I Will Not Suffer In Silence

Well ok. George is showing signs of impending do0m. I’ve had very minor cramping today and yesterday. Food cravings, especially for sugar, have been out of control.

I swear, I never thought I’d say this, but thank gods for Sucralose, although it has such a NASTY aftertaste and leaves me chugging water, it does the trick for a sugar fix. I’m sure one day soon, we’ll realise it’s as carcinogenic as Aspartame is purported to be.

Yesterday and today I have been all kinds of ragey, too. Like, seriously wanting to trash-the-house-and-scream-like-a-cave-woman type rage.

My mid and lower back has been really sore the past two days as well. I have to take time repeatedly to stretch, otherwise the pain is unbearable. But I haven’t taken any medication yet.

There’s also the hormonal core temperature wackiness going on, too. Yesterday, I went to bed in full on winter pajamas and was shivering. Today, I woke up freezing, then within an hour I had to turn on all the fans in the house. Then at the bank, while standing in line, I had a bonified hot flash, which left my face blotchy and stinging for over an hour.

But even with all that, I still haven’t had the pre-george pain I usually have by now. Let’s hope this month is easier on me.

Today I woke up and realised that george is due this Saturday.

Yet, I haven’t been focused on his impending arrival. I haven’t focused on any cramps … because there hasn’t been any!!

YAY!!

Feels like first time EVER I’ve had to think about when george is arriving, as opposed to two weeks beforehand, feeling like complete shit.

Perhaps all the dietary restrictions are working!

I’m coming up on my second menstrual cycle since going on the yeast-free diet, and starting Wednesday night, I began getting olfactory hallucinations of pizza just before bedtime. The scent was really strong, as though I’d just had pizza delivered.
I whimpered, of course.

A few days prior to that, I had a dream that I was making coffee in the morning, and I accidentally stirred in sugar and cream. I realised after the fact that I’d added verboten ingredients to it, and I remember saying “oh shit!” in the dream, staring down at the coffee, and then thinking, “well, I’d better drink it…don’t want to waste it”, and so I took a sip and it tasted SO good!!
I woke from that dream and whined. I’ve not had any coffee at all since going on this diet, because coffee itself is verboten. Previous to the diet, I couldn’t drink coffee first thing in the morning because it would lead to instant hypoglycemic attack. So dreaming of a morning ritual that includes making coffee is highly suspect.

This tells me that I’ve eaten something in the past week which has started to stir the little yeasty critters in my gut back to life again, and they’re trying to control my brain!!!

But what was it? I’m not keeping a food diary like a good girl. I should start doing that. Blah. I wonder if it was because I’d had the wheat cereal on the morning of May 19, and oatmeal on the morning of May 23rd? I remember those two dates because I’d noted hypoglycemic attacks in a monthly endo symptoms log that I keep, and I’d noted what brought those attacks on.

Anyway, PMS cravings won out and on Thursday, my boyfriend and I ordered Chinese food. My tummy was gurgly afterwards because of the soy sauce they use in the cooking, but it was soo good!

Today, I ate a sugar-free lifesaver candy, and it was so sweet from the sucralose that my eyes crossed, but it did the trick – it gave me the sugar fix I needed.

So, another month, another bout of food cravings, another month of nearly losing it emotionally, what’s new?
Same shit, different diet.

I guess it would help if I could remember to take my vitamins every day, too.

Oh, and on the drinking front…I went 26 days without a drop of alcohol. Then I had one small vodka on the rocks on May 20th. Then I went six days without drinking, before I had another small vodka on the rocks, and perhaps 1/4 glass of a mandarin vodka on the rocks after that, both on May 26th. I was at concerts on both occasions in which I drank liquor, which means I still get stressed out over being in social situations, and I still resort to alcohol to help chill me out.
BUT! And this is important – I haven’t gotten DRUNK to cope with social anxiety since going on this diet. Ha! It only took me 16 years to learn how to drink. :p

Oh, and you may ask ‘why vodka?’
I dunno. I thought it was ‘clean’? Not so much yeast? But I guess it’s made from potatoes, right? So I should really be going for rum or something, I dunno. I’m too lazy to research it right now.

