I’ve been sitting on this post for two years now. It is a difficult subject, related to a very close University friend of mine. A few post titles ran through my head. Krasi is his name, an abbreviation of Krasimir. As with most Slavic names it has a meaning: Krasi means beauty or adornment, and mir means peace.
I also have another title: “When fear overwhelms reason”. This one relates to the cause of his death.
Or “The triumph of pseudoscience”. It too relates to the reason for his early departure.
I can come up with many titles of this sort, but his name actually represents his character: adornment of peace. He was a steady, calm and collected person, who radiated joie de vivre. The spirits would settle in his presence to a joyful and pleasantly tranquil atmosphere. Conversations around the table would run for hours, yet it would feel like minutes.
And they had to be around the table, which would always feature some delicacy or other, even in the times when nothing could be found in the grocery stores. If there was something special to be sold in some store, Krasi would be first to find out and soon have it on his table. If there was only an egg in the fridge, he’d find a way to make a dinner for four.
I remember once when Vanya’s parents went away and four of us settled in their big apartment to study for an exam. When it was time for dinner, Vania looked in the fridge, expecting that her parents would have left some food. “There is nothing in the fridge!” she announced almost in tears. Krasi went to check. “What do you mean there is nothing? There are eggs, and cheese, and…” Soon the four of us would dine on delicious omelette.
He enjoyed life tremendously, but his entire life went through his stomach. I have never known anyone relishing so much good food and good wine. This however would cost him later in his life, when he had to go on a diet but he couldn’t refrain from the temptations. My very first fond memories of Krasi are related to catching and preparing fresh water crabs. It was a ritual that only the boys could perform. They’d go to a river near Sofia, that Krasi knew was full of crabs. It had to be midnight. Wearing flash lights on their foreheads, they’d catch the crabs and bring them home. The crabs had to be alive until preparation the very next day. Preparation was not to be entrusted to anyone. Krasi would do it all. There were herbs and spices in the water and after all was done, we’d enjoy delicious crabs, with good wine of course.
Alex and Krasi met in 2004 over a 5-hour dinner in a restaurant room reserved just for us (my introduction to Bulgarian fast food – A). He wrote about his experience in the “Bulgaria – Alex’s first impression” post.
Since then, we hadn’t visited Bulgaria without having a long, pleasant dinner with Krasi and Vanya at a place we hadn’t been before. Krasi knew the inexpensive and unpretentious restaurants with the best food.
He’d always recommend the wine and rakia we had to take with us back to Canada, and often just gave us some that one couldn’t easily find in the market. And until the end, he’d pick the restaurant bill with a smile: “You’ll pay me back when I visit you in Canada. I am accumulating my credit drop by drop.” We’d talk about the times when we’d all retire and he’d dream to take us to mountains and wineries that no one else would.
Alas, these times would never be. By the time we retired, Krasi’s health was already in jeopardy. And I, together with his widow and many others, blame it on his stubborn belief in a pseudoscience. He actually believed it was a real science since the person involved was a professor. Needless to say, this person has a soviet-era title of professor in something not related to his post-communist ventures making money in a then unregulated market where everything was OK as long as one could convince the gullible that it would do miracles where contemporary medicine couldn’t.
Below are the words of his widow Vanya, translated as closely as I could. At the time, she wanted to write to someone in Bulgaria, but didn’t believe anyone could help.
Vanya’s words:
Krasi wasn’t religious, he wasn’t superstitious, but it was very easy for someone “to get under his skin”. He was well-meaning, he couldn’t lie and believed that the rest of the world was like him. If he believed in someone, he believed in him unreservedly. That’s how he believed in the “great” professor Dimitar Dimitrov (chemist by education), the creator of the food supplement Sirius-D. In the fall of 2010 Krasi was diagnosed with aseptic necrosis of the hip joint. He began a traditional treatment in the orthopedic hospital. (I have to add here that their first option was to replace the hip).
We delivered injections of German medicines; they gave him transfusions… There were results, however it was clear that the treatment would be long… I don’t know how, but after 2 months, he (Krasi) learned about the panacea Sirius-D. He connected with the “great” professor Dimitrov, who, he said, had told him to stop all the treatment and instead take a regular dose of the food supplement Sirius-D that he “prescribed”. If taken as prescribed it restores all the muscles, he was told. And Krasi fell for it hook, line and sinker.
(My comments: This last one should have been the first alarm bell. He had damaged joints, not
muscles. I never managed to find out from Krasi how this miracle supplement was supposed to work or what was in it. He didn’t know – it was the professor’s secret, he’d say. But he was convinced that it would eventually work. He was taking enormous amounts of this “food”. He was spending 10 times my parents combined pension at the time for it. I had talked to other friends who were less educated but more grounded and they all said – it is known that Sirius-D clogs the arteries.)
