not-yet-known not-yet-known not-yet-known unknown Episode 2: The plant 30 years after discovering Gilvocarcin V, I was weeding around Lake Elkhorn near my home in Columbia and developed a strange itching and eventually petikiae (indications of internal bleeding). I ended up in the ER, where they found I had no visible platelets in my blood, a condition thought to be lethal. Then, while sitting there, I turned a sick yellow color and genuinely freaked out the docs. But I didn’t have any liver function problems. My friend and later husband Pete Chadwick said that I was more yellow on one side of my body than the other. I recovered after a transfusion of platelets and was at home working on my computer with a window on my right, as I had done right after weeding around the lake. I suddenly realized I had had a light-mediated reaction, as the color gradation on my body matched the light exposure from the window! [skin color change also happens in patients treated with 8=MOP]. And the sick yellow color on my skin was the same color as Gilvocarcin. I went back and photographed the plant. The State of MD web site identified it as Giant Hogweed (but not giant when I plucked it), a toxic plant with a chemical that is also a structural variant of 8-MOP and Gilvocarcins! (Figure 2). I had discovered the cause of my health scare. Did the Doc who attended to me, telling me I had leukemia or an autoimmune disease (which I didn’t) and hemolysis of the red blood cells causing the color (which would have been uniform on my body), believe me when I told him what I had discovered? No, he didn’t. What a coincidence related to my work. And why did I survive without platelets? It’s my guess that my Basque blood provided an alternative protection, as the Basques, ensconced in the Pyrenees for millenia, are a genetic bottleneck. The immune system is incredibly redundant.