Deadly Health

The author of Deadly Health, Henry Harold Trevor Mottishaw, was diagnosed with Vasculitis in 1992. His symptoms included weakness and numbness of the left arm and hand which were caused when inflammation of the artery created a blood clot that blocked blood circulation in the arm. Doctors have attempted to control this disease using a drug named Prednisone, which is a steroid. Side effects of this drug include; weight gain, hair loss, moon face, mood swings, diabetes, muscle loss, glaucoma, and bone loss. Doctors often overlook Vasculitis as the diagnosis of a patient's illness because it is a rare disease that can go into remission then return again and again. Most of the health incidents and other events described in this book happening to Fred Simms were actual incidents and events in Mr. Mottishaw's life. Chapter 17 describes Jame's Bornac's true story of his bout with CVNS. Chapter 22 is Sheri Schwar's true story of her bout with Vasculitis. You may remember Fred and Mable Simms from Mottishaw's other books. Fred was a retired maintenance worker for the City of Cold Creek and Mable worked in a bakery, which she later inherited from the late Les Moore, and then Fred won $1,000,000.00 on a nickel progressive slot machine in Lake Tahoe. As always, Fred and Mable portray down to earth average people in this book, and Mable uses her abilities as an amateur sleuth once again to solve medical mysteries. During the era described in Deadly Heath, health insurance premiums were on the rise across America due to the high cost of medical care, prescription drugs, and the fact that people were living much longer those days. Not too many years earlier doctors would not consider performing surgery on elderly patients, however with the advances in modern medicine it didn't seem to matter how old patients were, as long as they had good health insurance coverage. Costly research for new cures forced the price of prescription drugs to soar. Many people made periodic trips to Canada and Mexico to purchase the same drugs at much lower prices. Some even made it a point to schedule dental work during vacations in Mexico using the money saved to pay for their trips. A California based Health Insurance company, Mission Health Insurance, had grown rapidly during the previous ten years, making a killing from their investments in the stock market, until the dot.com stocks took a nose dive.