Valerie
Lindner
The Tragic Life of the
Girl with the Extraordinary Mind
A
story of two infections: The first ruined her emotions before birth and caused
an attachment disorder, the second degraded her brain’s stamina and
function.
Both
infections are unknown to modern medicine, yet common.
By
Henry H. Lindner, MD (under construction)
She was my best friend, best colleague, best patient, and
beloved daughter
She earned B.S. degrees with honors in physics,
astronomy/astrophysics, and mathematics; and completed all required courses for
her Physics PhD candidacy
I had the
incredible privilege of having this brilliant, unique, but tortured human being
in my life for 30 years. Through her I learned to see life and humans in a
deeper, more objective way.
I marveled
at her perseverance in the face of continual mental/emotional suffering and
physical deterioration. Despite her lack of hope, she kept fighting to get
better to the very end—for her family.
As her father, my only
consolations are that she died peacefully, without consciousness, and obtained
the permanent unconsciousness she had wanted for many years.
As Valerie
and I searched the internet to find others who suffered as she did, looking for
answers, I hope that others will be able to find some answers here.
Warning:
This website contains frank, personal information about mental suffering and
attachment disorders.
PowerPoint Presentation on Her Life
Valerie
Lindner: My brief review of her life, illness, and education. I
presented it at a memorial gathering hosted by Penn State’s Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos on
April 19, 2024.
Academic Achievement
despite Chronic Babesiosis
We raised Valerie with
attachment parenting, unconditional love and freedom. She grew up pursuing her
interests, without schooling of any kind.
When
she was 10 years old, she was bitten by two deer ticks. She remembers gradually
becoming depressed and unable to draw as she used to.
By age 14 she was
fatigued, distraught and suicidal. We enrolled her in college courses for
distraction. She excelled in every class.
In 2016, with great
effort, she graduated as the top STEM student at Penn State University; her
professors loved her because she loved knowledge.
Despite her low mental
energy, she garnered degrees in physics, astronomy/astrophysics and
mathematics, and took graduate courses in all three majors.
She could do complex
math for hours, but having a conversation or going shopping drained her of all
mental energy.
After a highly
emotional experience (see below), she barely made it through her senior year,
and afterwards spent many months in bed.
After taking a year
off, she became well enough to start graduate school in physics at Penn State
in 2017 but became disabled again under the stress.
We eventually realized
that she must have gotten some previously unknown infection from the ticks at
age 10.
Her brain MRI was
abnormal. In 2018 she started taking antimicrobials, but they, and especially
antimalarials, made her much more ill (Herxheimer-like reaction).
Testing
eventually revealed that she had chronic Bartonella and Babesia
infections—both are parasites that inhabit blood vessels throughout the
body and brain.
We
eventually realized that the ticks had given her Babesia odocoilei, the
most common Babesia species in deer ticks in the US, but ignored by the
“experts”.
It
created fibrin-bonded nests that occluded small blood vessels throughout her
brain, sapping its energy and disturbing its function. Her 2020 brain PET scan
was grossly abnormal.
In late 2020 she
improved dramatically on a powerful combination of antimalarial medications,
but after that progress was slow.
She required very high
steroid doses to tolerate the killing and exposing of the parasites in her
brain, and the steroids altered her appearance for the worse.
She was able to return
to grad school in 2022-2023, but again the stress and emotions worsened her
state and caused her to need higher steroid doses for months.
On December 9, 2023,
at the age of 30, while taking higher doses of fibrinolytic enzymes to break up
the parasite’s intravascular nests, she caught a cold and died of
hemophagocytic syndrome.
For more details on
her chronic babesiosis and its treatment, see: http://www.hormonerestoration.com/chronic-babesiosis/
Attachment Disorder
Her problems began
before the tick bites at age 10; her life was doubly cursed.
From birth, Valerie
seemed to be uncomfortable and needed constant distraction. For 3 years she
needed rhythmic bouncing to fall asleep and she awoke frequently.
She was slow to
maintain eye contact, smile and walk. She never crawled.
As long as she could
remember, she never felt joy, happiness, or love. She never had the good
feelings that we all take for granted. She needed constant distraction.
She did not identify
as female or even human. She only liked animals. She viewed humans and their
lives objectively—as if she were an alien visitor to our planet.
