Aspirin Bottles and Me

If you look at the back of every aspirin bottle, there is a note about not giving kids it if they have chicken pox. This is a fact. And it also has a lot to do with me.

When I was 5, I had chicken pox, just like every other kid in America. Back then in 1975, aspirin was the cure-all for everything. Got a headache? Take aspirin. Have the flu? Take aspirin. Need a double-bypass surgery? Take aspirin. They gave me aspirin.

One morning, I walked out of my room and started shaking. My father was watching this, wondering what was going on, and then I suddenly dropped to the floor and convulsed for minutes. My dad threw me into the car and sped to the emergency room.

The doctor saw me immediately but I had stopped convulsing. He checked me over and saw that I was ok and sent us on our way. Suddenly, I went into more convulsions right as we were leaving. The doctor screamed “Code Blue!” I don’t know what happened after that.

The next thing I remember a few days later, still this day — clear as the sky, was waking up and seeing family at my bed. I sat straight and asked “What’s for breakfast?” My parents fell apart in joy. The doctors told my family it was chicken pox encephalitis, because my brain swelled, and I had chicken pox, so they jammed them together as a Frankenstein diagnosis. But no one knew why.

A few months later, I was subjected to what felt like a million tests. Blood tests, brain scans, mental health evals, everything. I will never forget sitting in a chair with a giant spacepod over my head with wires attached to the helmet. I wish I had a photo, come to think of it. Bet it looked super cool. They told me to “think of nothing” while the test ran. Tell THAT to a future ADD 5 year old. I said “You mean like space?” “Sure kid. Whatever.” So I dreamed of zooming spaceships and fantastical planets with alien tentacles and flowers. I was a weird kid. Probably didn’t help the results at all. Whatever.

In 1964, Dr Douglas Reye documented the illness in 1963. but it wasn’t until 1979 when a doctor named Karen Starko made an important link: the disease is brought on between an interaction of chicken pox and…wait for it…aspirin. That’s the reason there are the signs on every bottle in the world. And I am a part of that. How wonderful?

I’m also damn lucky (or blessed if you want to call it that — not my thing, but you do you) to be alive. Death occurs in 20–40% of those affected and about a third of those who survive are left with a significant degree of brain damage. That’s not a fun stat. And I beat the odds.

I went to see a doctor for a physical a few years back and casually mentioned I had Reye’s Syndrome, casually because I always forget about, both due to my age and my later catastrophic issues. He stopped, looked outside and said, “Huh. Let me get my boss.” Sure enough, the head doctor came in and started asking me questions about my experience in life. “How did you do in school? How were your personal relationships?” I told him I did well and relationships were not an issue.

He thought for a second and said “Well, maybe your Reye’s Syndrome kicked off your bipolarity. We may never know.”

Maybe we will one day.