The Dangers of Kissing and Diet Coke: What Your Doctor Doesn't Know and Won't Bother to Find Out

By Mitzi Mensch

What is wrong with Mitzi's head? It all began in 1999 when a cat howling outside woke her up.
Shocked, she realized the howls weren't coming from a cat, but from her! Soon the loud nightly animal-like sounds were accompanied by major motor movements. She was sent to 'Psych' but her 'tics' only escalated until Mitzi was placed on an antipsychotic which turned her into an emotional zombie and created devastating side effects. In 2010 she quit taking her meds and reunited with her first love after a forty-eight year absence. Goldie's kisses lead to a virus which results in a headache that never goes away. Mitzi muddles through the morass of doctors, drugs and treatments as she searches for causes to and cures from the strange neurological symptoms that plague her. Mitzi's medical mysteries and turbulent love affair are thought provoking and compelling, leaving the reader with a lot to decide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491814130

Mitzi Mensch

Mitzi Mensch was born and raised in New England and attended college in Vermont. An island girl at heart, she moved to Hawaii, where she has lived long enough to be kama`aina.

Book preview

ME

I bet you bought this book because you’re wondering what’s dangerous about kissing and Diet Coke. Or maybe you’re curious about what your doctor doesn’t know. All of this will be made manifest, but first I’d like to tell you a little something about myself.

I am not a medical professional. I do not have any medical training whatsoever. I have a very old two year Associate in Arts degree in General Studies which qualifies me for nothing. I like to read and write so I took literature classes and creative writing.

This book is just about me. I can only relate what happened to me. I’m not saying that my strange neurological problems apply to anyone else. The conditions which affect me are mine, owned by me, and unfortunately, have become part of me. I am no expert. I have tried many medications, both over-the-counter and prescription. These may be excellent drugs for other people, people with normal brain activity; however, they have not worked for me. My brain seems to be wired differently. Drugs affect different people differently. I seem to be quite different. As for what I have ingested and the presumed neurological effect, let me say that some people have allergies to certain substances and foods, such as gluten and peanuts, while other people can digest them with no problem. What I write about cause and effect on my brain function is all based on postulation, gleaned from my personal experience and what I have read. I have simply learned what I have learned along the way in an effort to try and live my life in a normal and pain-free manner. I have had to do my research on my own because doctors have been no help. All I can say is I’m glad the Internet was invented.

As I begin this I am sixty-six years old, but I must say that people never take me for it. They say I look younger. I do color my hair medium brown which naturally at this point is snow white, but other than that I don’t do anything special. Although I don’t see anything wrong with improving your appearance any way you can, I have not had a face lift and I have never had any fillers injected into my laugh lines. I exercise regularly, lots of walking, mostly on the beach because I live in Hawai`i as I have for most of my adult life, so how could I not walk the beach, and I swim, again because the ocean water is just delightful. I do love the outdoors so I hike in our beautiful volcanic mountains and swim in clear bracing pools in streams beneath waterfalls. I belong to the Y where I use the exercise equipment and the pool. All this is to say that I live a healthy life style. I haven’t smoked since the sixties when I was a teenager and everybody did it, back when cigarettes were advertised on television and before warning labels were on packages. I will have a drink when the occasion calls for it, but that is rare. I haven’t eaten a mammal since 1997. I am slim because my diet is mostly salads or brown rice with tofu and stir-fried veggies on top. My only vice has been my lunchtime Diet Coke.

I am just me, no one special. So now that I have offered this disclaimer I will tell my story.

CHAPTER ONE

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

In the fall of 1999, just after falling asleep one night, I was awakened by the sound of a cat howling outside. I drifted back to sleep, only to be awakened by the same cat, the same howling. The third time the noise woke me I realized it was coming from me!

These vocalizations continued three or four nights a week. They were animal sounds, not sounds that would ever come from a human being, certainly not from me. There was quite a variety of sounds, sometimes howls, as originally, sometimes growls. Sometimes the noises would be very high-pitched, screams or screeches. Sometimes they would be quite low, guttural and groaning. They were usually long and drawn out. They were always loud, very, very loud. They were so intense they hurt my throat at times, I tasted blood. But sometimes they were short sounds, barks and yips. There was one unique vocalization that spiraled upwardly. I pictured it like a cyclone. There was quite a cacophony going on in my bedroom just as I would enter into sleep.

