MOULTRIE, Ga.-  

My emails have been inundated lately with a wide assortment of cures for all sorts of ailments. They target everything from toenail fungus to cellulite.

Without doing a detailed audit, I would say cures for obesity appear the most. And some of them are so bizarre that most people would not even bother to  open the spiel, which inevitably leads to a big price tag.

“Lose weight while you sleep!” 

Because I suffer from neuropathy as a result of heavy chemotherapy, I bit on a claim of a miracle cure and listened to a 30-minute, almost evangelical spiel. If you’ve never had a problem with neuropathy, let me tell you it hurts! Mine is severe. And if it would cure me, I would crow like a rooster at dawn, run naked through the swamp singing “She’ll Be Coming Around The Mountain” and drink stump water with wiggle tails in it. So given that, I thought I should listen to this guy.

Supposedly he found his cure somewhere in Asia while “taking a time out.”  He made it sound like he went to buy milk and bread and while he was out just decided to visit Thailand.

Now you don’t just drop by Asia from Moultrie. But my pain is enough that I would consider a trip if I thought it would cure my ailment, even though it would be quite expensive. Ironically, back in 1968, our government wanted to send me there for free.

This guy’s cure had to do with diet. He said he woke up one morning, and the pain was gone. He said the only thing he had done differently was adhere to a different diet while in Asia. But he didn’t describe the diet. 

He felt so good about his freedom from neuropathy that he wanted to share it with the world … for a price, of course. At first he said he was going to sell his nutrition program for $100 per customer. But in a state of severe altruism, I suppose, he reduced the package to $50. However, to get that deal I would have to order it in the next 15 minutes.

Oh well, I can smell a shyster a mile away. No thank you.  That’s thirty minutes of my life I can’t get back.

Like I said, the cures run the gamut. There was one for memory loss. Again, I have some of that. It’s also a side effect of heavy-duty chemo. In fact my doctor told me when I left Mayo Clinic that my mind had to heal along with my body. There’s this thing they call chemo fog where you might find yourself trying to change the TV channels with your cell phone. Or, you pick up your office phone and start dialing on your calculator.

Actually I did both of those before I received my treatments. I just have an excuse for it now.

Now I didn’t even click on this one. It said I could cure my memory loss in 14 days. Really? I could spend that much time rummaging through my desk looking for a pen with ink in it.

I skipped right over toenail fungus and psoriasis. 

Then one popped up that was very personal. It said, “Dwain, you could have a heart attack in seconds!”

My gosh! I thought I had won the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes, and this was to prepare me.

Not so lucky. It made this outlandish claim that eating bacon could aid blood flow and help prevent heart attacks. Again, I didn’t click on “enter.” I figured some guy had trapped some wild hogs and was trying to pass them off as “Clifty Farms.” 

Oh well, they say laughter is good medicine so I guess scrolling through these scams had some medicinal purpose. But my feet still hurt.

 (Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)