For the last several months, I've felt incredibly sick every time I ate. I've had intestinal "distress" so loudly other people in the room could hear it. My belly has gotten round and sore. Food seems to return not long after I eat it. In short, I've been a mess.
I've been this kind of a mess before. It generally goes away on its own; when it hasn't, my chiropractor put me on a crazy diet that made it go away. But this time. This time it brought back pain. One-sided back pain that feels like I'm being stabbed with a knitting needle--focused but not pointed, if that makes any sense at all.
We talked to our nurse friend and we've read up on the internet, and it looks like I may have Crohn's disease. This is not optimal.
Most of the websites and books and things talk about anti-inflammatories and steroids and immunosuppressants and surgeries without talking about, say, food, which, it stands to reason, would have something to do with how inflamed or not inflamed any particular set of intestines would be. So today C. and I trotted off to the bookstore to look at holistic books.
Here's what most of them tell me:
*don't eat anything that comes from a cow's udder
*don't eat wheat, pasta, potatos, or grains of any kind
*don't consume caffiene, alcohol, or carbonation
*avoid all sugars, preservatives, and additives
My response: "What is it I'm allowed to eat again?"
My response involved a lot more crying and wailing and gnashing of teeth, frankly. I'm not very good at being denied things, especially food. It tends to make me feel very small and very abandoned. But I really want to avoid steroids, which made me so sleepless and mean that I scared C, and surgery, for obvious reasons, so I'm going to try this and see if it helps calm things down.
C. is being wonderful about it, even though cheese, bread and wine are her three favorite food groups, and we went to the health food store and duly bought all of the things for a two-day liquid diet and the some-fruit-some-vegetable-lean-protein diet that I have to follow for two weeks. I know that I'll feel much more sanguine about things once the strict eating plan has made the pain, gas, and "distress" go away.
I'm seeing my doctor on Monday, and we'll see what she says. She tends to the hippy side of medicine anyway, so even if she's not convinced I have Crohn's, she'll likely think the food regimen is a good idea.
I really hate my health sometimes.
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