[AMightyWind]

For forty years I tried to blend into the crowd, but when I discovered that the quacks were back, I knew that I couldn't do that anymore. I had to stand up and shout, "Look at me! I'm gray." I had to warn the public. A local newspaper broke my story with the headline, "The silver woman from Long Island. The face that no one forgets."

I wasn't always gray. I was born white in Brooklyn, New York, in 1942. When I was eleven years old, my mother mentioned to an MD -- an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist on Long Island -- that I always had a cold. He told her that it had to be allergies and prescribed nose drops that contained silver with instructions to take them "intermittently as needed."

[snip]

One morning when I walked in she was very startled by my appearance.

"Why are you that color?" she asked. What color? No one had noticed that my color was weird until then. She repeated, "Why are you that color? Ask the doctor." Suddenly everyone noticed. I was slate-gray. We had a family friend, a general practitioner, who made an appointment for me to see a dermatologist. Meanwhile, Saturday rolled around again and I went back to class. This time Sister greeted me with, "You're taking nose drops, aren't you?" I told her I was. "Stop," she said. "They have silver in them. That's why you're gray."

She had seen another nursing sister at the hospital with the same skin discoloration which was also caused by nose drops, probably from the same doctor who was on their staff. The dermatologist took one look at me and diagnosed argyria - a permanent, irreversible skin discoloration caused by the ingestion of silver.

A biopsy confirmed the diagnosis showing all the little specks of silver in my skin. Unfortunately, that is the only information that I have ever been able to get about the drug that disfigured me. No one ever sued doctors back then.

http://www.rosemaryjacobs.com/index.html



Photos in 1978, before she had a dermabrasion to remove the top layer of skin and remove the silver particles.


One day after her dermabrasion.

[Morc]

WTF????

[LadyCPlum]

I thought people who "overdose", for the sake of a better word on silver turn blue....

[Konglomo]

Reminds me of Rumpelstiltskin on Once Upon a Time.

[AMightyWind]

Originally Posted by daveizgod ↗

I thought people who "overdose", for the sake of a better word on silver turn blue....

Hm, it appears some people do, but maybe when she got the skin treatment it faded to more of a gray.



From her blog

[Rusty666]

[bernard]

stop huffing...lol

[collaredgirl65]

[Sharon]

Interesting case. Poor woman.

[AMightyWind]

Originally Posted by Sharon. ↗

Interesting case. Poor woman.

She seems pretty bitter about it and is speaking against the pharmaceutical industry which told doctors to use those treatments which made her turn gray.