Last week, I found some sugar-free cereal so I tried it out. For the rest of the day, I had severe indigestion. The cereal is whole wheat.
A few days ago, I tried the cereal again, and I got indigestion, stomach gurgle, puffy eyes, tingly nose and general irritibility.
So now wheat is out. The waffles I’ve been eating are wheat-free, thankfully. I need some semblance of bread in my diet!

I’d called my mom the other day to ask what my childhood allergies were. She grabbed the list she’s kept all these years and said she’d send it to me. My allergies are: tomato, corn, citrus, egg & dairy, wheat, feathers, dust, cotton lint, grass, trees, and mold/penicillin.

Of those, I know that my allergies to mold/penicillin are severe, followed by dust and lint and feathers, followed by fresh-cut grass. The others, I’d forgotten about over the years, and now it’s caught up with me.

So now, along with new restrictions based on the above, I’ve also just confirmed why soy cheese makes my stomach gurgly and makes me feel crappy after eating it – because they put casein in it and call it vegan! Bastard Dickweeds!

But that’s not all! Many of the soy-protein fake meat products out there contain “yeast extract”, which is really MSG!!

WTF?!?!!

So now I REALLY have to learn how to cook.

Ass.

But the good news is, I’ve lost 2 more pounds! I’m now at 170lbs (77kg).

OH, and I ate asparagus again tonight and I’ve been fine.

Well. It turns out, people on the Internet are misinformed…again! Shock and awe!

Now that I have two books on yeast overgrowth, these books tell me that anything with corn in it is BAD, mmkay?

So I have to ditch the corn tortilla crackers, and the taco shells completely, and read all labels for any corn ingredients. Apparently, corn easily succumbs to mold, and it is one of the most common of food allergens, because corn in many forms is in virtually everything we eat every day. Therefore, exposing oneself to the same food every day can produce an allergic reaction that ranges anywhere from headaches to indigestion to constipation/diarrhea.
So on the advice of two books, I’m omitting corn while on this diet.

The two books I bought are:

Chronic Candidiasis and The Yeast Connection Cookbook.

I tried eating shrimp today and now I have a headache and I felt like my blood sugar got wonky. I ate the shrimp with broccoli and asparagus, and I had lime infused sparkling water to drink.
Since I’ve not had a problem with the water or broccoli, I’m going to narrow it down to shrimp and/or asparagus.
So I’ll give the asparagus another whirl, but I’m omitting all shelfish for now.

Needless to say, this is turning into a bit more than a sugar-free/yeast-free diet. It’s now become a full-blown Find The Allergens diet on top of it.

That’s okay though. I like puzzles.

Today we are at week four of the yeast-free/sugar-free diet.
I weighed in at 172 lbs (78kg), which is a total for one month of 9 lbs (4kg) lost!

In the first seven days of the diet, I went from 181 lbs (82kg) to 176 lbs (79kg).
In the second week of the diet, I dropped another two pounds. And over the past two weeks, I’ve lost a pound per week.

I could be losing more if I’d get back on my damned bicycle…

As far as this diet impacting george, well I just went through my first cycle on this diet as you know, and it wasn’t any less painful than usual. I didn’t expect it to be. I don’t expect to feel less pain until month three or four, honestly. If I still have a lot of pain at month four, I may continue this diet out to the six month mark.
If nothing has changed in six months pain-wise, then I’ll go back to eating yeasty foods, but I am getting the hang of being sugar-free, so I may continue on with that.

The awesome side benefit to this diet, along with the weight loss, is that I haven’t experienced ANY* hypoglycemic attacks!! I can go up to six hours at a time without eating a meal and not have a sugar crash! It’s been WONDERFUL!!!
Prior to this diet when I had regular sugar intake through drinks and chocolates and other sugary foods, I couldn’t ever go longer than three and a half hours before experiencing a debilitating hypoglycemic attack.
So yeah, I may make the sugar-free part of the diet permanent.