No one could convince him otherwise. From the fall of 2010 to 03.10.2016, when he had a massive heart attack, he was taking serious doses of this food. We called emergency; the doctors saved him. They put in a stent and told him to go for a second stent in two months (the second artery was partially clogged). After the surgery he felt well. He went to see the “professor”, whose opinion (according to Krasi) was: The heart is a muscle, Sirius-D regenerates all the muscles; take it and you don’t need anything else. Krasi accepted his advice. Then we argued to no avail. There was no result, either from the fight, or from Sirius-D. His internal organs started failing: stomach, liver, kidneys… the weak heart couldn’t support them anymore. Eh, which could endure… The worst was his stomach. During the summer of 2017 he was in hospital a few times; didn’t have any energy, couldn’t eat, was vomiting; had blood transfusions many times… Finally, he decided that he had to undergo the second heart operation. It was almost a year after the heart attack and the recommended second stent. At that point all 3 arteries were clogged and it was too late for stents. Heart valves were not working either. He had 3 bypasses, replacement of one of the valves and repair of the other.
During all these years we’d meet annually with Vanya and Krasi for dinner at a restaurant. After 2010 he was walking with a crutch. We tried to convince him to get joint replacement surgery. It was in vain. This “miraculous food” had helped others, he claimed. It will help him too… Every year we visited, he’d say he was getting a little better, and that he could do a few steps without the help of a crutch.
In 2015 he drove us to Borovets, where we took the lift to Yastrebets peak and he walked without crutch or cane for couple of hundred metres on uneven terrain. The pain was visible on his face, but he was hopeful. We, as everyone else, couldn’t see the improvement: rather, it was obvious to us that it was getting worse. By that time, however, the hip was too far gone for joint replacement. Not that he ever considered it.
We met Krasi one last time in the fall of 2018. (We don’t have photos from these times. Our last photos with Krasi were in 2016. In 2017 and 2018 Krasi was too weak and our conversations were focused on his health). In a small pizza restaurant around the corner from their apartment. It was after his second heart operation. He was weak, and I am not sure he believed he’d see us again. Vanya took me aside and whispered in my ears that he again wasn’t keeping to his diet. After dinner, when having a goodbye hug, he stared long into my eyes, saying to Alex in English “Didi (my Bulgarian nickname) is a very old friend of mine”. He held me tight and stared into my eyes for as long as he could. I knew he was saying his final goodbye.
Back home in October Alex tried to encourage him to keep to his diet:
“Hi Krasi, I want to thank you for making the effort to get together when we were in Sofia. I do understand that it is not easy for you these days. Having dinner with you is always a highlight of my time in Bulgaria. I remember my first trip when you treated us to a feast at the traditional restaurant. It was my first trip across the Atlantic since my family moved to Canada, and my first experience being immersed in a culture that was foreign to me. Your smile and hospitality will always stay with me, and I have always wanted to reciprocate and welcome you to Canada. Given your current challenges I understand that you believe that door to be closed, but I still hope to see that day. Seemingly insurmountable obstacles are not always so. I encourage you to keep a positive attitude and healthy life style for the future, and I will keep wishing the same for you.”
Alex’s email was ray of sunlight in Krasi’s last few months. Then at end of November I had a bad dream about Krasi being quite sick. Vania e-mailed me that my dream was right; the last 3 days he had stomach problems and finally agreed to visit a doctor. After multiple visits to emergency, he eventually had to be operated on; the heart survived, but the subsequent peritonitis was the last straw.
We all truly believe that had he not met this “professor” (we put quotes around professor, because despite the fact that he is a professor in chemistry form the soviet-era, he is not a professor in medicine), and taken enormous amounts of his “miracle” food supplement for 8 years (!?), without any knowledge of its ingredients and its effect on the human body, he’d be still alive and well. For the life of me, I could never understand how such an intelligent person could fall in such a marketing trap.
I always say that in the lack of a belief system (destroyed during communism), people tend to believe in shamans and charlatans and there is always someone taking advantage of this. Remember the magnetic blankets I wrote about in Rila Monastery & Melnik post? And needless to say, every time someone mentions alternative medicine, especially in Bulgaria, I become extremely agitated.
I tried to find more information on the “food” Krasi was taking. At the time he was buying kilograms of powder. I found a site (a few actually) that now sells pills (way less harmless than the kilograms of food Krasi was taking-provided you don’t take kilograms of pills) and claims it contains soluble animal protein. (Great, the last thing Krasi needed was more animal protein).
According to this site the “professor”, who we think of as a self-proclaimed medical expert (how else would you explain the statement that this food cures so many diseases?) is still alive. I bet he is not taking his own “medicine”. As far as I know the company is run by his son.
There isn’t much information aside from the repeated statements that it cures almost everything, it is harmless (really!!??) and how to order online. I took screenshots of the websites in English on Feb. 7 2021. Included below are a few screenshots from these sites (highlights are mine).
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