She compensated by
pursuing intellectual distractions and pleasures—whatever was
intelligent, interesting, complex, novel, or beautiful—she became
hyperintellectual.
The Babesia
infection at age 10 caused more negative emotions and robbed her of her ability
to distract herself.
She hated herself,
hated and envied men, and despised women as inferior to men. She thought that
all male-female sex was rape.
In adolescence, she
was able to get some good feelings through a libidinous fantasy involving love
between two androgynous characters—a human and an alien.
She was driven to
study the sciences in college to make her fantasy world as real as
possible—because she hated her life in this world.
At age 22, she fell in
love with a real human, an androgynous male rock star from the 70s. Her
life-long dysphoria disappeared temporarily as she felt love for the first time
in her life.
She could maintain
these good feelings only while immersed in fantasies about him. She could only
love a male whom she could imagine was female.
She also fantasized
about kidnapping, controlling, and eating young women and men. She studied and
understood serial killers. Part of her wanted to make others suffer as she
suffered.
She was two persons:
she could seem perfectly normal, even super-normal, when suppressing her true
feelings, but they surfaced periodically in fits of homicidal and suicidal
rage.
In 2017, due to
increasing brain inflammation, she lost the ability to immerse herself in her
love fantasies—and became desperately unhappy.
In July of 2022,
through her own research, she realized that she had an attachment
disorder—a severe psychological problem dating back to her infancy.
From birth she never
felt our love and so didn’t learn to love herself or humans in general.
She compensated as best she could through fantasy and art.
Val and I theorized
that she had acquired her Bartonella infection in the uterus, perhaps at
the time of chorionic villus sampling.
This intravascular
infection inflamed the emotional centers of her brain before birth. Her 2020
PET-MRI scan revealed hypermetabolism in the basal ganglia and limbic
system.
An attachment disorder
cannot be cured. Her parents’ love was not enough. She consulted
psychotherapists but they could not help her.
Four years of
antimicrobial treatment improved her brain function, but this made her more
aware of her negative emotions.
She became convinced
that she could never find a permanent, real-life solution to her constant emotional turmoil, and
therefore needed to die.
- Research Ideas
for Flowing Space v. Relativity: Like the other writings on
physics here, she produced this in 2015, in the spring semester of her
junior year at Penn State University. She was preparing to apply to
graduate schools and was compelled to write down her ideas for her PhD
thesis. She was convinced that the Flowing Space theory of gravity was
correct, and that theoretical physics must be reformulated as a theory of
the role of physical inertial-gravitational/electromagnetic space in all
phenomena. This is the approach to physics that Einstein tried to suppress
by restricting physics to observer-based measurement-prediction modeling.
- Unanswered Questions in Physics, Relevant Quotes and other Ideas
- Thoughts on Electromagnetism
- Additional Thoughts on Quantum Mechanics
- The GPS System with Flowing Space Corrections: A paper she wrote at my request after a GPS expert claimed that the system would not work as it does if space were flowing radially into the Earth from all directions, as light signals from different satellites would have different spatial paths—particularly when comparing an overhead satellite with one on the horizon. She did the math and found that the “error” due to spatial sink flow was only 2.4 mm, well within the known error. She also proved that Flowing Space reproduced the Shapiro Time Delay.
- Online Debates on
Relativity vs. Flowing Space
- Dark Matter Distribution: A
PowerPoint presentation she prepared for an astrophysics course.
On Her Education
Braddock
Scholar: Unschooled but not Uneducated: A Penn State Eberle
Science Journal article on Valerie’s unschooling and academic
achievements.- Interview with Valerie: Her responses were the basis for the above article.
On Her Suffering and
Disabilities
1. Her Anhedonia:
This was written in 2017, just after she started her first year at grad school.
This was before we understood that she had infections and an attachment
disorder.
2. Babesia-related
Problems at School in her Undergrad Years: Two weeks after starting
classes each year she would become fatigued, brain-fogged, and cold, and suffer
from extreme hunger
3. On Her Attachment Disorder
and its Effects on her Life: Written in May of 2023, while she was
seeing a psychotherapist and had begun to realize that she had an attachment
disorder.
