens, healthwise, during my stay.
However, I can not chance a trip like this without insurance coverage, as even short trips in the car cause me to go into attacks. During attacks, I sometimes forget how to breathe, which has landed me in the hospital on several occassions. If I make it to Michigan, my family and I are certainly going to encounter some difficulties having to take care of both me, and a new baby... but I absolutely must be there. I am still loved, appreciated, and very much missed by my family, even though 'Mom' is not quite the same anymore. My family has been through some pretty rough stuff over the past few years, and this baby is the best thing to happen to us all in a very, very long time. Having me more stable than I am now would greatly relieve some fears my family and I have about me travelling - especially uninsured - and in such an unpredictable state. And with absolutely no income or money to deal with any of it, should something unforseen arise... well than Mom would just be more screwed. So insurance costs are an immediate concern. Although ER visits for me are to be avoided at almost all costs, because they don't know how to deal with someone in my condition.
Unfortunately my problems "far exceed the abilities of the general health care system" as one of my doctors explained. EMS workers have no idea how to take care of me. ER physicians have no idea how to take care of me. When I have an attack, it is almost impossible for even trained professionals to tell if I am having a heart attack, a stroke, or both. When we explain what I have, I have actually had EMS guys and ER docs pull out their phones or laptops and start googling stuff, it is that weird, as I am laying on their gurney in an ambulance or emergency room, with muscle spasms so strong they can be seen through the skin, like moving snakes. This happens everywhere in my body when something, like head movement or car rides, set it off: from the top of my head to my feet, and everywhere in-between. But when it happens in my neck, the blood supply gets cut off in the back of my brain. No two attacks have been the same, and I have had up to 10 of these attacks in a single day.
I'm supposed to breakdown the money situation in some detail. Well. Right now, I have no income, and haven't for the past 12 months, thanks to some major mistakes on the part of the hospital I used to work for, their disability provider, UNUM, and the doctor who was giving me shots in the neck back in Michigan. That will hopefully be rectified over the next few months. Hopefully. So far, and regardless of disability, I am responsible for at least $13,000 from 4 hospital stays, possibly quite a bit more, as I recently underwent a fluoroscopy spinal tap and about $3,000 worth of blood work to rule rare disorders a few weeks ago. I estimate I will require at least $12,000 to keep the same level of coverage I had and to continue my care at specialty facilities like Mayo, Cleveland, or Vanderbilt over the next year, as I have been referred to Vanderbilt for evaluation and treatment of the autonomic dysfunction part of this. I also have a custom wheelchair that is on hold until my insurance issues get straightened out, as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and another MRI of my neck and brain. The out-of-pocket costs for these things will add up to at least another $3,000 - even with the best insurance plan I can can get. I will throw in another $2000. because I am probably wildly underestimating the costs I'm going to be faced with, per usual.
I know I will never 'be' like I was before, that hope diminishes from a neurological standpoint once symptoms have persisted beyond 6 months. But I would like to keep from getting worse (ie. stay out of a nursing home) and keep whats left of my sanity intact. Plus, there is always that unexpected miracle of sorts that one can come out of the other side of something like this, being a better person for it... more profound and insightful, more rational and measured, and more articulate than before. Catching a glimpse into hell has given me an entirely different, simplistic, and sometimes more realistic, perspective on things in general. For the past 5 years, one of my biggest concerns had been the health of the children on our planet. Now, my reality has been brought down to the micro rather than macro: to just the basics of human survivial, trying not to trip or fall, remembering to eat, take medications that I actually need to stave off attacks, and even sometimes how to breathe... when my brain can't seem to remember how to. I need to stay alive for my family.
You can find my previous work, when my brain was a bit more functional, at the following links ~
You Tube channel: Rad Chick
Facebook: RadChick Radition Research & Mitigation
Twitter: @RadChick4Cast
Instagram: radchickyo
And for the Science-Nerds: The last big project I worked on was "The Wigner Effect" - Is Fukushima Radiation affecting Airlines and Infrastructure?" with former nuclear lab geoscientist Leuren Moret, and Ex-Navy engineer Laurence Battis.
This is promo for the interview:
I have published on many radiation related topics, including Wigner, on my wordpress site.
