Gerd's Insight

Left-- Montanist martyrs: The Africans Perpetua and Felicitas

I was happy to see the distinguished academic historian of religion Prof. Gerd Lüdemann making the point below (#6) about the heretics of the Second Century.

The Marcionites and the Montanists in particular were admirable, sincere, impressively spirit-filled believers, and to have their reputations systematically besmirched over centuries and centuries is just awful. So thumbs up to Prof. Lüdemann!

Ten Golden Words (1995)
Gerd Lüdemann

[The following essay was originally published as the Epilogue to Gerd Lüdemann, Heretics: The Other Side of Early Christianity (trans. John Bowden, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), pp. 219-220.]
1. The view of the Bible as the Word of God or as Holy Scripture belongs to a past time. Today it hinders understanding. The Bible is the word of human beings.
2. The idea of the sinlessness of Jesus belongs to a past age. It hinders understanding of the human being Jesus. Jesus is either fully a human being or not a human being at all.
3. Jesus proclaims the unknown God and his rule. He understands, measures and lives out the tradition by love, which first allows us to live in a human way, open to the world and indeed reasonably, in the freedom of the children of God, and to remain true to God's creation.
4. As the first Christian, Jesus remains the criterion for what is Christian in the Bible, in history and in the present.
5. The church is the community of people who have been touched by Jesus, who celebrate his coming and seek the truth.
6. The heretics of the second century, men and women, are at least as close to Jesus as the orthodox, and must be welcomed back into the church.
7. In the conflict between the church and truthfulness, truthfulness has the priority.
8. In theology and the church there is a need to turn from phraseology to reality in order to survive.
9. Theologians must keep learning to say "I," and if need be to contradict the tradition.
10. A fragment of religion which has been experienced and recognized is worth more than an orthodoxy which is fully known. A tiny ray of the light of Jesus in my life is more important than any orthodoxy.

Ouch

The picture says it all. Backache. It seems both worse and longer lasting than last week. Motrin works better than Tylenol for it.

It is not impeding my rowing though. I'm still cranking off my meters.

This stupid Hep C blog is a complete bore. I might go back to New Testament stuff.

Hey you!! 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 in a non-Pauline interpolation!

Round Two

I took my second interferon injection on Friday. It was much the same as the first week. No immediate reaction, but about 24 hours later fatigue sets in. I slept 15 hours Saturday! Then there is a backache kind of thing, relieved pretty well by Tylenol. Saturday and Sunday I didn’t feel much like eating, which is okay. I had beef broth, cereal, fruit and saltines.

Sorry there aren’t more dramatic side effects to report, but in this case boring is good.

I feel like just keeping everything stable and low stress. Row on my machine, listen to classical music, read my commentary on Acts or my novel, and be grateful that I’m doing so well thus far.

Bitter Meat

Well, I may be asking for trouble, but I'm very curious about some of the freaky side effects connected with food. One of these evidently is that red meat tastes bitter. Weird, no?

Also, it seems so people lose their taste, or food seems tasteless, in which case PegAssist advises you to add seasoning. No shit, Sherlock. Add seasoning. That's almost as brilliant as their advice to put on a sweatshirt if you get the chills.

Then too, it seems for some people the smell of certain foods becomes repulsive and nauseating. Can you guess what the PegAssist advice is?

Wrong!

The sensible thing would be to not cook foods that smell disgusting to you. PegAssist however suggests using boil-in-bags, or cooking the repulsive food outside on a grill.

Thanks, PegAssist!

Dry

One thing I notice now is dry itchy skin. I'm going to try different soaps and lotions. This is a notorious side effect of interferon. It burns the water right up.

EPISTLE CCCCXIX

Dear friends, — Something was upon me to write unto you, that such among Friends, who marry, and provide great dinners, that instead thereof, it will be of a good savour on such occasions, that they may be put in mind at such times, to give something to the poor that be widows and fatherless, and such like, to make them a feast, or to refresh them. And this, I look upon, would be a very good savour, to feast the poor that cannot feast you again; and would be a good practice and example, and would be a means to keep the mind to the Lord; and in remembrance of the poor; for 'they that give to the poor, lend to the Lord, and the Lord will repay them.' And I do really believe, whatever they give, less or more, according to their ability, cheerfully, they will not have the less at the year's end, for the Lord loves a cheerful giver. I know this practice hath been used by some twenty years ago. And so it is not only to give the poor a little victuals, which you cannot eat yourselves, but give them a little money, that the Lord hath blessed you with; and give it to some of the women's meetings for to distribute to the poor: so you will have the blessings of the Lord, and the blessings of the poor: and so, to be of a free noble spirit, above all the churlish misers and niggards, and narrow spirits.
These things I do recommend to you (though it may look a little strange), to weigh and consider the thing, it will both be of a good report and a good savour, and manifest a self-denial and openness of heart, and of the general love of God. G. F.
London, the 4th of the 4th month, 1690.