*Well, I had experienced one or two attacks during george, when my hormones were wonky anyway. So only when george is around now, can I expect to feel hypoglycemic (as well as anemic), so obviously that’s the next thing to work on is more protein and iron intake.

I spoke to six people over 4 hours yesterday!

The interview seemed to go well at first. I spoke with the helpdesk department (which I’m interviewing for), a system integration guy, and a couple of quality assurance (QA) guys.

Well, the QA guys grilled me gestapo-style on Linux, so naturally I blanked on most of the answers. As a matter of fact, looking back, I also blanked when I tried to tell the system integration guy what products my last company produces.

Overall though, I liked everybody and they seemed to like me. Even the QA guys reminded me of friends and former co-workers, so there was a bit of familiarity to guide me in addressing them.

I’m my own worst critic though, so after the interview, my feeling was that I didn’t get the job. It was a fun time though, like a pop-quiz at school, where I got to find out how much techie stuff I still remember and how much I’ve forgotten.

Honestly, with how high-stress the dotcom industry is, I’ll actually be relieved to get a rejection from them. I keep vowing never to go back to the tech industry, and I keep allowing people to guide me back there. Why can’t I break out of this cycle?

Anyway, the waiting has begun, as has the flip-flopping of emotions. I’ll find out this coming week if I’m hired or not.

Today, my gut feeling tells me that ‘vacation’ is ending, which gives me low-grade panic at knowing I may actually be called back to the high-stress dotcom field.

But if I am called back, who’s to say that this time I won’t dig it? What if this gig is better than the last few years’ worth of anxiety?

Now…the outstanding issues:

Certain things were purposefully ommitted during the interview that I’m dwelling on now.
1) my back goes out several times a year, and
2) george.

They expect me to lift up to 80 pounds (36kg). I told them during the phone interview that I could probably lift closer to 40 pounds (18kg), but I didn’t say why.

During the in-person interview, the bossman brought up how a former hire had over time set more and more restrictions on her job, relying on more people to help her instead of being able to do it herself.

Her issues were not health-related, though.

I felt that disclosing my health issues would preclude my being interviewed and/or hired. At the time, it wasn’t such a big deal, since I was humouring my friend by applying to begin with. But now…if it went well enough that I’ll be hired…now begins the sticky aspect of timing of disclosure.

Do I tell them as soon as an offer is made? Or do I wait til the issues start happening (which would be as early as June 2 for george, or sooner if my back goes out).

If I tell them at the time of offer, and they revoke the offer, saying that I’ve wasted their time in interviewing me, well, I don’t consider it my problem, and here’s why:

If I told every prospective employer that I need to miss 1-3 days of work per month because of severe menstrual pain, and that I need to miss anywhere from 1-3 weeks of work per year because my back goes out, how often do you think I’d be hired?

Now ask yourself these questions:

How often does the average new parent need to take time off work for their newborn and family issues?

How many days of work does the average person miss in a year due to cold and/or flu because they’re not as germ-cautious/hygienic as I am?

How many hours of work monthly does the average parent miss due to having to pick up or drop off their offspring?

Now, how are my time-off issues any different from the above? I’ll miss some days of work here and there, just like anybody else. What business is it of theirs WHY I’ll miss work?

Hmmm. Actually, I think I have my answer. What business is it of theirs, indeed!

For the past five days, I’ve come close to full on panic attack. I’ve also alternated between panic and rage.

Today is rage day.

This is my first menstrual cycle on the yeast-free diet. This is my first menstrual cycle with sugar substitute in my diet. And Saturday is the full moon. Have these things combined with menstrual hormonal whack to put me in this state of mind, alternating between panic and rage?

Will I be back to normal in time for my interview on Friday?

All this past week, I’ve been craving sugar relentlessly. I blame it on PMS.
I drank two of my boyfriend’s Minute Maid sugar free drinks, and I’m still eating the wretched Atkins “protein” candy bars. Out of five of those Atkins bars, which I bought on April 30th (so nine days ago) two remain. That’s really good, because they’re really nasty. It took me three days to get through the first one I tried, it was so sweet. That sucralose crap is …. well you already know.