I always said, at the end of every broadcast of Nuked Radio: "Share love, caring, and concern for your fellow man..." But my all time favorite quote, and one that has held a certain significance to me over time with my Fukushima work, has to be by Thomas Paine: "To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead." You present the information, and allow people to digest it when they are ready. I *hope* to one day pick up where I left off, with this personal journey having an unanticipated and even added benefit in my research, and how I communicate that knowledge - and connect with other people. The way some of the really outstanding doctors have been with me, sitting down, eye-to-eye, and telling it like it is. But first, I need to get better, and try to be a good new grandmother. I need this to heal, as does my family.
I will update this page, as well as my other links, with any milestones acheived. Hopefully I will re-learn how to use my phone so I actually can keep people updated by video, instead of taking 100 pictures of myself talking. You have to laugh, sometimes, at brain problems!
Thank you all for for your consideration, if you read this entire thing. And if you can't donate, please send along to others who possibly can, it would be most appreciated by myself, my family, and my soon to be born granddaughter, Baby Olivia.
Stay safe everyone.
Best regards,
Christina Consolo (aka RadChick)
That was me, in better days. All that changed a year ago, when an insidious event took me to another place entirely. An event, to this day, which still hasn't been fully explained.
"At 3:00 am on December 2nd of 2015, I woke up to the most surreal experience of my life. I woke up, and thought I was dead. I wasn't breathing, and I couldn't remember how to, or if I needed to. Then I started sneezing and vomiting, simultaneously..." This is how every single visit to a new doctor starts. A scene which has repeated itself probably 50 or 60 times in the past year, if you count specialists, EMS workers, and ER physicians.
I didn't even tell my family about this event, I was so freaked out by it, until about 2 weeks later, when I realized there was way more than just 'the flu' going on. I knew something was really wrong, when I developed a rotational nystagmus... my left eye began moving in circles I couldn't control. I started to see black bubbles on the ceiling, yellow paint across the floor, and when planes flew over the house, my hearing was so amplified I thought they were going to crash into it. My vision would change from diplopia to hyperstereo... seeing things first in double, and then in excessive 3D. My eyes would get hot, I felt if I was in a heat ray or thermal lift, and then boom - I would pass out. The first few months of this, after 3 hospital visits and a range of diagnoses; encephalopathy, malignant hypertension, lax ligaments, and an atrial fibrillation event... we were still no closer to figuring out what was going on, or how to stop it from getting worse. My symptoms kept changing over time. A retina specialist confirmed I was missing 'parts' of my vision, which change from day to day. I had trouble remembering these episodes, and have had to write everything down. Transcribing my symptoms became 40 pages long, typed, by May. At that point I stopped, since no one was ever going to read it, and I was too tired to continue. Problems with reading, writing, and cognition overwhelmed me. I had dreams of being electrocuted, and some of my pains have actually felt like electric shocks. Even after giving birth to 4 children, I never knew what a "10" was on the pain scale, until this happened.
In June, my family managed to pull together enough resources to get top-grade insurance, at a price costing more than most mortgages I know. This allowed me to see specialists across almost every realm of my affliction, from eyes to heart to head, because we knew it was super-serious. Sometimes these visits were helpful, sometimes they were not. It would seem we would be handed one small peice of the puzzle, which then another specialist would disagree with. I bounced around, from specialist to specialist, for months. Hallucinating. Passing out. Going from being normal to looking sh*tfaced drunk, on the floor, in literally the blink of an eye. And no one could tell me why.
Also, it became somewhat predictable, that during a consultation with a brand new doctor, that 3 or 4 minutes into 'my story' you can see them growing visibly uncomfortable with the history I am giving them. They figet, scribble notes, or type into their laptops, and you can almost see them picturing themselves in this position. They didn't like hearing about the shots I got in my neck, 2 days before this all happened. They also don't like being confronted with something that they can't explain, and what they know is going to be super-tough to figure out. My symptoms present as TIA's, seizures, torticollis, narcolepsy, autonomic neuropathy, and brain stem disorder - an unlikely smorgasborg of neurological wackiness. The narcolepsy has been proved, and the TIA's, but the electrical component is where everyone seems to get hung up. They know it isn't a weird psychological glitch or Somatoform, because the first thing Mayo did was rule that out. And the fact that these things occur intermittantly, has made testing for it more difficult. Permanent damage has occurred in the 'circuit board' in my brain, that controls all the things I do not. Like breathing. Blood pressure. And temperature.