Shortly after the noises began they were accompanied by major motor movements, and I mean major. My arms flailed around up into the air, hands flopping, loose at the wrists. My upper body jerked up off the bed, head, neck, shoulders pushed suddenly and with lightning speed from behind by an unseen powerful force. Startled awake at a sharp angle, a jackknife snapped open, that’s how I found myself without warning. The sounds and the movements sometimes were simultaneous, sometimes separate. I was doing a lot of weird things, and instead of three or four nights a week, it became nightly.

I lived alone, except for my dog, Sunshine. I always said that if Sunshine were a person she would be a very nice person. She was a medium-sized white poi dog with brown ears. With my daughter Grace off at college, Sunshine was my best friend and constant companion, never mind that she had been acquired at Grace’s insistence.

Don’t the parents always get the pets when offspring move on in their lives? Of course, what are parents for if not a storage facility for treasures and animals the onward bound can’t take with them? Parents can be counted on while young person flies off for new experiences and adventures, knowing with assurance that when they return, home will be as they left it, anchored by the parent person, a rock of stability. So I got left being the sole guardian of the dog. I was the only one to walk the dog, bathe the dog, feed the dog, pick up poop from the dog. I always had to get home to take care of the dog. The dog was hungry, the dog was lonely, whatever. I felt guilty. I couldn’t stay long at the pau hana gatherings after work on Friday. I couldn’t go directly to dinner in town from the office. I had to drive all the way over the Pali first to let the dog bound joyfully out of the yard for her nightly romp with all the neighbor dogs on the canal bank. Dinner and fresh water came next. Playtime with her friends was her priority, and I will admit I enjoyed the camaraderie of the other neighbor dog owners who let their dogs out as well. Sunshine waited for this special time all day while I was gone and I couldn’t deny her. I was beholden to the dog to keep to her routine. My social schedule ranked behind hers. Her needs and wants came first. My dinner dates came second. See what happens when you can’t say no? Grace had worked on me, it’s true, wore me down for years with her constant pleas, but actually I really liked dogs too, so I had finally capitulated, putting on a begrudging air which belied fond memories of a dog left behind by me in like manner (it was payback time) when I took off for far-away places. In my mind I saw adoring looks from a dog’s eyes, the feel of soft fur on the hand as it strokes and the gratitude demonstrated by a wet kiss it’s best to avoid because that tongue has just been licking its hindquarters.

After we got Sunshine and Grace saw me sitting on the floor one day petting the dog she said, Mom, you love Sunshine, don’t you?

I tolerate her.

No, you don’t. You love her.

So as I stroked Sunshine’s head and ears and under her chin I crooned softly, I tolerate you Sunshine. I tolerate you so much.

And she gazed at me with adoring eyes and tried to kiss me with her yucky tongue.

With Grace gone, every night when I went to bed Sunshine would sit on the floor by the side of my bed and look up at me with those eyes, waiting to be invited. I would pat the bed and say Come and she would happily jump up to join me while I watched TV or read. As soon as I turned off the TV and light she spontaneously jumped back down and curled up in her own bed right beside mine. It was our routine, established by her. But once the vocalizations and motor movements began she stopped curling up in bed with me. She wouldn’t jump up when I said Come. She turned around and ran away, tail between her legs. She was afraid of me. She would go as far away from me in the house as she could. It made me very sad to know I was frightening my loyal friend. Sunshine was terrified of me.

My employer was shutting down. Hawai`i Health Care (fictitious name as are all the names used herein) had been a start-up HMO that didn’t make it. We had lost fifteen million dollars (due to improper rating) for our parent company in the previous year, and I would be out of work by the end of November. And this was a really good job, one I enjoyed. It paid well and I’ve always liked being out and about, talking to people, giving presentations, traveling to neighbor islands. And I really liked my co-workers. All of us account managers got along great. We were a team. We helped each other with open enrollments and whenever we happened to be in the office at lunchtime we ate together. I always went across the street to pick up my favorite take-out, a mini-plate of brown rice with something stir-fried on top, veggies and usually tofu or chicken. It tasted so good with the Diet Coke I always bought. We all came back to the lunch room with our Styrofoam containers and paper cups and talked and laughed a lot. I would miss the work and my colleagues, not to mention Thai Take-Out, but losing a job was nothing new. I had worked for several other companies in Hawai`i who had ceased doing business and left me unemployed. With my expertise in sales/marketing/account management I would find something else. At fifty-three I still had lots of optimism, energy and vitality. I had a professional appearance, an excellent resume and good references. I wasn’t concerned about employment. Plus I was getting a great severance package and collecting unemployment at the same time. I would be making more than when I was working. So I planned to take an extended trip to Florida to visit Grace and her husband Gus where they were attending graduate school. I could look for a new job later, much later. I would have a great vacation and I wouldn’t have to worry about all the work piling up at the office or my accounts not getting my attention. There wasn’t any office to go back to and there weren’t any accounts. I was a free woman. My trip would be care free. Sunshine would be staying with my neighborhood friends, the owners of her best dog friend. Sunshine had learned to love it when I went away. When she saw me packing up her dishes and bedding she got all excited, wagging her tail, knowing she was going to play with Mele whenever she wanted. I hate to say it, but I think she liked it next door better than at home. I had no worries about her. The only problem was I was worried that I might embarrass myself on the airplane. What if I started making my weird noises and thrashing around? It was a long flight, almost six thousand miles, and, of course, it flew at night.