4. Collection
of Her Writings about Her Constant Mental Torment
5. Dreams: This
collection of some of her dreams provides more insight into her
mental/emotional predicament.
6. On the
Impossibility of Her Life: Written in January of 2023 after returning
to grad school for the Spring semester. I had to bring her home soon after
this.
7. Draft Letter to David
Sylvian: She often thought of completing and sending this letter to
David, the 70s rock star who changed her life, but she never did.
8. Discussion
of Val’s Attachment Disorder with a Psychologist: From April
2024, several months after her death. I sent him some of her writings,
including her notes for her psychotherapist from the spring of 2023. I
described her to him. He agreed that she was a straightforward case and was
surprised that she had survived to the age of 30. He had seen many cases like
hers. He helped me to better understand her and our predicament.
9. Henry on
Val’s Attachment Disorder: A letter that I wrote to a concerned
friend in Aug. 2022, one and one-half years before her death
10. Henry on
Val’s Hopelessness: Written to a friend 10 days after her death
On Music
She listened to music much of
the time, including when doing homework. It gave her a feeling of connection to
the artists and elicited thoughts and feelings she could not otherwise have.
1. On the band Tool: She explains why she loved their music so much. She was born at the right time, for the 1990s provided her with many bands that expressed anger, despair, and anxiety, thereby mirroring her emotions. She never liked sweet, melodic music. From a young age she listened to Pink Floyd, Papa Roach, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Korn, Rage Against the Machine, and Slipnot. She loved Einstürzende Neubauten for the complexity and novelty of their music. Because of them, she taught herself German. She could recognize songs in a second, and perfectly sing complex musical lines.
On the Female Problem
1. The
Basic Problem with Feminism: As part of Val’s attachment
disorder, she never had normal human feelings, and particularly never had
normal female feelings. Her mentality defaulted to a masculine type. She hated
being female. In some ways she was able to see her predicament, and that of all
women, objectively. She saw human sexual dimorphism as no different from that
of other animals. We have greater sexual dimorphism than some species, less
than others. For certain, human males and females are very different. She saw
that, in order for women to sexually attract men, and to make, feed and raise
babies, the Cosmos disadvantaged them in many ways relative to men. We did not
learn about her infections until she was 24. So until then she erred in blaming
the severity of disabilities on being female.
2. Proposed
Book on the Female Problem and its Solution: She realized that feminism
was no solution to the female problem. She wanted those women who were not
content with their disadvantages to understand the true source of their
discontent and to stop fruitlessly and counterproductively blaming men. The solution
must begin with a full recognition of the problem and understanding of its
causes. As solutions, she envisioned hormonal manipulation in utero and/or
later in life (mostly higher testosterone levels), and eventually genetic
engineering to allow females to be as physically strong and as courageous,
inventive, task-oriented, and productive as men, yet still be able to produce
and feed babies. We humans have decided to interfere with Nature in many ways,
why not change ourselves? She collected and read many papers and books on this
subject. She later understand that her disabilities were caused by chronic
babesiosis, not only by being female.
4. Quotes on Feminism
and Male-Female Differences
5. Angry Thoughts
on Being a Woman: She wrote this a month before her death
Art
Drawing was her major
pastime. It engaged her with this world, gave her intellectual pleasure,
permitted her to make her fantasy world real, and expressed and relieved her
emotional turmoil.
1.
Slide Show of Selected
Drawings:
After her Babesia infection, she lost the ability to draw effortlessly.
Her brain function and connectivity were degraded. She became very frustrated
with her drawings and despondent. Later, when the killing of nested parasites
inflamed her brain, she could draw only occasionally and poorly. It was a
severe loss for her. I put together this slide show for a student art show that
occurred the day before her memorial meeting at Penn State’s IGC.
2.
Triggered:
The face expresses how she felt all the time. In the caption, she explains the
purpose of her art. This is an example of art that helped to relieve her pain.
3.
