"Gold that buys health can never be ill spent."
—John Webster
Michael Daniels made it his business to know the value of the dollar. As a successful vice-president of a large bank in California, he enjoyed the everyday challenges of the financial world. He knew the many lucrative uses of money and skillfully made it a banker's gainful servant.
Life was fast-paced, and work days were long as Mike supervised 30 West Coast branch managers and their lending operations. Traveling frequently to and from these affiliated offices, he consulted with the managers, taught classes on lending, and trained key bank personnel. At the main office, he often met with customers, approved loan applications, and also assisted the area manager with the business performances of the entire group of branches.
He earned a very good reputation with the bank and among his business associates. Mike recalled, "I was pretty young, at the top of my game, and [I] was doing the things that I needed to do to be successful. I did work very hard, though, and really enjoyed it. I also enjoyed the limelight of the success that I was having." An avid golfer, Mike played about twice a week with business associates. "It was a good way to make new friends as [I] came into a new area with the bank," he explained.
He seemed equally successful in his social world. "I played on a very competitive softball team. We were undefeated at one point for almost two years in a very competitive environment," Mike said. In civic affairs, Mike took a very active role. He served as treasurer of the local Kiwanis club and was active on various committees, and also, in the Chamber of Commerce. "My wife and I had a very active social life while we were living there, and we made a lot of friends," he said.
In the winter of 1985, Mike accepted a job transfer, a promotion to a bank in Los Gatos, California. The merger of the main office with Los Gatos was part of a large consolidation effort organized by the bank. Instead of being offered a manager's position with one of the 30 branch offices, Mike was given an opportunity to join the present merger. "I was very fortunate, at the time, to get to go [to Los Gatos]," he reflected.
Los Gatos was an upscale bedroom community located on Highway 17 between San Jose and Santa Cruz. Its ideal location brought in heavy tourism and attracted wealthy retirees and other professionals with money and leisure time to spare. At the time of Mike's transfer, he envisioned a happy and prosperous life for himself, his wife, Rebecca, and his children.
Though grateful for the transfer invitation, Mike was, in actuality, one of the bank's top performers in the West Coast region. He had been recognized and rewarded by the bank in all the typical ways: stock options, stock awards, bonuses, trips and gifts. Whenever top executive banking guests were being wined and dined, Mike played an active role as business host during these visits. Without a doubt, Mike was enjoying the pinnacle of career success.
At 36 years of age, Mike basked in good health and bountiful energy. "At the time, I felt pretty much bulletproof," he said. He needed no other doctor than the sun, fresh air, and a competitive game of softball. The new locality and its surrounding areas offered all those things and more: ball parks, golf courses, nearby forests, lakes and state parks.
It was a paradise of sporting pleasure, and he took advantage of it by playing weekly softball games, golfing, and taking family camping trips each summer. "I also loved to take care of the yard around the house. I would mow the whole 2 1/2 acres every week during the spring and fall seasons. I [rode] my riding mower, and then [I would] weed-eat around all 150 oak trees every week in shorts and sandals," he explained.
In his upscale neighborhood of heavily wooded lots, it was very common to observe abundant numbers of deer foraging for food, and in the process, destroying property and decorative garden and landscaping plants. They had become a real nuisance to people like Mike, who took pride in the presentation of his yard. "There would always be ten to twenty deer on our property every day [without fail]," he said. Other wildlife such as squirrels, rabbits, raccoons and skunks flourished there along with an occasional wild turkey or fox.
Something else thrived there too—ticks. "I never noticed the ticks, [but] we had a dog that my [family] used to pull ticks off of [frequently]." Personally, Mike was terribly repulsed by ticks and would not even look at them, but he has since wondered about his exposure to them while working in his yard.
First Symptoms
Barely two weeks had passed since Mike's relocation when he became terribly sick. For the next three weeks, he experienced diarrhea, nausea, sweats, chills and weight loss. Recalling this aggressive sickness, he said, "I was afraid that I had some very serious illness and that I was dying. Because of that fear, I didn't go to the doctor for quite a while." Mike's father finally convinced him to consult with a medical professional, if for no other reason than to squelch the worries of the family. He complied, and his blood was drawn for testing.
After examining the resulting test report, the physician diagnosed Mike with giardiasis. This disease is caused by intestinal protozoa and is usually associated with drinking contaminated water. Symptoms include notable diarrhea, and diagnosis is most often made by microscopic visualization of the organism in stool samples.
"I never did understand how I could have obtained giardia. I did not drink any contaminated water that I knew of. [Previously] I drank only treated water; [now] I drink from our well, usually. It wasn't treated, but it was from a well that was 400 feet [deep]. That water had been tested at the time that they dug the well, and it was not contaminated. I always wondered how I could have possibly gotten giardia. Even at the time, I had no reason to think that it was anything else," Mike related.
Treated with a short course of strong antibiotics, his symptoms subsided within a couple of days. He felt well again and went back to work. He thought that was the end of the story. After about one year, however, Mike gradually began to experience soreness in his right hip. Tylenol seemed to take care of most of the discomfort at that point in time. This was the same hip that he had broken in a motorcycle accident when he was 18 years of age. Naturally, he wondered if there was a connection between that earlier injury and his current, arthritic-type of pain.
Mike never noticed a sudden onset of this new hip pain; it just crept up on him. When the pain kept recurring and additional joints began to ache, he went to see his family doctor. "He could not come up with any reason for these problems. [However] he prescribed an anti-inflammatory medication and enough pain medicine so that I would have one [prescription pain reliever] when I really needed it," Mike explained.
By seeming coincidence, Mike also began experiencing visual problems. One morning as he woke and looked around him, the vision through his right eye seemed to have a smoky ring around it. He immediately consulted with an ophthalmologist, who diagnosed him with iritis (inflammation of the iris, the colored portion of the eye) along with a subsequent rare form of glaucoma. The ophthalmologist prescribed some eye drops for Mike and told him that in a week or so, his symptoms would clear up and go away, but they did not.
Click HERE to read the rest of The Money Lender's story.