The Blue Man

The Blue Man

blue period and then moved on to different colors. Paul Karason knows where the famous artist was coming from. After literally living the blues for more than a decade, the real-life “Blue Boy” is ready to try a different color. “I’m anxious to try green,” Karason joked to TODAY’s Matt Lauer in New York Thursday. “You get a little bored with blue.” A year and a half ago, Karason vaulted from life as a relative recluse to Internet fame when he first appeared on TODAY to tell how he turned his skin the color of a ripe Concord grape with years of self-administered doses of colloidal silver. He went from a man who didn’t like to speak in public and didn’t appreciate the often-negative attention his singular skin color brought him to giving interviews on national shows and being approached with acceptance by people who had seen his story.

When he first appeared on TODAY, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical editor, talked him into getting his first complete medical checkup in years. The colloidal silver that had been collecting in his tissues and turning his skin blue is a heavy metal, and there was fear it could have affected his organs, particularly his liver. “I didn’t have much choice. I couldn’t find the cave I was looking for,” Karason said with his characteristic self-deprecating humor.Karason passed all the tests with flying colors (of a bluish hue) and was given a clean bill of health. Since then, Karason told Lauer, he has had other medical issues that are unrelated to his self-treatment with silver compounds. Those caused the 58-year-old to move from California, where he had gone to get away from what he felt were the negative reactions of others in his previous home in Oregon, to Bellingham in northwest Washington state.

“You can actually get health care up there,” he said of a state that has made an effort to make health care available to all citizens. After spending his life distrusting the medical profession, Karason was full of praise for his doctors in his new hometown. “I have a very good primary care physician — best doctor I’ve ever had. He gives me referrals to people who are just the best in the field. Washington — particularly Bellingham — has a medical community that’s just absolutely outstanding,” he enthused. “I had a blocked artery that required stents [be] put in place, and prostate cancer — oh, that was a thrill,” he told Lauer. He reported that his PSA (prostate specific antigen) numbers are way down now. “Presumably that’s a good thing,” he said ironically. Karason was also engaged 18 months ago, to Jackie Northrup. But while the two remain friends, they no longer have wedding plans. Karason declined to discuss the matter further othen than to confirm that they are no longer officially engaged.