I went to my Primary Care Physician, Dr. Ching, an internist, and asked her, What is all this jerking and screaming about that I’m doing as I fall asleep at night?

With a backhand wave of her hand she replied, dismissing me, I don’t know. Go to Psych.

But I didn’t have time to go to Psych then because I was going on a trip. I don’t sleep on airplanes anyway, so I flew to Florida awake the whole time. I read during the flight and the novel I read was Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio. Icy was a ten-year-old girl growing up in rural Kentucky in the fifties, the same time that I was growing up. I read with fascination about her strange eye-popping actions and frog-like croaks. Icy’s peculiarities were different from mine but I related to her. She did weird things she couldn’t control. I was reading about someone like me! But while she felt invisible rubber bands inside her head prior to releasing her urges, my premonitory sensations, when I had them, felt like her name, icy sparks. My skin, every inch of it, felt like I was holding a sparkler and the sparks were landing on it. Sometimes I felt the sparks, other times there was no warning. But I couldn’t have what she had. She was a child. I was a grown-up.

For the first few days I was in Florida I was jet lagged, but once I settled in to their cute little rented cottage and felt relaxed the jerking and screaming returned. Grace would come into my room (actually an alcove off the kitchen where I slept on a futon on the floor) and wake me up. Mom, stop it, she would say, and I did, for a while, but then it started again as I drifted off.

One day while Gus was at work and Grace was off she took me to a bucolic spring. We had the place to ourselves except for a young couple with two small children who were eating at a picnic table, some yards from the pool. After a quick dip in the cool refreshing water I was lying in the shade on the bank, vegging out. Then all of a sudden my arms flew up above my head without warning and I let out a loud yelping noise.

Mom, stop it, please stop, Grace said in a loud whisper from the rock she was sitting on at the water’s edge where she was dangling her feet in the pool. There are people here. Grace was embarrassed by me, ashamed of her mother. She got up and sat on the bank beside me. Maybe you’re stressed and you just don’t realize it, Grace suggested. Maybe this is your way of releasing it.

But I don’t feel stressed, I answered. In fact it always happens when I’m the most relaxed.

So maybe that’s when your subconscious fears surface. You’re suppressing them when you’re awake, but when you zone out the fears exhibit them selves in this weird way.

What are you, a shrink?

No, but it makes sense. You could be in denial.

So you’re saying I’m crazy, this is all in my head.

I’m not saying that at all, Mom. I just want you to figure out what’s causing this so you can stop it.

That’s what happens when you send your kid to college. You give them a little book learnin’ and they think they know it all. Suddenly the educated young’un who memorized all the psychobabble from Psych 101 is telling the ignorant parent what to do. And she didn’t stop the whole time I was there.

Please go to Psych when you get back, Grace continued to implore as we parted at the airport. She hugged me hard.

CHAPTER TWO

PSYCH

This is an HMO I belong to, not Hawai`i Health Care, the short-lived one that put me out of work (due to a bean counter who didn’t know how to count beans), but an established one, a big one. I’ll call it Big HMO. I’d belonged to Big HMO for years, had worked for it previously, had preached about the continuum of care, the ease of receiving services, the single chart for all the doctors to see. So I had first-hand knowledge of how HMOs operate. When you go to Behavioral Health that doesn’t mean you get to see a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists cost Big HMO a lot of money so they are there for one reason only, to prescribe drugs. Having done sales and account management for Big HMO, I understand cost containment and rating methodology. They want members who don’t actually use services. They want low utilizers. Like all kinds of insurance the company does well when it collects premiums and doesn’t pay claims. As a Health Maintenance Organization it is there to maintain your health, to provide preventive services so that you don’t get sick and they don’t have to treat you for an illness. A nurse can give a flu shot a lot more cheaply than a doctor can treat you for a full-blown case of influenza. So when you go to Psych what you get is a social worker, trained in talk therapy, not medicine. I was no stranger to Psych. I had talked to therapists in the past, back in the eighties when my biggest problems were relationship issues. It was really nice to have someone who would listen to me talk about me for a whole hour.

