I Will Not Suffer In Silence

Spent all day yesterday sneezing and having intermittent faucet dripping nose action. Had some mild coughing fits but nothing too bad. The worst part was the foggy brain and being SO tired. And then the sinus headache started in around dinner time.

My man decided last night that since both of us are now sick, that he’d buy us dinner instead of having to make dinner. We got something quick and cheap and brought home Boston Market food. Of course, as I sat there chowing down, the food tasted a bit sweet to me. I said “great, I think there’s corn syrup in this”.
And I was right. I thought the corn syrup was in the creamed spinach but no, it was actually in the fecking squash casserole! And there’s wheat in the squash casserole, too! Not enough for me to get sick on it seems, but obviously I want to avoid it in the future.

Throughout the day and even after dinner, I found my stubborn streak and held onto it tightly, and got over a full day’s work done for my business. Even went out and bought printer paper, and though it’s a shade off, it still does the trick for printed reports. I’ll get OCD later and try again to match the colour from the site to printed paper.

Today I started off the day with a really bad nightmare, and it took me about an hour to settle down (I think chamomile tea and a nice email from my friend wanting to buy my product helped, too).

I’ve been VERY tired again today, and my eyes feel itchy and swollen, AND I’m still feeling like george is gonna be here any second, too. I wish he’d make up his fecking mind and be early already, instead of dragging on the pain for days before the Real Pain.

I keep trying to get work done, but I can’t focus for shit. And now the coughing has started again. GAH.

I hate today and it’s not even noon, yet.

Back on July 6, 2006, I had eaten buckwheat pancakes and had a hypoglycemic attack, which is also what happens when I eat foods containing wheat. I suspected I was allergic to gluten, not just wheat as an isolated grain.

Since that time, I’ve been terrified of buckwheat, despite numerous sources citing it as gluten free.
I’ve also read over the past year that buckwheat is easily contaminated by glutenous flours and grains. That’s likely what happened to me last year when I used a buckwheat pancake mix - there must have been some glutenous flour contamination going on.

My health counselor gave me a cupfull of buckwheat a few months ago, and told me to soak the grain for hours, then rinse it, before cooking it. It was not in powdered form.

Well I tried that last night - I soaked it overnight, and today I made a breakfast porridge out of it, with a banana and cinnamon. It was tolerable, taste-wise. As I ate it, my stomach grumbled and gurgled a bit, but I did not have a sugar attack, nor did I feel nauseated, nor did I have intestinal panic.

So, lesson learned - I will eat buckwheat, but I will do so with extreme caution.

I felt crappy on Monday and Tuesday.
Tuesday was even moreso, with the uterine pain and the sloshy feeling inside growing more intense with the commute in to work. My shift started at 8am and I just barely made it before a ‘tardy’ could be declared, because traffic sucked on the way in again.

After fighting traffic and uterine pain, then I sugar crashed. This, after having eaten a full breakfast, consisting of two eggs, two gluten-free waffles, and gluten-free rice milk. I don’t eat eggs very often anymore since the gallbladder pain I had last month, but I was tired of sausage or flax shakes or tuna pate as my breakfast options. I felt dizzy and nauseated and headachey - classic symptoms of the sugar crash feeling. I hadn’t had any wheat, so it must be sugar crash, which ALWAYS happens right before george. I’d been crashing even after full meals at breakfast and lunch for the past few days. This happened around 9am.

And then, george showed up by about 9:30am. The cramps began setting in, thankfully not at warp speed this time, so I pulled my new boss aside and asked for a word.
We went into an empty meeting room and I told her what I go through each month, how it’s being handled by HR, and that it was time for me to go. Told her I’ll likely be out for two days because of the pain. She sounded really supportive and actually even angry on my behalf, for the way HR has been treating me, making me get a doctor’s note each time. She then told me that she went out on maternity leave twice during her employment with this company, and both times she had to FIGHT to get the pay owed her according to the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) - and that this company fought her both times in having to pay out, and did so reluctantly.
WHY the hell would she stay at this company? I’m so sorry to hear her story, because the woman who is now out on maternity leave, the one who broke out in hives in front of me while panicking one day - she was RIGHT and JUSTIFIED in her paranoia surrounding the FMLA. And now she too will have to fight to get the money owed her. All because she wanted to procreate.

