Vertigo, or "How My Spinning World Finally Stopped"

I recently read where a MLB baseball player went on the disabled list because of vertigo. For some reason I found this funny. I have since found out it's not funny, especially if it happens to you.
For the last few months, I have been experiencing chest pains, headaches, eye pain, itching, breathing difficulties, ringing in my ears, vision problems, and other things. My doctor even hospitalized me for extensive tests, including a cardiac catheterization. The good news was my heart was unchanged since my last 2 heart attacks, the bad news was they had no idea what the problem was.
Ten or 12 days ago, I went all dizzy. I couldn't walk, my head ached, I was sweaty, and my vision was blurred. I recognized these to be symptoms of vertigo, so off I went to my good 'ole buddy Google to find a cure, or at least to see if I really had vertigo. I indeed did display all the symptoms of vertigo, so I read further to learn the cause of this malady. As I scrolled down the list of causes, going past brain tumors and other scary possibilities, my eyes fell upon what I INSTANTLY knew to be the cause of my sickness.
I been a diabetic since 1990, and as all of you that are familiar with this disease, it requires an enormous amount of self-care to continue with a somewhat higher quality of life. You have to monitor your diet closely, maintain your blood sugar levels with medication and injections, and get as much exercise as possible. Therefore, I never used added sugar to anything, and always used a sugar substitute instead. I freely used these little packets in my coffee, cereal, and anything else I felt the need to sweeten up. I thought this is great stuff, a diabetics dream, you might say. It was in fact poisoning me.
Nutra-sweet, phenylalanine, whatever name it goes by, is commonly called aspartame. It is used in a long list of commercial products, including diet sodas, or anything low calorie or sugar free. When I read that one of it's MANY side effects was vertigo, I immediately stopped my use of this product. Within 48 hours, my vertigo symptoms mostly stopped, with the double vision lasting another day or so. My ears have stopped ringing, I have stopped itching, I breath a lot better, and most wonderful of all, my chest no longer hurts. That throbbing pain that I had endured and worried about for months had disappeared.
Now I know what you are thinking. I'm thinking the same thing, believe me. A few days isn't enough time to attribute my problems to aspartame. I found one medical website that said it takes 30-60 days to rid yourself of this poison, so time will tell. I do know I feel better right now then I have in years. Meanwhile, I have spent the last few days researching this poison, and I have found numerous case studies supporting the belief that this stuff is toxic.
I will be reporting back during my ongoing recovery period and maybe we will all be a little better educated on this topic. Thanks for reading.

'Japan Question"

I took a world of shit on a question I posted on Facebook Friday night. I asked a rhetorical question as to weather people might be offended that the U.S.A. is offering aid to Japan after the earthquake, beings they bombed Pearl Harbor. I mistakenly wondered weather people might feel this way.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I in NO way feel we should not offer aid to these people. I harbor NO hard feelings toward the Japanese people. Some of you may not know or have forgotten something about me. I am a LIBERAL. I care about the welfare of all people. You are probably now thinking I assume all conservatives don't care about people. Not true either, we just have differing ways on how to express these views.
Live and let live is my motto. I don't care if you are gay, lesbian, green, brown, red or orange. I still love you. Though if you are orange, you might want to see a doctor.
Unlike most liberals, I do not support abortion. I had the unfortunate experience of seeing my unborn child miscarry and the resulting removal of the 15 week old fetus. It was a life changing event for me. I will never forget it.
I was born in the early 50's. I went to school in the early aftermath of Pearl Harbor. One of my teachers was held in a concentration camp just because he was Japanese. I personally saw how offended and hurt these people were. So this goes out to all those self serving bastards that want to go off on me. Unless you are at least as old as me, you need to shut the fuck up, because I have some first hand knowledge of at least some of the misery these people went through. I didn't reach this age and not learn a few things. I read at least two newspapers a day, sometimes more. I am very up to date on current events.
My heart goes out to the Japanese people. I remember how we all felt after Katrina, how the president sat on his hands while an entire American city drowned. I can only imagine the horror they felt.
I now know how former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak felt a few weeks when a simple social network removed him from power. Listed below is a sample of the messages I received...

This is from someone named Mike Evans...
But all of me wants to scream "why are you so damn ignorant?" try having some compassion for people once and maybe feel better about yourself.
p.s. you might want to make your facebook more secure so it doesnt show up on openbook again, that way you can be ignorant as you want and only have family members like your son call you out for it, instead of the thousands of people browing "pearl harbor" on facebook.
people like you make me ashamed to breathe the same air as you.

From Dan Jensen...
But there's a pretty large part of you screaming ignorance. They got what they deserved with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is a natural disaster no one deserves.

From someone calling himself "Agent Jerry"...
please kill yourself you worthless piece of shit, and YOUR Tax dollars will be sent to Japan, after they killed Americunts at pearl harbor. haha fucker

From Omar H. Freeman...
Hey moron, what are you talking about?
paybacks a bitch?
After pearl harbor, the US destroyed two of their cities.
I think that paid them back more than 50 years ago you clueless twit.
Those cities had thousands of civilians, far more died in those nuclear blasts than the entire pear harbor attack which was a military attack not an attack on civilians.

And finally, the one halfway decent post...from Dillion Votaw... I'll ignore the dickhead remark.

here's some perspective, dickhead

"After Katrina, the Japanese government offered material and monetary assistance that surpassed $1 million and that included tents, blankets, power generators and portable water tanks. Japan also provided $200,000 to the American Red Cross to aid hurricane victims. In addition, Takashi Endo, a private businessman in Japan, donated $1 million from his personal funds to Katrina relief efforts."

Well, you get the drift. I try to keep this somewhat a family blog, so I'll just delete the others.
Please understand I'm not the person some people believed me to be. We can have differing viewpoints. We can just agree to disagree, no problem. Healthy, stimulating conversation is good for everyone, we should ALL welcome all viewpoints, not just your own, and consider them. It would be a sad world if we didn't.