I Will Not Suffer In Silence

I’ve been plugging away all night trying to bend WordPress to my will for pages on educating the masses about Endometriosis, and now I’m officially giving up. I’m cranky, I don’t care, people can friggin search for info themselves, and I don’t care to keep educating myself. I’m miserable, I’m bleeding like a stuck pig, I don’t want to go on with this life …

and… radio nigel just started playing Enigma’s Return to Innocence.

Love – Devotion – Feeling – Emotion
Don’t be afraid to be weak
Don’t be too proud to be strong
Just look into your heart my friend
That will be the return to yourself
The return to innocence.
A return to innocence.
If you want, then start to laugh
If you must, then start to cry
Be yourself don’t hide
Just believe in destiny.
Don’t care what people say
Just follow your own way
Don’t give up and use the chance
To return to innocence.
That’s not the beginning of the end
That’s the return to yourself
The return to innocence.
That’s the return to innocence.

Ok, ok.

And now, some invigoration:

I need more Native American warrior music in the house.

I took a shower around 4pm. i’d taken a tylenol3 around what, 1:30pm? So I should have been fine.

But no.

The cramps started up once again after I got out of the shower. And because I’d stopped taking the Chinese herbal pills this month due to pill overload, I now pay the price in the form of clots again.

I took Ibuprofen 600mg as soon as I got out of the shower, around 4:30pm. It kicked in within about 20 minutes, and the pain subsided. I felt bad that my honey was doing so much housework today, so I did some dishes. Very slowly. That’s all I did. And the cramping came back.
I tried to let the Ibuprofen continue to do its thing but that time had passed. Around 5:45pm, I took a Tylenol3. Now I wait for it to fully kick in (I have dizziness so it’s starting), and I’ve stopped moving around – I’m on the couch with dual heating pad action.

My rant for today is:

How the hell am I supposed to work on hobbies or side projects when I’m constantly in pain, waiting for the meds to kick in, and updating this journal as to what’s going on so that I have some sort of record for myself, the doctors, and others who go through this hell?

I don’t DO anything!!!! I sit here in pain and cry and/or whimper. I fall asleep continuously at the keyboard. I sleep half the day because of the pain and the medication. I do this for up to four days. Then when all the pain stops, I have to get back to work. There’s no more time for side projects. The time was used up by being in pain and in a daze on medication so that I could barely even update my journal.

So nothing extra and meaningful for me gets done in life. Nothing.

That’s my rant for today.

While in Tylenol3-induced sleep, I had a dream about something in my childhood. It’s ALWAYS something out of my childhood whenever I have codeine.

This dream featured the woods I grew up in. I was in my dad’s living room, peeking out of the golden/yellow 1970’s curtains hanging over the large picture window. I had my little 35mm film camera with me, and I was taking pictures of the woods through the window like I often did as a kid. There were a bunch of boys in the forest below, playing football. I squinted to see them better. They were dressed warmly cuz it was a cold day out. When I looked closer, however, I saw that the floor of the forest was GREEN – there was GRASS down there.

THAT’S not right.

The curtains kept falling back across the window, obscuring my view, and I had to keep pushing the curtains out of my way so I could get a better look at the forest, camera still in hand. I could see now that where all the streams used to be, there was now PAVEMENT in winding paths. The pavement was right over the top of the streams, with the streams flowing beneath them! In the right corner of the forest, near where the boys were playing football, I could see that a portion of the cement path was not there, in order to reveal the stream flowing beneath it.

My eyes scanned the forest and moved towards the left, and I could see less and less trees, and more and more ground, covered over with thick green sod.
The whole place had been turned from a natural wetland into a city park!! People were walking around down there, playing in the park – playing in MY FORMER WOODS – MY FORMER SANCTUARY.

I scanned the forest towards the left of the view out the window, and searched for grampa’s plow – the one that two trees grew through after he’d left the plow in the forest because he was too old and weak, and then had died. I found the plow, but the trees growing through the wheels had been chopped to stubs only in the wheels themselves, and there was no marker explaining the plow’s existence there in the former woods.

And the tree house that Uncle C had built – the trees and boards and the cement tubes were all gone to make for a pretty park.

I began to cry. It was all gone. They took it all away from me.

My crying woke me up – I was crying in real life.

And, in reality, this dream may not be so far fetched, because based upon what my father has told me over the years (reports of developments still coming in every so many months from him), the people who bought my father’s house put a second addition onto the house, and developers nearby have been clearing the forest on the other side of the road from this house, and putting in McMansions. The developers and the city have widened the two-lane highway into FIVE lanes, so of course they’ve cut into the forest. There’s now a sidewalk at the far end of the two-acre front lawn I and the family used to mow with the John Deere tractor.

I need a new sanctuary.

Notes about the dream:
The golden curtains haven’t been hanging in that window since the early 80’s, and he no longer lives in that house since the late ’90’s.

I’m not sure the city could get away with paving over the streams, although I know its done all the time (it’s happening off Highway 101 in San Mateo right now). In the case of the natural wetland near my father’s old house, that valley floods like the devil every spring, because the streams that run through the forest are major tributaries to the Rouge River. So I don’t see HOW it would be possible to fill it in or pave over any part of it. In that regard, I may still have some semblance of my sanctuary left for whenever I visit home. Maybe.

View out the picture window.

Looking into the forest from near the garage.

The forest in the winter.

