In 1976, the summer after my first wedding, I went to the local butcher and bought pork chops to make for dinner. I couldn’t wait to take them home and prepare them the way I always knew they could and should be prepared. Mine would be thick, pink, juicy and delicious and they definitely were fantastic, the best pork chops I ever ate. I remembered back to the way my mother made her pork chops. They were thin, hard, almost inedible planks of protein with no juice or flavor whatsoever except for the gravy in which they languished on simmer for at least an hour and a half. I was determined that mine were going to be done to perfection. I distinctly remember their exceptionally juicy, pink and oh so tasty deliciousness.
However, this culinary miscalculation started a sequence of events that plagued me the rest of my adult life resulting in misdiagnosis after misdiagnosis and mystified both me and the doctors I went to regularly due to one kind of ailment or another. The pesky Chinese liver flukes that were living and imbedded within that pig muscle didn’t die because I had not cooked them long enough at temperatures high enough (as I had always been instructed even before I was old enough to cook) to cause their miniscule, potentially deadly little carcasses to expire. I had been made aware that one could get tricanosis, another form of parasite, from eating undercooked pork, but I doubt that anyone even knew that Chinese liver flukes could and did live in pigs and that 25% of Americans today are possibly infected with these or other parasites due to this unfortunate miscalculation in culinary preparation of porcine, other forms of animal flesh and sea or fresh water fish, and possibly even unwashed fresh vegetables.
Consequently, in this case, they were very much alive in one or several delicious bites of pink, juicy pieces of pork muscle I swallowed resulting in a parasite infestation intoxication that practically killed me some twenty-five years later! It eluded yet affected me in many and varied ways that caused untold emotional as well as physical scars that I find just simply and absolutely amazing and still suffer from to this very day even though I have been parasite free since October of 2004.
If you died today, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? You can be! TRUST JESUS NOW
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That was truly a terrible thing to happen to you, to get those parasites - and for all those years! Maybe more of us should be vegetarians - I have thought about that concerning beef, and now ...pork! I hope and pray your body will continue to get stronger and free of all toxins. You are a good writer, keep it up!
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