Sleep

The sleep disruption problem I have associated with the ribavirin, so I tried something new. An hour before bedtime I took two Benadryl, my never-fail sleep aid, and then took the PM ribavirin dose just before turning out the light. That worked brilliantly. I slept very soundly, and had a wonderful dream in which I dosed in the backseat of a convertible driven by Karen Armstrong, with Elaine Pagels in the passager seat. They talked about Satan and the future of religion. Mainly Karen talked about the future of religion, and Elaine talked about the social history of Satan. I dosed pleasantly.

I think the flu-like symptoms have disappeared. If they come from the interferon, that's pretty cool: injected on Friday, no symptoms by Tuesday AM.

The illustration by the way is of Sleep and his half-brother Death. We can pretend its Ribavirin and his medicinal sibling Interferon.

On the Third Day, He Danced

On Friday I went down to my liver doc, proudly carrying my spiffy PegAssist cooler containing the four pre-filled syringes of interferon. I got a lesson in self-injection, and found the process to be no big deal. You can't even feel it. My doctor injected B-12 into one thigh, and I followed his example and injected interferon into the other.

I expected some dramatic side-effects, but none were forthcoming. Friday evening I took my first dose of three ribavirin tablets, and perhaps had a tiny bit of sleep disruption. But it's hard to say.

So far the side-effects are slight and very tolerable: a bit of muscle ache, a little bit of fatigue, a little bit of reduced appetite, a touch of sleep disturbance. I was still in my normal silly mode though, and on Sunday danced all around the house to Haydn's Symphony No. 94 in G 'Surprise'.

Dead Man Walking Goody Bag

The interferon and ribavirin arrived today in a huge box labeled “REFRIGERATE UPON RECEIPT”. Inside there were lots of goodies, including a DVD about how to inject yourself featuring a confident redhaired lady in a lab coat and an overweight middle aged black guy as the patient. He gave himself an injection in the stomach, pinching a huge fold of skin and jacking that interferon right in there. Sheesh. I think I’ll go for the thigh, if it’s all the same to the redhead technician.

You get all sorts of stuff, everything but a Roche ballcap. There is a little blue cooler pack with a shoulder strap, like you’re going on a tour. The logo of “Pegassist” is embroidered on there. It’s not the Pegasys logo, which – can you guess?—is a flying horse, but similar: vaguely equine, vaguely airborne. Pegasys™ is the Roche brand of pegylated interferon-alfa. There is a super-fancy pill box for the ribavirin with 14 compartments, AM and PM compartments for every day of the week. These are nicely color-coded for the convenience of the spaced-out seniors and brain-fried coke snorters that are among my fellow Hep C patients. You also get a cool miniature sharps container, in a lovely shade of fire engine red with the always-intriguing biohazard logo on it. But wait! There's more! They throw in a bunch of alcohol wipes, and a strange cup-like object with the PegAssist logo, which looks like it is to hold the syringe while you hunt around for a body part to inject. Or something.

Then there is a cute diary or journal. You are meant to record little observations about the treatment, such as “good week”, “okay week”, “bad week”, whether you injected in the abdomen or thigh, and other stuff that might occur to you, such as whether you bought a rope to hang yourself, and whether you got a pretty good price on it, or were able to use that Home Depot card you got for Father’s Day. Stuff like that.

There are warnings and lists of (heh heh) “possible side effects.” I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version: it can cause fatal problems, or make life-threatening problems worse, and you’ll feel like shit for a year, and your hair falls out but grows back, and it may not even work.

Okay, what the heck! Am I a man or a mouse?

Don’t answer.

Then there are inspiring quotes:

“Patience and fortitude conquer all things.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The one really good thing about all this is the price: The whole box of junk, plus the meds was $13.