So, sucks to say it but it’s good to know that I’m not alone in the harrassment. I’m not singled out.

I got home from work by around 11:30am yesterday and took my medication. I spent the rest of the day in the usual drug haze, with a heating bad on my lower back and another one on my pelvic area. I was stubborn though and couldn’t lay down - was too fidgety - so my pain lasted that much longer as a result, and my entire back felt like it was locked up from steeling against the pain all day.

Eh, good thing I didn’t go in to work today, either. It’s the first rain and traffic is screwed. I’d have been late to work, anyway. Check out the speed limit on south-bound 880 - it’s only 25MPH right now:

I’m actually feeling pretty good right now, but I’m nearly over feeling guilty about work. I’m not beating myself up over it. I acknowledge consciously that although I’m not in pain at the moment, I made the right choice by staying home because it is likely, given the consistency in my pain cycle, that I will be in grave pain today, and I don’t want to be at work when it does happen, because the ride home would be grueling and I’d be crying. Been there, done that. Multiple times in the past ten years.

Oh, on the forgetting note:
Monday night, I RSVP’d with my health counselor to meet her after work on Tuesday. Tuesday night came around and I was lying on the bed with a sore lower back due to george when she came knocking at the door. Whoops. I forgot. Although I really must blame this on the pain meds and medical condition rather than on just all out forgetting. So I’ve forgiven myself. Good thing the health counselor was understanding, too. Good thing she only lives next door.

At work today my boss pulled me aside and:

1. wanted to know what my surgeon had said on Friday, and wanted to let me know that she’ll need me to let the CEO’s new right-hand-man know about my health condition in a bid to try to work something out to keep me
2. wanted to let me know that she was disappointed to not see my resume for an internal job that’s opening up - for the email-support-only team. The internal job offering closed yesterday.

I told her:

1. There’s nothing more my surgeon can do since hormones didn’t work, and sure, no problem, I’ll tell Mr. Guy all about my condition, no problem.
2. Sorry, but I’ve been BEDRIDDEN ALL WEEK. Submitting a resume was the last thing on my mind.

Hell, I don’t even want to be at that company anymore. I purposefully didn’t submit my damned resume. As it was, my boss told me she’ll “break convention” and take my resume, even though HR closed the offering internally. Rather than admit to her that I don’t want to stick around, I handed my resume to her.

I started off the day without george, but after lunch he returned. I had cramps and hot flashes and wondered if I should go home. But I stuck it out because if I would have taken yet another day, it’d be one more nail in the coffin of my employment there, sooner than expected. Why not take it? I dunno. Stubborn, I guess. Or stupid retarded.

I got home and there was a message on the machine - it was the doctor’s office saying they WON’T write me a note excusing me for three days of work this week - that now I have to come in for an appointment before they’ll give me any note at all.

Fecking lovely. Well there’s the final nail in the coffin. If I can’t get an appointment for this Saturday, then I don’t have a note, and if I don’t have a note, then each day off work counts as one incident each and I’m as good as fired. I’ve got one incident on record from last month already. I have a total of three. After three they can fire me.

Tonight my man took me out to a low-key dinner. I drove so he could have a drink, because his job is now talking job cuts.

I can’t handle all this stress. My forehead is broken out again fresh this week with over a dozen zits, and my left thumb looks like leprosy again - eczema from stress or diet or both. I told my man I not only want to quit my job, I don’t want to take another job. And he can’t afford to take care of me. I asked him, if he got laid-off work today, could he make rent and bills next month?

No, he can’t.

And he thinks he can support me if I lose my job?!?!?

This is the American Way, folks. People constantly counting on that next paycheck, never saving any money for emergencies - using all their income on toys and food and other frivolties.

So much for me being the designated driver last night! George came back and killed me dead by early afternoon, and I realised I had not brought my Tylenol3 with me.

My friend had some Darvocet that he gave me. I took that with a muscle relaxer but it still took a couple hours to fully kick in. Meanwhile, I sat or laid around all frowny, dealing with the pain in the midst of the weekend-long gathering.