Others doctors have done some serious investigation. Followed up with me. Become more interested in time because they probably want to publish about it, provided they ever find out what 'it' is. Or, because they actually care, and are genuinely intrigued. That seems to be very hard to find these days. Medicine is a numbers game, like anything else. All practices keep track and encourage competition, as to how many patients a doc can see in an hour, and how much revenue that doc brings in. It's standard, and unknown by most patients, unless you have worked in the field of medicine. As you can see from this dissertation so far, I am not an in-and-out type patient. I walk into every visit with a bag full of films and records. I am every doctors nightmare, if they are under the clock.
But in all fairness, I've seen some really outstanding ones also, of late. Doctors who have sat eye-to-eye with me, and said "How can I say this nicely... we don't know everything in medicine. We like to think that we do, but we don't. I'm sure you have been told already, you will probably never find out why this happened to you." She, an infectious disease specialist, was right; another doc, a cardiologist, had told me almost the exact same thing a week before. He also said: "You are a Mayo or Cleveland case" after witnessing one of my attacks in his office. Not something, as a former medical professional, you ever want to be. Because you know that's where you send people because no one can figure out what's wrong with them, or their case involves extreme complexity. As a patient, and sometimes it happens the way it happened to me: You wake up one day, and everything is different. Way way different, and way way worse. Worse than you could have ever imagined. As I processed this information, the cardiologist actually hugged me, because he said he knew I needed it. Then, he hugged the rest of my family.
My timeframe of life-events are now all classified in my brain of before/after the event. BB = Before Brain. AB = Afterbrain.
But 5 years ago something else had happened, something that was also worse than anyone could of imagined: The Fukushima Nuclear Accident in Japan. At that time, my timeframe of life-events became before/after Fukushima classification; I knew it was that significant.
Which has something to do with who I was, before this "new thing" happened to me.
For those of you who don't know me, I am a former health care worker and clinical researcher who had been following the nuclear fallout from Fukushima, and studying the subsequent health effects to Japan, the Pacific Ocean, and North America. I had been compiling research and images to assess whether the contamination from fallout is already affecting our plants, animals, and people, and had been doing radio and TV interviews to spread awareness about this complicated subject, since 2011.
At one time, I had 3 million people a month following my work through social media, thanks to some smart friends that taught me how to use it properly. As little as 1 or 2 posts a day would end up in tens of thousands of feeds. Anchors on the Weather Channel were emailing me, asking questions about nuclear fallout. I was offered my own radio show 3 times, and the third time, I accepted. The show became popular, even at just 2 hrs a week, and some articles I published went absolutely viral. I was extremely humbled by the fact that so many people followed me, and trusted me. And I was doing all of this, with a back injury, and a boatload of other health problems that I was told were fibromyalgia. I even interviewed with Russia Today on several occasions about the Fukushima accident, and had the great privilege of doing several co-interviews with world renowned radiation expert Leuren Moret, and even the late legendary environmental activist John Trudell.
The Smithsonian even became interested in my image collection. HBO and VICE contacted me, and wanted to do a story about my research too.
Then in late 2012, I got really, really sick. I had a couple of teeth that abcessed, I was coughing up blood from pneumonia, and I had to have emergency surgery to drain an abcess in my abdomen - all at the same time. The recovery took months, which reduced my ability to communicate, and little by little I had to back away from activism-type things to deal with mounting health, family, and the fairly predictable financial issues that followed. I still did occasional interviews, but they wore me out physically; it would take days to recover from them. I turned down offers to be interviewed by news outlets, because I couldn't make the trip, or I looked 'too sick' to even go on camera. So I worked on some projects to keep active mentally, taking months to put them together, as I could only work on them a little at a time. I felt dizzy a lot, and like my body couldn't hold up my spine. And I kept getting what I thought was the flu, over and over again. I started getting episodes of torticollis, and 'tunnel-vision' looking up in the shower to wash my hair. I constantly had to change doctor appointments, because I was literally too sick to get out of bed, or even drive a car. My docs, when I did see them, blew it off, suggesting 'pain shots' in my neck and down my spine, instead.