Due to my PMS sugar and carb cravings, I even went and bought Sweet ‘n Low coffee flavoured hard candy. I’ve only had once piece, which is about the size of a peanut. The aftertaste was so nasty that I found myself guzzling water for the next hour.

I’m thinking of buying my own case of the Minute Maid sugar free drinks, because they actually taste the best out of all the fake sugar stuff so far. I’ve already gotten myself some Calistoga flavoured carbonated water and have been sipping that.

On the salt craving front, I’ve increased consumption of the Trader Joe’s corn tortilla salted sesame sugar free/yeast free flatbread crackers, enjoying up to 3 servings a day of those. Oh and salted almonds – I’m loving those. Trying to remember to keep intake on both the almonds and the crackers to a minimum but the past couple days have been food craving hell.

Food in general has been pretty boring since going on this diet. Breakfast has actually been the most exciting so far. I’ve been eating yeast-free waffles since April 30th when I discovered them. I can also eat eggs, so I’ll scramble those up with some soy cheese and fake bacon or fake breakfast sausage links. I’ve gone back to drinking soy milk (rice milk has too many carbs, and carbs convert to sugar). I can also do a rice cake w/ almond butter for breakfast, but it doesn’t really fill me up.

For snacks, I can have almonds, Trader Joe’s yeast-free salted sesame crackers, a rice cake w/ almond butter, or sunflower seeds.

For lunch and dinner, I can eat a turkey patty with a slice of fake cheese, or baked chicken and green beans, or fake spicy sausage (can’t have real red meats, only white meats). Tonight I baked up some Trader Joe’s pre-marinated mahi-mahi – it was awesome so I’ll be buying that again.

There’s other stuff I can make, but I just haven’t found my creative niche yet.

I’ll weigh myself again on Friday or Saturday after george leaves.

On the george front, the pain has been terrible from the moment george arrived. I mean, I was having moderate cramps two days before he arrived, which is a bit unusual. I’ve been drugged silly for about the past 32 hours. SO drugged in fact, that this afternoon at 1pm, some kid in our building accidentally shot someone dead and I didn’t even know it. My boyfriend just read about it and told me. Crazy!
I didn’t expect the pain level to subside on this cycle due to the diet, and now I’m wondering if I should expect the pain to subside at all. I’ve had this intense pain since the age of 15 (that’s going on 20 years), but until now, I’ve never once had a sugar-free, yeast-free diet. So maybe this will help…maybe it won’t.
I think if I can convince myself that sugar is lethal poison, then I can stay on this diet indefinitely. We’ll see…

George is two days late, but he arrived today. The cramps were on time, however – they arrived on Friday in lieu of bleedy do0m. The cramps were enough that I took 800mg Ibuprofen all day. Then yesterday, I endured the cramps and went for a walk around Park Street with my boyfriend. Most of the cramping has been in my lower back, instead of in the front parts.

Got up this morning in terrible pain – I swear, I felt brittle and bone-breaky just trying to move to get out of bed, my lower back hurt so bad. I considered taking a Tylenol 3 just on that alone but being more stubborn than whimpery, I waited it out.
When george finally made his appearance, the cramps intensified, this time in the front bits as well as the lower back, and I finally threw up the white flag and reached for the Tylenol 3 and my heating pad.

I’m good and drugged, now. But the part I hate most about being on Tylenol 3 is that it makes me hungry. I’ve just eaten breakfast no more than 40 minutes ago, and I’m starving again already because of the effect of the codeine.

Oh, and it’s hard to breathe when on codeine. I’m only on one pill, mind you, which is 300mg Tylenol and 30mg codeine, and I feel like I’m out of breath. Usually though it’s not so bad. I think I’m just still fighting the downtime. I WANT to be up and active and doing stuff – it’s a beautiful warm sunny day outside.
What I need to do is just accept that I need to be bedridden for the next few days.

I’m gonna go watch the stash of documentaries I rented specifically for downtime.