In April 1996 I was deployed to Thailand to support this annual military joint exercise named “Cobra Gold.”  If I would give a ‘guesstimate,’ I would say around 2,000 U.S. soldiers from all military branches were also deployed. Thailand was a beautiful place to live. The people were friendly, the food was delicious, and there was so much to explore.  Unfortunately, the country is a public health nightmare. There is an incredible amount of disease and germs in Thailand. It was so bad, the military’s Public Health Department prescribed everyone Doxycycline as a preventative medicine. I am not totally sure about how I got the H. pylori germ. It is a toss-up between the ice that was in my glass of soda or the “sampler plate” that had ten different types of meat. I am not a gambling man, but I would probably put $100 on the sampler plate, from which I accidently ate frog, snake and dog meat.  Let’s just say that dog meat tastes like a tough steak.

I started feeling the symptoms somewhere around the tail end of my deployment in June. I remembered asking my friend Pic, “Does my neck looks swollen to you?” to which he replied, “Hell yeah!” At first, I felt fatigued. The fatigue was so extreme that I drank Pepsi nearly all day, for the caffeine. This chronic fatigue lasted weeks, until I returned from Thailand, sometime in late June 1996.  

I was able to get some free time away from home and went to visit one of my friends. When I arrived another friend of my friend was there also. They were smoking wax and asked if I wanted to smoke and so I took a hit. I’ve tried wax once before and experienced anxiety and really didn't care for it. After taking a hit, I sat back down and took a few sips from my beer. I started feeling hot and then my hearing started to close. I knew I was in trouble but didn't let anyone know. I knew my friends were talking but I couldn't hear them. I could see their mouths moving through my blurry vision which was getting worse with each second. All while keeping how I was feeling to myself because I didn't want to ruin their high.

Even now almost 15 years later, hardly a day goes by that I don’t think about my experience of going to the other side during surgery. I’m frustrated and I have been searching for answers. 

well to whoever is reading this there is no capping in this i was not religious at all i believed we all were going to get buried and that was the end to us I was wrong and here’s why so one day i was being an idiot and i slashed some of my neighbors tires and i got caught by the bitch ass police sorry for swearing  and he had to take me to shelter care but he forgot to search me for stuff and i had xans on me. And we all know it’s boring in shelter care so i took all the xans that day right and i went to sleep my friend jonathan which im still good buddies with will tell u he walked in to the room and i was foaming up and he said my eyes rolled to the back of my head so he went to go get help its good that he did otherwise i would be dead