But both before and during the course of my research into Fukushima, I had been exposed to some of the many other issues facing us from an environmental standpoint, and about the tremendous force multipliers that occur when different contaminating vectors overlap during a persons lifetime. A force multiplier is where you take one thing thats bad, like radiation, and then combine it with something else, like benzene. The result on the body becomes hundreds, thousands, or millions of times worse had you been exposed to one or the other, alone. Some of it I learned from my late father, a well-known environmental activist in Canada, Nick 'Lucky' Malik; some from childhood friends that have stayed in touch and now work in nuclear and other industries. Most of it I learned from Leuren Moret, who was herself trained by a Manhattan-Project scientist, Marion Falk. And some of it, I think, may have happened to me. This was somewhat confirmed by one of the neurosurgeons I saw, and by a wonderful infectious disease doctor, who called it "Post Exposure Syndrome."
But once you really understand how force multipliers work, then the biggest concern with all of these environment issues we have, is how it will affect little kids, especially babies, as toxins and pollutants will affect them 1000x more than it would affect an adult... on top of any force multipliers that are introduced. I was taught about this extensively by my family of activists too - sometimes as my father would be changing out the water filter in my house - when my own 4 daughters were growing up. But most parents don't even have a clue what their children are being exposed to, or how to avoid it. There are many reasons for that I will not go into here - but I will drop some links below if you wish to check out some of these things I'm talking about.
This is who I was, or who I had been, anyway.
But one year ago today, things changed for the worse in a most dramatic and unexpected way. I had what even neurologists and neurosurgeons have had difficulty explaining - except to say it was a "really big event." Ever since, I have not been the same, and my life has not been the same. I don't know for sure, but I do suspect, that there are force multipliers at work with this, also. I have been restricted to managing my medical problems full time, and effectively neutralized from doing any kind of research or activism ever since. My days are spent trying to care for myself, and keep from injurying myself further because of drop attacks. I have legal pads in every room, as I no longer have short term memory. I will ask people the same question 30 seconds after I asked it already. I can not recall what transpired the day before, but I will remember bits and pieces in the days following. Some of it based on my notes, and some based on watching things like snapchat. It's no joke... snapchat is how I remember what happened yesterday.
But most important of all, in the midst of all of this bad news and uncertainty, something amazing, incredible, and also very unexpected happened: I found out I am going to be a grandmother. Which is a big. big deal.
My 1st grandchild is about to be born in Michigan in January... and I am in currently in Florida, 1200 miles away. In my video, I expain why I was down here when I had this acute event, and haven't been able to go back. More than anything in the world, besides the obvious healthy-baby wish every new grandparent has, is that I want to be there for the birth, not only beause I already love this child dearly - but to be supportive of the parents, who I also love dearly. Fortunately I have a very caring individual that will be driving me, and knows about my medical problems in great detail. My main neuro docs are all aware of this, and have encouraged me to go, agreeing to refill meds and refer me to local docs up there if anything crazy happens, healthwise, during my stay.
However, I can not chance a trip like this without insurance coverage, as even short trips in the car cause me to go into attacks. During attacks, I sometimes forget how to breathe, which has landed me in the hospital on several occassions. If I make it to Michigan, my family and I are certainly going to encounter some difficulties having to take care of both me, and a new baby... but I absolutely must be there. I am still loved, appreciated, and very much missed by my family, even though 'Mom' is not quite the same anymore. My family has been through some pretty rough stuff over the past few years, and this baby is the best thing to happen to us all in a very, very long time. Having me more stable than I am now would greatly relieve some fears my family and I have about me travelling - especially uninsured - and in such an unpredictable state. And with absolutely no income or money to deal with any of it, should something unforseen arise... well than Mom would just be more screwed. So insurance costs are an immediate concern. Although ER visits for me are to be avoided at almost all costs, because they don't know how to deal with someone in my condition.
