143 – Moving Away from the Drain, Part 1: 10 January 2025

1st photo Anne Ryan and the wooden chest I restored for her; 2^nd photo, the Jarrah table.

****

My Third Time in Hospital - July 2021

After the disappearance of Dr Kannusamy on 8 July, Dr Aiyappan took charge of my hospital medical care.

Dr Aiyappan ordered an extensive range of tests and scheduled a colonoscopy for the following Tuesday - 13 July.  The colonoscopy found nothing of note.  

Dr Aiyappan was determined to find out why I was so ill. and by the morning of the following Tuesday – before the colonoscopy – he had worked out what had gone wrong. 

I was being attacked by my own immune system.  

Our immune system contains white blood cells which attack intruders such as diseases.  A significant number of the white blood cells which make up the immune system are a type of white blood cell called eosinophils.

My body was producing an extraordinarily high number of eosinophils. 

My immune system had decided my body was under attack and had therefore made a large supply of white blood cells to protect me.  The large number of eosinophils made by my body formed part of my body’s determination to protect me from attack an attack by microscopic “bad guys”.  Unfortunately, there were no “bad guys” for my immune system to kill.  My body was not under attack by any disease.  Because there was no external enemy to be eliminated, the eosinophils in my immune system attacked the only thing that could be attacked – and that was - me.

By trying to protect me, my own body had come extremely close to killing me.

****

This is what Wiki says about eosinophils.

Eosinophils, sometimes called eosinophiles or, less commonly, acidophils, are a variety of white blood cells and one of the immune system components responsible for combating multicellular parasites and certain infections in vertebrates. Along with mast cells and basophils, they also control mechanisms associated with allergy and asthma. They are granulocytes that develop during hematopoiesis in the bone marrow before migrating into blood, after which they are terminally differentiated and do not multiply. These cells are eosinophilic or "acid-loving" due to their large acidophilic cytoplasmic granules, which show their affinity for acids by their affinity to coal tar dyes: Normally transparent, it is this affinity that causes them to appear brick-red after staining with eosin, a red dye, using the Romanowsky method. The staining is concentrated in small granules within the cellular cytoplasm, which contain many chemical mediators, such as eosinophil peroxidase, ribonuclease (RNase), deoxyribonucleases (DNase), lipase, plasminogen, and major basic protein. These mediators are released by a process called degranulation following activation of the eosinophil, and are toxic to both parasite and host tissues. In normal individuals, eosinophils make up about 1–3% of white blood cells, and are about 12–17 micrometres in size with bilobed nuclei.

 

                                                                       ****

Here is my personal theory of what happened to me.  I claim no medical expertise and this theory may not be valid – but it fits the facts as known to me and none of the facts contradict my theory.

The restoration of Anne Ryan’s Jarrah table and wooden chest made of King Billy Pine caused my body to ingest large quantities of the disease resistant substances created by these native Australian timbers.  These substances prevent native timbers from being turned into compost in the short time frames it takes to do this with most trees.  The ingestion of these substances nearly killed me while I was engaged in the restoration projects, but my body coped because the projects took only a few weeks.

When Margaret was diagnosed with terminal cancer in July 2020, the native timber “stuff” in my body was again activated and this triggered my original breath attacks, stomach bloating and related symptoms. 

Once Margaret’s cancer “disappeared” in March 2021, my symptoms should have disappeared, but this did not happen because of the appalling behaviour of our supposed friend Anne Ryan.  The stress of Anne’s awful behaviour significantly boosted the impact of the stuff I had ingested while restoring Anne’s wooden furniture.  This boosting meant my symptoms did not disappear at all but began to spin wildly out of control. 

The distress caused by the bad behaviour of a formerly long time friend should not have caused me any serious health problems, but on this occasion it completely destroyed my health and nearly resulted in my death.

The law has a principle used to assess how much money in damages should be awarded to someone who has been wrongfully injured.  

If the injured person is more susceptible to harm that an “normal” person would be, the person who inflicts the wrong is not allowed to limit the amount that must be paid by claiming that a “normal” person would not have suffered such extensive injuries.  The law says “you take your victim as you find the victim”.  

Anne might not have intended to do quite as much harm as she did, but this is irrelevant.  She DID intend to do some harm and must therefore accept responsibility for ALL of the harm she actually caused. 

****

Once he had identified the cause of my illness, Dr Aiyappan prescribed a medication which ended the civil war within my body.

As long as I have an injection every four weeks, my life is unlikely to again be endangered by rogue eosinophils. 

My final discharge from hospital happened on Thursday 15 July 2022. 

Since my discharge, I have experienced no symptoms and I have been in good physical health.  I am able to eat all meals, take all recommended exercise and my weight is at the recommended level.

I owe my continued life to the care of a competent and compassionate doctor called Vinod Aiyappan.