Life Without Cheese

And Other Events Since July 18 (For Real This Time)

Happy Solar Eclipse Day! This is perfect for today - I'm talking about cheese and my path - perhaps my path of totality.

Moon made of cheese, Total Eclipse

Once again, it has been more than a month since I have posted. Ugh.

I have written pages and pages in my head but haven't been able to make myself sit down at the computer and type. I'll say this: pneumonia recovery is intense; pneumonia recovery with the stress of borrowing money to pay bills, meeting with attorneys to discuss lost job and severance docs and attempting to file for unemployment benefits (mostly an exercise in frustration) is painful and overwhelming.

I'm going to try to not make this a whine fest. I'm struggling with that lately. I'm letting everything get to me and feeling like a failure most days when most of my life I have been an upbeat, positive, glass half full, PollyAnna Glad kind of girl.

Since my last post, lots and lots of ups - improvement in my health. I still sleep 9-10 hours a night (this for a lifelong 5-6 hour a night sleeper sounds crazy) but I haven't been napping during the say along with that sleep. I want to most days but it's not required as it was for two months. I turned a corner about a week ago - more energy, more color in my face and the lung exerciser (you know the weird plastic contraption where you have to keep the ball between the lines while getting the plunger to rise) is much easier now and stairs no longer cause a panic.

I have run - well walk/run - 3 times this week. Two to three miles. I'm as sore as if I had run a marathon - not kidding. For my running friends, I walk downstairs sideways. At night, I am coughing more, but from what I have read, I will likely have mucus created by the pneumonia for several months. Mucus is the enemy of asthma so I'm watchful of my peak flow numbers and how my lungs are feeling. B is incredibly watchful - he is very observant of my breathing and my purple lip when it shows up and takes better care of me than I do of myself. 💓

Eating - here's the cheese part. I miss cheese. I'm pretty sure I will always miss cheese. Dr. Trudy says I will likely not be able to have it again - at least not without consequences. I don't think I will get over not having cheese. I likely will get over having wheat and gluten - though I Do miss sandwiches and beer. As of Aug. 13, I made it two months on the elimination diet and ultra supplements including my daily shake (sometimes twice a day). I was supposed to only have one month left before the great adding back experiment began but Dr. Trudy thinks because of the pneumonia-steroids-antibiotic gut set back, I should add another month before I start the experiment. The experiment involves eating three servings of a banned food in one day and waiting 72 hours for any effects. You might remember I have 34 banned foods. If each food only takes the three days (in that it doesn't make me so sick I need more time to get over it), that's 102 days.

There are worse things and I feel better. My gut feels better. My brain feels better. My body is on the mend. I imagine I would be feeling pretty tremendous by now had I not gotten pneumonia.

Other happenings

My other sailboat is dead. My wooden sailboat - named Sloopy but I had another name chosen. I won't share it because I never put her in the water and conducted the name changing ceremony. I had to destroy her and throw her away. I went to move the boat from one storage spot to another and she had rotted out. My friend Karl and I figured out how to keep her local by chopping her up and dropping her at the local recycling center. That was July 19.

Since then, I have seen some beautiful sunsets; taken a couple of boat rides; had a couple of meltdowns - over feeling like a failure, questioning my existence, upset I still have barrel belly; made some fun food, watched a lot of HGTV and FOOD; discovered a decently yummy but weird vegan gluten free mac and cheese; had some very nice chats, texts, prezzies, coffee visits, boat visits and words of encouragement from lovely friends; packed and unpacked from my missed trips; celebrated B's birthday; and found more restaurants and kind chefs to put up with all my eating restrictions.

I have figured out a new path or a new path to begin the path of totality - more on that later. I'm excited and nervous. It's not traditional. I can keep getting well and do it. I might need a part-time job for a bit to go along with it. That's enough information for now. 

I made quinoa and roasted tofu stuffed poblano peppers

Those are sun dried tomatoes

From Jeri

I made edame hummus stuffed endive with seared tuna and scallions

Healthy is a Feeling

(Written Wednesday, May 10, on a hotel notepad while enjoying a beautiful view).