Once the meds kicked in, I was stoned for the rest of the day. The cramps finally went away after nearly 4 hours. I realised what I’d done wrong. I’d conjured the bleeding/clots and therefore cramps because I had eaten some chocolate-covered espresso beans. Chocolate and caffeine stimulates the body’s endocrine system. This affects hormones. The uterus is regulated by hormones. So the uterus reacted and went WTF?
And presto - I birthed baby squid for hours in major pain.

I …

Am a dumbass.

So when it came time for people to want to go to the casinos in South Lake Tahoe, I was unable to be their designated driver, as I was still stoned on pain meds. :(

People were able to go anyway, and a few of us stayed behind and lazed about. When everyone came back, the drinking began anew, with Lemondrops!

I am cut off from drinking due to surgery coming up in five days, but I was able to taste the Lemondrops. It was soooo good! I definitely would have gotten trashed with the group on those.
In fact, everyone made a good stab at partying like the olden days, but alas, the party petered out by 1am.
I went to bed by 2am and slept like a log (Friday night, I slept like shit, but it was the first night in town and I always sleep like shit).

Welp, it’s 9:45am - I’d better get my arse in gear - people are calling and will be showing up soon for brunch!

At a party tonight, I was asked, “do you have a sunburn?”, to which I replied something along the lines of, “no, I always get a flushed face when I’m drinking. I blame it on my Appalachian family - they’re a mix of Scotch-Irish and get red faces when drinking booze.”

Well curiosity got the best of me in this late hour and I googled it.

I found goaskalice. Hm! I never knew that. I’m not Asian, but that’s still fascinating.

Then I found a webmd.com article. Hey! Neat! I drank white wine predominantly tonight, and some gluten-free beer (yes gluten-free beer, it exists).

Fascinating! So white wine is a trigger for red face! Very interesting indeed.

I wonder if there’s a yeast connection? If so, I’ll have to eliminate several alcoholic beverages from my diet now, too. :(

You know how sometimes you just want a fast meal? And you go and buy something frozen or you go to a drive-through “restaurant”?

Last night, I just wanted something fast. I had bought two small frozen quiches earlier yesterday to have at work for a late breakfast, but never had the chance to eat them (and I’d brought other food for lunch).

So when I got home, I was dead tired, and I popped the quiches in the microwave.

I peeled off the yeast-ladden crust and dug out the egg/cheese portion, ate, and went to bed.

Well, apparently peeling off the pie crust is not good enough.
I still somehow ingested pie crust, and within a few hours, was awoken by intestinal pain that made me whimper, and an immediacy to get to the toilet.
I’m glad it was only one round of painful intestinal madness which also drove me to nausea.

I’d love to update you on other stuff, including the job, but I have no time. Gotta go to work, now.

The george cravings hit me about ten days ago, and I’ve been gorging on chocolate and cheese-popcorn ever since, along with the usual cherry soy ice cream.

Yesterday, when I was out with my boyfriend shopping, the fatigue slammed down on me. We’d gone to about eight places. It was a struggle to get through the last four - I was just SO tired.

On the way home, I realised we still had a party to go to as well. I groaned. When we got home, it was 8pm and I took a nap for exactly one hour. Got up, threw myself together, and we went over to the party.

It appeared to be a housewarming/birthday, although the hostess had told us not to bring anything, so we didn’t. I mean, I’m beyond broke right now to begin with. I’m negative in the bank account with overdraft charges accumulating.

It was nice to see a bunch of people in person that I see often online, although I was feeling the usual social anxiety, so I began drinking. That’s how it goes with me. I got a nice buzz going but did not get drunk, so I’m proud of myself for that, but let me tell you, the social anxiety was pretty harsh for me last night. There were three obvious instances where as I was talking, people gave a look to another person with raised eyebrows like they had no idea what planet I was from, and then within thirty seconds, they walked away. It’s only with these few people that this always happens, too, which is why I’ve refused to get closer to these people.
This in turn makes me turn more towards a hermit, and I’ll end up not going out for longer and longer stretches of time. I could just go out and get additional friends to hang with, but as I get older, I find that it’s not really necessary. I actually prefer being a hermit. It’s also scary, because that’s the route my mom took, and I’d rather not turn into my mom.

Anyway, back to george. I felt kinda crampy last night at the party, and then even more crampy this morning. Now I’m waiting for george to just show up. He’s due tomorrow but it feels like he’ll be here today.

