Excerpts from FLAKE

Flake Excerpts

Ed's note to the Web reader: Flake started out as frustrated man's diary back in 1994. My psoriasis was worsening at breakneck speed, I was disgruntled with my derms and p.o.'d about life in general. Somehow, keeping the diary made me feel better about myself. It hastened that variety of callous resolve that enables people to carry on in otherwise lose/lose situations. The decision to turn it into something for public consumption didn't come until late 1995 and the book finally hit the streets (so to speak) in the Fall of 1996.

[from:] "The Litany of Treatments"...

Intralesion Steroid Injections

After about two years and several thousand dollars worth of potions and unguents, the usual waxing and waning of those lesions' activity, and some enlargement of lesions, my derm finally decided to try direct intralesion injection of a steroid. It worked almost overnight.

I thought I had been cured.

I was so ecstatic I wrote him a letter gushing with thanks—and in which I refrained from asking why he waited so long to share this miracle cure with me.

I was nearly lesion-free for six weeks; felt like running around town in my skivvies and shouting, "Hey people! Look at the beautiful skin on this hunka-hunka-hunka man!"

The lesions were just beginning to redden again when it was time for my next regularly scheduled visit to the derm. He thanked me for my kind letter, expressed satisfaction with the way I had responded to the injections.

Then I blew it. "Doc, even my scalp stopped flaking!" (There had been no injections into my scalp.)

Grinning stupidly, unaware of what was going on in my derm's noggin, I went on: "And remember, you didn't inject my wrists or hands, either." (He'd said there were too many blood vessels and nerves close to the surface of the skin to "risk" intralesion injections in these areas.) "But look, Doc! They cleared, too!"

I was so happy I could have kissed him—or, well, more likely the pretty nurse who was attending to me with him.

Doc and the nurse exchanged knowing glances. Finally, Doc said, "Well, I guess we can't go doing that anymore."

I was flabbergasted. "Whatcha mean? It cured me for six weeks! I'd gladly do the needles again. What's wrong?"

Then he explained to me that steroids can have very sinister side effects if they spread beyond their intended area of the body. My scalp and hands having cleared up indicated to him—at least beyond a reasonable doubt—that the steroid had spread throughout my body, or, as he called it, systematized.

"But gosh, Doc, I've had no side effects."

He said he was glad to hear that but, nonetheless, the risks were too great.

I went home depressed all over again. Great! Here's the one thing that works and I'm being cut off already.

He refused to give me any more intralesion injections for six months. By that time I was flaming mightily. I had a business trip planned for the east coast and was loathe to meet clients looking like a leper.

I went back to the derm and almost got down on my knees to beg him for the injections. He sat there, reviewing my file and finally relented—a little. He instructed the nurse to limit the injections to so-many CC's. "That won't cover but maybe one arm and one leg," he said to me. "So I suggest you pick your most egregious lesions and prioritize them; then we'll hit as many as we can within the limits of this dosage."

Well, that was better than nothing. I picked the big ones that were flaking the worst and drove me the most crazy with itching. There were twenty, maybe thirty lesions that I would have liked to hit, but the prescribed dosage didn't get us half that far.

Intralesion injections draw blood. Despite my limited dosage, after fifteen minutes I was lying there in the examining room bleeding profusely. Two nurses were dabbing at me with cotton balls. "Hold this one there.... Hold that one over here.... You better wait a few minutes before you get dressed."

I evoked my Steven Segal voice and said, "Unless you give me more dope, I'm going to run out into the receiving room and bleed all over your waiting patients."

For a moment they thought I was serious.

[from:] "The Litany of Treatments"...

Acupuncture

I was in San Francisco, mixing business and pleasure, having dinner with friends—a couple and their daughter. Somehow the subject of my psoriasis came up.

"Have you tried acupuncture?" the lady of the house asked.

I admitted that I hadn't; never even thought about it, in fact.

"You must see our Chinese doctor before you leave town."