To borrow from my yoga studio's post: Health is not a look; it's a feeling.

After a recent blog post, more than couple of people told me I should stop worrying about how I look and just be happy. For me - the two often are inseparable. When I'm feeling healthy, I can do all the things that make me look healthy inside and out. There's a glow that comes from the inside - from endorphins and joy and feeling right with the world. And there are the physical changes that come from being active.

So what I'm saying is I don't feel well or healthy. I won't repeat the myriad of ailments and symptoms I have previously discussed (whined about). But I will tell you about the hope I have after meeting with the functional medicine doctor I mentioned.

I like her - Dr. T I'll call her. She's my age, talks a mile a minute and seems to know her stuff.

She didn't start our first appointment with "so what's going on? Why are you here?" Instead, she had read and studied the questionnaire that took an hour and a half to complete. She had come up with a hypothesis about my health but had a few blanks to fill and some blood work to check (that's on hold until I return from a work trip).

Dr. T also took recent tests and studied those instead of making me repeat them - no need to add to the health-care bill - thank goodness!

After writing down the long list of meds I take each day - for asthma, for allergies, for SIBO - and perusing some nutrient levels, Dr. T. said: well no wonder you are complaining of weight gain!" She said the drug cocktail alone could cause me to pack on pounds but deficiencies in vitamins A, D, B12, B6, iron and protein have sent my body into panic mode - holding on to everything it can. Fight or Flight and my body is fighting.

But why? More to be determined there but basically my body likely isn't absorbing the nutrients I give it. Determining if it can absorb any at all is the next step when I return from Miami.

Meantime, Dr. T has me doing a few things to help me feel better: She wants me to wean off of the acide reflux medicine - you have to wean off these things or your body freaks out and over produces acid. It's miserable - I know firsthand how hard it is to get off the purple pill. A tablespoon of apple cider vinegar - Bragg's only - before I eat a meal will help to level out the acid and ensure that only good acid is being produced. Also licorice tablets in between meals instead of Xantac or  Tums if there are issues.

Cod liver oil is another addition with Vitamin A, D and some omega-3 fatty acids. This one is tough if only mentally. The name! But just once a day (admittedly I never got around to it yesterday - I was focused on a bad tummy) and lemon flavored. It just feels weird going down (yes, Victoria, Ty, Duane, Tiff - I KNOW what you are thinking!)

After Dr. T determines how deep the SIBO goes - as in can I absorb any nutrients or do we need to fix the leak first and then add in supplements - she wants to put me on vitamins B12, B6, Iron and pre- and probiotics.

I'm hopeful - a lot more so than I have been in at least a year. I'm also pretty annoyed at doctors who ignored or didn't see low-iron, protein and vitamin levels. Looks like my iron has been low for at leat a year. Seriously - I could have been feeling better?! Well, maybe not if I couldn't absorb anything then - but still! I actually found out my iron was low - despite feeling not so hot and this explains my fatigue - because I tried to give blood 3 times in the past 6 months but each time was turned away for low iron.

So I hope to get my life back - and I hope that on a day I spent an hour in the ladies room at work yesterday morning and then slept for hours after work - hardly able to open my eyes - like I had a flu - you know that feeling right? I had planned to go for a run and to a museum. I haven't made plans with two dear friends who live in Miami for fear I'll have to cancel.

I'm not asking to run marathons again - though I would like to - I'm just asking for most of my life back - not necessarily the extreme parts.

I made it upstairs and outside to write this and enjoy the view, a glass of wine and free hotel hour snacks (i.e. dinner). But then had to head back to bed. Around 8, I put my shoes on and went for a walk - determined not to let the day totally beat me.

B said today, "I give you a lot of credit for keeping up with the exercise with all this."

I told him it makes me a more decent human. :)

Free Hugs with your cocktail. I feel like that could happen anywhere - but I like it.

My blog in my chicken scratch - my view while writing

Interesting on my walk

No words