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Karen's Journal is now required reading at Duke School of Medicine.

A reporter at the local paper summarized Karen’s story as: “Karen’s first-hand account of her illness gave an honest, heart-wrenching depiction of what it is like to live with debilitating pain day-to-day.

For nearly 25 years, I watched my wife Karen struggle with nearly constant head pain to be relieved only by laying down, a loss of friends and a family that did not believe her.

I was at times frustrated by lack of support from the medical community.

After many years of her own research, Karen suspected her diagnosis to be a spinal CSF leak so she sought treatment from the best physicians in the field. In the end, Karen took her own life when the treatments did not stop her pain; it is my belief that fluoroquinolone antibiotics (Cipro, Levaquin and 20 other names) and steroid use complicated her treatments.

Sometimes we choose our mission in life, other times it chooses us. I have become very active in the medical community in raising awareness of Intracranial Hypotension due to Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) Leaks. A condition that is more common that many think (for example Actor George Clooney had/has a CSF Leak and considered suicide), yet is so unknown that some doctors argue the condition does not even exist.

To raise awareness and to attract research dollars, I initially collected her writings into a web site kpaddock.com and then into a book. We must lose no one else to suicide due to this condition. I had hoped Karen would be the last, sadly, this is not the case.

This edition of the book was created for the Spinal CSF Leak Foundation who will receive 100% of the royalties from the sales. http://www.createspace.com/5737105

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  • Last modified: 2015/11/19 01:27
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