Daniel Forsyth - The Mercury Diaries

No way in a million years could Ihave believed that I would get poisoned by mercury and that my once-beautifullife would be flushed away in a torrent of ill-health. In this day and age itspretty far-fetched to think normal people get mercury poisoned and that itssuch a big deal. Its difficult to comprehend that modern medical doctors sorarely understand or believe, that diagnosing it is so tricky and that even ifthey do, they are more likely to do harm than to help.

Not many people get better frommercury poisoning. I am very much in the minority to have recovered. Theproblems it causes are numerous and ghastly, made all the more difficult by ourwestern medical profession that is blind to it.

Five years ago, back in 2007, allhell broke loose, I was wildly ill and my health and my life collapsed due tomercury that leaked out of my amalgam fillings.

I was just a typical Londonbusinessman. I wore a pinstripe suit to work every day for the first ten yearsof my career. The next twelve years have been a bit more relaxed and I wearsmart casual these days. I spent my days on the phone negotiating deals. I dida lot of lunches, dinners and lundinnies. I worked long hours, but no longerthan anyone else. I was just getting on with life like everyone else. Justanother city bloke. I knew nothing about medical matters.

I had a good life before all thisstarted. First and foremost a fabulous wife, we have been happily together 24years now, since we were 18. I also had cool friends, a great family and asteady well-paid job that I was good at and loved. I was into all the normalthings that normal people are into: football, cricket, rugby, good food, goodcompany, drinking, cars, PlayStations and holidaying anywhere hot. I workedhard and played hard too.

Weekdays were spent working at mydesk on the trading floor. By night I could be found unwinding down the pubwith the lads. Friday nights became eagerly awaited for the trip to a club forhours of dancing to the wildest and loudest music in town, staggering homeexhausted and bleary-eyed at sunrise.

I was a typical white-collar partyanimal, out all the time, drinking, smoking, partying, clubbing; everything toexcess and generally having the time of my life. I am a product of MaggieThatchers 1980s chemical generation of young dog-eat-dog city blokes living itup large, totally wrapped up in my own little world of work and play. Life wasgood and I made sure I enjoyed myself.

My full-on exciting lifestyle camewith a blatant disregard for my health. I was never that healthy in the firstplace; I always seemed to have a cold and was overly skinny as a kid. Slowlybut surely, my health was slipping and sliding downwards. Once the hecticlifestyle started to bite, I toned things down a little, worked out down thegym, changed my diet a little, but nothing stopped the health-crash that came.

Anyway, I did get better, I keptmy job, my life, my family, my friends, and today I lead a normal life again,but it was an uphill struggle and for a long time it looked like I was nevergoing to make it. I changed too; I went from an ignorant party-animal, to aneducated ex-party-animal.

This is my story of what happenedto me and how I managed to get back to the land of the living. Its written inchronological order; I didnt know anything in the beginning. As I struggled alongI figured stuff out, discovered what meant what. I explain things when Iunderstood them, which is not necessarily when they happened.

Everything in here happened to meand I didnt discover anything new. Everything I did, someone else discoveredbefore me, I just read about it somewhere, either in a book or online, and thentried it myself. If you want to check out and verify the things I did, to read,review and research an idea, just Google it or read some of the books Irecommend; the knowledge is not far away.

My story is written for regularpeople who are sick and want to get better. I was just a normal bloke whoselife was almost wasted by a poison. I use friendly words like stuff andgunk and funk because big long medical words mean nothing to me. This isjust the story of how I got better; if you want a reference book full of longincomprehensible words, there are many out there to satisfy those needs.