Her Androgynous Fantasy
Couple: They weren’t really lovers, as Valerie didn’t
understand love as such. On the left is ND, an alien who came to Earth
masquerading as a human. ND knows everything about the Cosmos intuitively,
without language, and can form and shape matter by thought, including his/her
own appearance. Hans (crouching on right) is a human who is a malformed female
but identifies as male. Hans worked in a research facility with ND and figured
out that ND must be an alien. Hans was sexually attracted to ND, but ND was
unable to reciprocate. ND eventually gave Hans some her his/her special
abilities—the kinds of abilities Valerie wanted to transform her own
life. Both of her characters were self-inserts, expressing both her problems
and aspirations. She had no insight into any of this until her
“Husbando” revelation—when she fell in love with David
Sylvian. Her fantasies about him allowed her to have normal human feelings for
the first time in her life, and eventually allowed her to understand the nature
and severity of her attachment disorder. When she was distraught, I could get
her to cheer up a bit by asking her to talk about David or her alien fantasy
characters.
Other Topics
1. On the Cosmos and Our
Purpose Here
Photos
1.
With Her
Family in Lebanon in 2008: A picture taken at her mother’s
school, Sophie Hagopian, in Bourj Hammoud just outside Beirut. She was 15 years
old and anorexic at this time. Babesiosis induced an insane hunger that forced
her to eat, even when full. Otherwise she would suffer from severe malaise. By
this time, she found that she could control the hunger by eating extremely
small amounts of food. Later, starving herself no longer helped. When stressed
the hunger would worsen and she would have to “stuff her face” almost
continuously to not only satisfy the hunger but to be able to function and to
sleep.
2.
Valerie’s
Graduation in 2016: We did not yet know about her infections. She
needed high steroid doses to control the inflammation in her brain and get
through the end of the last semester. After she came home, we stopped the
steroids and she was left extremely fatigued for months.
3.
Receiving
Plasmapheresis in October 2020: She was not able to tolerate any
antibabesial treatment up to this time. Desperate to find something that could
help her, we followed a neurologist’s advice and gave her a 5-day,
high-dose corticosteroid treatment for presumed autoimmune encephalitis. When
the steroids wore off her immune reaction to the parasites greatly increased.
She was left in a much worse state—unable to walk outside or even watch
videos with us. She began needing to take very high steroid doses to eat, sleep
and get out of bed. The neurologist then prescribed plasmapheresis. While she
was doubly immunosuppressed I took over her treatment—and started her on
very strong antibabesial medications. We quickly killed a large number of the
exposed parasites resulting in severe hemolysis, marked improvements, and a
large decline in her steroid requirement.
4.
At the Camden
Aquarium in March 2022: After 1.5 years of antibabesials and
fibrinolytic enzymes she improved enough that for the first time in 3 years she
was able to make this trip with me to Philadelphia. We visited the zoo and the
Camden Aquarium. I cried with happiness as I watched her lean down to touch the
stingrays.
5.
With Dad at Luray
Caverns and 
Choosing a Geode
there in July 2022.
6.
With Dad in Philadelphia in
July 2023: She was gradually becoming more functional with the clearing
of Babesia parasites from her brain’s blood vessels using
lumbrokinase and nattokinase. She was able to walk all over Center City for 2
days and tour two museums. However, her appearance had been altered by the very
high doses she needed to get through the 2022-2023 grad school year. Her face
became more Cushingoid and her belly more protuberant. This added insult to
injury. She hated her Cushingoid appearance immensely. However, she never had a
choice—she had to take the steroid doses she required to continue to
clear the parasite nests and get better. She became enraged whenever she saw
herself in a mirror because it meant that she could never attract the
androgynous young man she needed to fix her attachment disorder, and therefore
had no chance to have a life she could tolerate.
7.
Val and I Taking a
Walk in October of 2023: Just one month before her death. We took a walk
together every day when she was able and we talked continuously. She often
complained to me about how there was no reasonable possibility of her ever
having a life that she would want. She didn’t like to complain to
me—but she often had to. She was proud of herself when she could avoid
complaining to me, because she knew how much it hurt me. I argued against her
conclusions because I could not bear to think of life without her, but in the
end I believe she was right. I could not fix her attachment disorder, and no
real person could. She was also very heavily infested with Babesia
parasites (probably due to her congenital immunosuppressive Bartonella
infection), and she needed such extremely high steroid doses to control her
brain inflammation when she was dissolving Babesia nests and killing Babesia
and Bartonella parasites. She was essentially an untreatable
case—one that only a desperate father-physician would have ever persisted
in treating.
Let me know what you think.
hlindner1 at yahoo period com