Fingernails on the Chalkboard

It boggles my blogging mind!

In an effort to find out how Laura Beckett was doing -- the woman who was "trapped" in Germany after contracting pneumonia and systemic MRSA infections on the second day of a week-long ketamine coma designed to treat her CRPS -- I started looking around various CRPS/pain forums. It's always disruptive to me to read the commentary of ordinary people. It scares me to death.

In an intellectually challenging discussion of the ketamine coma trials and protocols, Dylsierra writes, using a great big font and with a cute bunny and an adorable bear:

"HI Michelle,
I agree with you and Jojo!
I think that Jojo is soo right when she says that [the ketamine coma treatment] is not approved here for a reason. What the reason is, well, i don't know but it is something!!!"***

The response to Dylsierra's on-the-road-to-Damascus insight? Read on, McDuff:

"Very True!! Very good point!"

Oh, God, take me now.

These groups are everywhere and are as promiscuous in The Willies they inspire. I used to believe that GroupThink was something to fear. And then I found its opposite, and The Truth set me free.

***The reason? The FDA does not recognize coma treatments that go beyond 3 days, and the ketamine coma requires 5-7 days for effective dosing. The agency HAS approved "awake" (subanesthetic) ketamine infusions but these have proven much less successful than the full course of coma therapy, followed by "boosters." Whether or not Mrs. Beckett's complications have caused a change in the work in Saarbrucken, I don't know. I tend to hope not, since complications from MRSA are not necessarily an indication of poor standards or more risk than one would have in any ICU the world over. Some apparently unbalanced people have written that Beckett died subsequent to her return to New Jersey -- I can find no proof of it, and these folk seemed to have an agenda that included shutting down this promising avenue of research, as well as denigrating Dr. Schwartzman and Dr. Kirkpatrick, personally and professionally.

I also cannot find any more information about the tragic death of Andrea Lynn Gianopoulos, who was to undergo her *second* ketamine coma, this time in Monterrey, Mexico.

My neurologist, a great fellow, almost begged me to not participate in online CRPS "support groups." That is like telling a toddler not to put a bean up his nose -- but it proved to be excellent advice.