There was one in particular I really liked, Sherone, who was very kind and attentive. We talked and laughed like friends about an older man, Cyril, who I was dating at the time (twenty-six years older), a gentleman who was quite prominent in the business community, a leading developer and financier. Cyril spoke with a very proper British accent. He was from an exotic far-away land, fascinatingly foreign. His swarthy good looks were topped off by a head of thick white hair. The first time I saw him standing outside the Pauahi Tower at Tamarind Square in his three-piece double-breasted suit (business men in Honolulu wear aloha shirts) I thought he should have completed his ensemble with a turban. I was walking fast, in a hurry because I was on my lunch hour, had an appointment after.

He held the door for me and asked, Are we having a race?

I said, Well, if we are, it’s okay, you can win.

With a beguiling smile he retorted, "Oh, no my dear, the lady always wins."

On the way up the escalator to the lobby he held out his hand and said his name, got mine and ascertained that there was no mister. As we got off the escalator he asked me if I worked in the building and I said no. He asked me if I had business in the building and I said no. I told him I was just there to look at the water color exhibit. I told him the last time they’d had a show at the Amfac I kind of let it get away from me. He asked me if I always let things get away from me and I said no. He asked me if I let people get away from me and I told him that I’d been told I sometimes push people away from me.

Cyril said, "You cannot push me away. You can push that chair away or you can push that table away, but you cannot push me away."

By now he had me intrigued. After we walked around the exhibit and he determined that there was nothing appropriate for my ‘drawing’ room we exchanged cards. He asked if he could call me that afternoon. I said that would be okay.

Then he asked, If I call you will you see me again?

I stammered, Well… I… I don’t know.

He quipped, Well, then that’s a decision you’ll have to make, isn’t it?

When we had dinner that night Cyril ordered for me, then instructed me to reach across the table and stroke his hair. I hesitated. He repeated himself, his eyes boring into mine. I did it, mesmerized, I stroked his hair.

Cyril liked to dine out every evening. I couldn’t go every night. I had Grace at home who needed to be fed and mothered. Or maybe at thirteen I had a need to feed and mother her. In any event she had a regular baby-sitting job for a neighbor who taught natural childbirth classes at night, so most nights after Grace took off I drove all the way back over the Pali to meet Cyril for dinner. Cyril and I went to fancy restaurants where maitre d’s called him by name as he entered and fawned all over him. We went to ‘amusing bistros’ where other diners recognized him and told him they admired his projects. One night we were talking about his latest high-rise condominium building currently under construction. I said it gleamed up at me each morning as I drove over the Pali.

Cyril said, Yes, it is a huge erection, isn’t it?

Then we went on to discuss the tomes he wrote about his homeland (required reading which bored me to death) when all of a sudden he came up with a non sequitur and asked, How often do you masturbate?

Shocked, I blushed and answered, Well, if I do at all I assure you it is only with thoughts of you.

But tease me as he would he never even kissed me. The closest he came was one night as we parted by my car he asked me if he could. I nodded expectantly, glad it would finally happen. He told me to stick out my tongue. I did as he instructed, wondering if kissing customs were different in his country. He pulled a little bottle of breath freshener out of his coat pocket and deposited one drop onto my obediently protruding tongue. But then, after all this time, after all this precaution, after all this anticipation, after all this driving over the Pali, he held my face in his hands and kissed me with precise deliberateness on the forehead, then nose, then cheeks, then chin.

When I told a man friend about this he said, Just think, if he has to douse you with breath drops before he’ll kiss you what will he do to you before he makes love to you?

I related all this to Sherone and we cracked up. Christmas was coming up and I was trying to think of a gift to give Cyril. She suggested a book. I said, "How about How to Make Love to a Woman." We couldn’t stop giggling.

But then I told her about how he cut me down. One night we were in a restaurant and the conversation, which he always commanded, came to a halt. He had just come back from London so I asked him how his trip had been.

Fine, he answered, saying no more.

I asked him how his meetings with his editor had been.

Fine.

Feeling cut off and waiting for him to say more, I looked around the room, at the décor.

Stop looking at other men, he demanded accusingly.

I’m not looking at other men. I denied it.

Cyril said, If I am involved with a woman I would prefer she go to bed with another man in private than to exhibit the roving eye with me.

I kept assuring him I only had eyes for him. He kept accusing me, kept saying ‘roving