And then there’s the diet/george thing combined. Since I’ve been having massive food cravings, I’ve been eating a lot of sugary and caffinated foods. This in turn has led me to be moody, and has also contributed to the myriad hypoglycemic attacks I’ve been having for about a week, now.

On Thursday, the PMS was so bad that I caved in and had four Bagel Bites. They were left in the freezer from a party last month. I knew that this food contained yeast and wheat, but I was so thoroughly sick of chicken and eggs as my main staples, that I snapped and went for truly forbidden foods.
I did not appear to have a reaction to these four Bagel Bites! I couldn’t believe it.

So the next morning, as I rushed to get ready for my last day at work, I was still sick and tired of eggs for breakfast every day that I reached again for the Bagel Bites. I had five this time. I was already starting to sugar crash before I ate them, because I’d taken so long to eat on account of indecision that morning.
But within an hour of consuming the Bagel Bites, I got a migraine and my head felt swimmy like I was buzzed on alcohol, and it was difficult to see and concentrate, and I felt like I was starving again.
I took some ibuprofen and chugged water to try and counteract the insulin reaction. I didn’t feel better until I had lunch. I had Tilapia and yams that I’d made that morning, and that helped me immensely.

There’s good news and bad news in this story. The good news is that I didn’t have a reaction to the yeast in the Bagel Bites. That would have been a GI reaction. I only had the hypoglycemic attack, which is a wheat reaction. So my threshold for yeast remains greater than for that of wheat… sorta.
I mean, I don’t have the GI reaction on low amounts of yeast, but I still have the candida rash on my chest. So there’s that issue.

The end result is that I still have to cut sugar (and yeast is part of that) from my diet once again, and I really do have to keep avoiding wheat.

I’ve not lost any further weight after reintroducing sugar into my diet, so I’m hoping for additional weight loss once I remove sugar again.

When I will remove sugar again…that is the big question. I was supposed to do this last month. I’m eating soy ice cream as I type. Hmmm. How about… starting this Thursday, I will cut out all sugar. Yes, I can do this.

This morning I microwaved a freezer quiche. The crust has wheat flour in it.

I decided that since I’ve nothing pressing to do today, I might as well do a threshhold test, so I ate about two good bites of the crust along with the quiche, and just dug the egg out of the rest of the crust.

The two mouthfuls was all it took to give me a reaction.

The reaction occurred about two hours after ingestion, which is the normal reaction time with me and wheat.

The reaction is fuzzy-headedness / low-grade headache with plugged ears and hypoglycemia.
My gut did not react - that happens with yeast.

So, now I take it down another notch and only try one mouthful of wheat flour. Too bad I only had one quiche to test with. I’ll have to either buy another or find some more wheat flour in one of B’s foods to do another test with tomorrow afternoon.

To combat the current hypoglycemic attack, I’m eating a turkey/chicken/portabella burger (also a pre-packaged freezer food I recently bought and don’t recommend buying again cuz it tastes kinda gross). The burger is smothered in mozarella cheese. I chose these two foods because I believe it will spike my protein levels, and the yeast is minute in the mushrooms and the cheese - it doesn’t give me a gut reaction. Oh, and I’m chugging lots of water, too.

5:26pm Edit: My blood sugar stabilised within an hour and a half of eating the hamburger patty and chugging water. Wheee.

I’ve been suffering hypoglycemic attacks, dermatitis and anal bleeding again, so I’ve decided to eliminate soy (as much as I can - since it’s like corn - it’s in everything). I am also eliminating corn again, too. These things will be eliminated for ten days, at which point I will reintroduce one at a time over a period of seven days apart.

I found out that the dermatitis is exacerbated by cleaning products - namely those bleach-added cleaning wipes that I’m so fond of. So now I use rubber gloves when using the wipes, and I’m nursing broken skin.

Job and money stress are NOT helping with the dietary restrictions.

I had a mocha and a scone for lunch (although aren’t you excited for me that I didn’t have a reaction to the scone?).

January 11, 2009 edit: I am still consuming soy and corn and I still have not been able to determine whether they really do cause me the problems listed above. The only soy I consume is via tamari when I go out for sushi, and soy lecithin where it may be contained in the ingredients of certain prepackaged foods I eat.