Unfortunately my problems "far exceed the abilities of the general health care system" as one of my doctors explained. EMS workers have no idea how to take care of me. ER physicians have no idea how to take care of me. When I have an attack, it is almost impossible for even trained professionals to tell if I am having a heart attack, a stroke, or both. When we explain what I have, I have actually had EMS guys and ER docs pull out their phones or laptops and start googling stuff, it is that weird, as I am laying on their gurney in an ambulance or emergency room, with muscle spasms so strong they can be seen through the skin, like moving snakes. This happens everywhere in my body when something, like head movement or car rides, set it off: from the top of my head to my feet, and everywhere in-between. But when it happens in my neck, the blood supply gets cut off in the back of my brain. No two attacks have been the same, and I have had up to 10 of these attacks in a single day.
I'm supposed to breakdown the money situation in some detail. Well. Right now, I have no income, and haven't for the past 12 months, thanks to some major mistakes on the part of the hospital I used to work for, their disability provider, UNUM, and the doctor who was giving me shots in the neck back in Michigan. That will hopefully be rectified over the next few months. Hopefully. So far, and regardless of disability, I am responsible for at least $13,000 from 4 hospital stays, possibly quite a bit more, as I recently underwent a fluoroscopy spinal tap and about $3,000 worth of blood work to rule rare disorders a few weeks ago. I estimate I will require at least $12,000 to keep the same level of coverage I had and to continue my care at specialty facilities like Mayo, Cleveland, or Vanderbilt over the next year, as I have been referred to Vanderbilt for evaluation and treatment of the autonomic dysfunction part of this. I also have a custom wheelchair that is on hold until my insurance issues get straightened out, as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and another MRI of my neck and brain. The out-of-pocket costs for these things will add up to at least another $3,000 - even with the best insurance plan I can can get. I will throw in another $2000. because I am probably wildly underestimating the costs I'm going to be faced with, per usual.
I know I will never 'be' like I was before, that hope diminishes from a neurological standpoint once symptoms have persisted beyond 6 months. But I would like to keep from getting worse (ie. stay out of a nursing home) and keep whats left of my sanity intact. Plus, there is always that unexpected miracle of sorts that one can come out of the other side of something like this, being a better person for it... more profound and insightful, more rational and measured, and more articulate than before. Catching a glimpse into hell has given me an entirely different, simplistic, and sometimes more realistic, perspective on things in general. For the past 5 years, one of my biggest concerns had been the health of the children on our planet. Now, my reality has been brought down to the micro rather than macro: to just the basics of human survivial, trying not to trip or fall, remembering to eat, take medications that I actually need to stave off attacks, and even sometimes how to breathe... when my brain can't seem to remember how to. I need to stay alive for my family.
You can find my previous work, when my brain was a bit more functional, at the following links ~
You Tube channel: Rad Chick
Facebook: RadChick Radition Research & Mitigation
Twitter: @RadChick4Cast
Instagram: radchickyo
And for the Science-Nerds: The last big project I worked on was "The Wigner Effect" - Is Fukushima Radiation affecting Airlines and Infrastructure?" with former nuclear lab geoscientist Leuren Moret, and Ex-Navy engineer Laurence Battis.
This is promo for the interview:
I have published on many radiation related topics, including Wigner, on my wordpress site.
I always said, at the end of every broadcast of Nuked Radio: "Share love, caring, and concern for your fellow man..." But my all time favorite quote, and one that has held a certain significance to me over time with my Fukushima work, has to be by Thomas Paine: "To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead." You present the information, and allow people to digest it when they are ready. I *hope* to one day pick up where I left off, with this personal journey having an unanticipated and even added benefit in my research, and how I communicate that knowledge - and connect with other people. The way some of the really outstanding doctors have been with me, sitting down, eye-to-eye, and telling it like it is. But first, I need to get better, and try to be a good new grandmother. I need this to heal, as does my family.
I will update this page, as well as my other links, with any milestones acheived. Hopefully I will re-learn how to use my phone so I actually can keep people updated by video, instead of taking 100 pictures of myself talking. You have to laugh, sometimes, at brain problems!
Thank you all for for your consideration, if you read this entire thing. And if you can't donate, please send along to others who possibly can, it would be most appreciated by myself, my family, and my soon to be born granddaughter, Baby Olivia.
Stay safe everyone.
Best regards,
Christina Consolo (aka RadChick)
Organizer
Christina Consolo
Organizer
Sanford, FL