I've since learned that Chinese and Western medicine are formidably different and only now being seriously examined from a "comparative" perspective. But at that moment in San Francisco I knew nothing and was more than willing to experiment. You need a bit of background.

It was November 1994. I was coming off the biggest job of my year. Nothing else of professional consequence was scheduled to happen to me that year. My psoriasis was flaming. I was less than two months into a volatile separation from my second wife. (In retrospect, I'm just glad these friends of mine hadn't recommended crack cocaine. I was in the mood to try anything.)

One thing lead to another and the next morning I met the Chinese doctor whom I'll call here Dr. Chung.

"I understand from our mutual friends that you have psoriasis?" That's pretty much how Dr. Chung opened the conversation.

"That's right," I said. "Been having problems with it for four or five years now."

"All right. Let me see the extent of its involvement."

I blinked a couple of times but finally figured out I was being asked to strip, so I did.

"Oh my. Yes. We have a problem here."

Dr. Chung did a lot of "hmmm-ing" while surveying my torso. The psoriatic lesions in the groin area were particularly "hmmm-ful."

"Considerable sexual activity lately?" Dr. Chung asked.

"Quite the contrary," I volunteered, wondering if I should tell him about my wife's recent abandonment.

"Good," Dr. Chung offered. "Don't have sex and don't eat shrimp."

Don't eat shrimp? Where the hell did that come from?

"Okey dokey," I said. This was becoming quite interesting.

Dr. Chung dutifully noted that my problems went beyond the psoriasis. "Major pathways in your body are blocked," the doctor said, "and we must open them as first step."

I didn't then and don't now have the foggiest clue what a "major pathway" is. But I knew I felt like hell, and that flaking was only the surface of my problems (no pun intended). So I allowed the doctor to proceed to open my major pathways "as a first step."

This involved sixteen needles, a maze of wires, and something that looked to me like a Delco™ 12-volt car battery. Evidently, "opening my major pathway" was going to require electro-shock therapy.

Once I had been stabbed and wired appropriately, the good Doctor stepped away from my gurney to hum Chinese tunes and write my prescription for future treatment. I lay there lurching every twenty seconds or so when the battery let loose its volts into my needles hence into me. All the while I listened to the good Doctor hum, wondering what prescription could take so long to write.

I also tried to sense whether or not my major pathway was unclogging. I had this vision of an L.A. freeway on a Friday afternoon...

The prescription—written in Chinese characters—was for an herbal concoction. The good doctor took ten minutes to explain to me, step-by-step, how to prepare my "tea." Problem was, I live in Kentucky and the doctor's sources of herbs were in San Francisco.

"If you pay," the doctor told me, "they will ship."

I said "Sure." After all, I was sitting there on the gurney, nearly buck naked, recently having had my major pathway cleared of traffic by God knows how many doses of how many volts, and I was expecting a cure.

A week or so later, back at home in Lexington, the box of herbs arrived. A box full of little sacks labeled "1," "2," "3," and so on. I referred to the notes Dr. Chung had given me. Oh yeah. Boil water, add "1," boil for so many minutes, add "2," boil for so many more minutes ... eventually it read, "steep" for so many minutes on low heat; then, take off heat altogether. Let cool. Drink at room temperature. I did.... And then I vomited until there was nothing more to throw up but pale yellow strands of bile.

I'm sorry, Dr. Chung, but what looked like dried sliced mushrooms, bits of honeycomb, dead flowers, insect parts and ground bone meal did not do me well. I went back to my room, sat on the edge of my bed, scratched my calves until the psoriasis flakes formed little piles on the carpet next to my feet.

Oddly enough, I kept the little bags labeled "1," "2," "3," and so on in my recently-cleaned-out-by-former-wife cupboard for many months. Finally, a new main squeeze happened to open the cupboard one evening and said something unpublishable.

Basically what she was getting at is that it didn't smell good.

I said, "Sorry, that's my herbal medicine."

She volunteered that herbs were much tastier when consumed fresh—and then told me what she thought I should do with the not-so-fresh herbs I'd been sent from San Francisco.

Subsequently, I followed her instructions.

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