The forest in the spring.

The property as it looks today – not much different from how it always looked.

Woke up suddenly at 7:30am and went to the bathroom.
George had faded throughout yesterday but began gushing again. As soon as I let him out, the pain began strong. There was no time to get the meds in me. I’d let the night go by once again without waking to take more pain medication, and now it’s too late.

So here I sit, waiting for the medication to kick in. It’s been half an hour and george is beating the shit out of me. I’ve got a heating pad on my pelvis and a heating pad on my back.

The reason I didn’t take a new round of medication last night was because the stomach ache had returned. So when the stomach is hurting, one naturally doesn’t want to put anything into it, including pain medication that normally makes the stomach a bit pained or uneasy to begin with.
That’s the catch-22 and now I regret it. I can’t win either way. This makes me have major empathy/sympathy for my uncle, who has stomach cancer. My aunt says he’s in a lot of pain but I have NO idea. Even this pain with this mysterious stomach illness that I and six of my friends got on Christmas Day – even this stomach pain, which makes me empathise with my uncle – I still have NO idea what he’s *really* going through.

Gah. I’m taking another Tylenol 3. I can’t handle this pelvic pain and I’m willing to brave further stomach irritation because it can’t be as bad as my pelvic pain.

…the pain is low in the pelvis and makes me forget to breathe. It burns. The pain is strong in the lower back and makes me want to arch my back to stretch, but doing so makes the tightness in the pelvic region hurt even worse, because the muscles in front are so unwilling to stretch. So I lay on top of a heated rice pad to let it dig into my lower back. I push the ball of my foot into a nearby piece of furniture to attempt pressure point relief. An endometriosis book I have says to sit upright and bring the left ankle up across the right leg and hold the ankle or the ball of the foot. But that position KILLS me. I need my man to be awake to help me – to massage me – to hold the pressure point on my foot. But he’s been sick with the stomach virus, too. He’s still sleeping. I may wake him in a minute anyway, but only if the second Tylenol 3 doesn’t kick in soon.

… I return to this journal entry. As soon as I think it’s too much to bear, the wave of pain suddenly shrinks back, and I feel the jaw pain from gritting my teeth more than the pelvic pain. I stick my tongue between my teeth to release the jaw clench (something I taught myself to do after the car accident when I had TMJ so I wouldn’t have to wear the jaw splint for the rest of my life). Now I ‘m sitting erect on the couch, cross-legged, facing long-ways with my back to the arm of the couch as it were. I have the rice heating pad balled up on my lower back, and the electric heating pad on my upper back. Tongue still stuck between my teeth, eyes hurting from the worried position they’ve been in since 7:30am but I can’t seem to relax my face.

The pain comes again.

I opened my mouth, I’m breathing, doing the breathing exercises.

There’s a scrub jay outside, just started calling. It’s 8:19am now.

I take you with me through this. Someone has GOT to go through this with me.

I don’t mean to be cruel to humanity, but I so desperately want one of those devices in the movie Strange Days – the headgear like virtual reality that allows someone to see and feel what is going on with someone else.

I wrote this bit about the device just now on IRC and my friend just made me cry with her reply:

<julie> I know it’s not much consulation, Steph, but I believe you. Every word. Every time.

I thanked her.

I’m thankful for the time difference – it’s 11:24am where she is. Someone is awake to talk to me in real time. The bitch part of this is that any emotion I experience – crying, fear, excitement – it sets off a wave of hormones in the body – it’s a natural thing of course – but the hormones are rich in the uterus and pelvic region, and this sets off further pain. So the crying just set off a new wave of pain. No, I can’t win.

…I return to the journal entry again. It’s 8:30am – the one hour mark now. I’m feeling dizzy so the medication is kicking in. Why did it take an hour again. Why did I have to go through the pain again – oh yeah.. this time was because of the stomach virus and not wanting to take the meds last night. So my body had a lapse of coverage and the pain snuck in.

Soon I will be able to sleep again, pain free.

Both my man and I slept through the night. He slept for a total of 13 hours he says. I slept for about 11 hours.

Today we both feel better. Still tired, but the nausea is gone. I’m still bleedy and crampy but continuing to take the medication on regular rotation. I’ve only slipped up once so far, cuz I forgot to wake up in the middle of the night and take more meds. I woke up at ten to six in the morning and was in a lot of pain. I’m so glad to be back on the Tylenol 3 because it kicks in so much faster. I also remembered to eat something with the medication cuz I didn’t wanna chance stomach ache again.
While I’ve not been pain free on this cycle, and while I’ve still been bedridden, the being bedridden is mostly due to fatigue because of george and the meds, not the debilitating pain (except for that little bout I had around 6-7am this morning due to forgetting to take meds).

I can’t decide if I’m just going to sit on the couch all day or if I’m going to take up my Ma’s suggestion (we talked by phone yesterday) and ‘get a hobby’ so I don’t think about the pain. I told Ma that I do have a hobby of organising all my photos into albums, but that for some time now I’ve not had the money for more albums, so piles of stuff have been sitting around. It was then that the idea came to me – just scan all the damned photos and memorabilia and put it on web-based photo albums for now, until I get the photo albums I want. That way, I’m still DOING something instead of just being on the Internet in chat rooms and on LiveJournal and on this journal all the time.
I could also start really WRITING my life story, or other novels…again. I start, stop, start, stop.

And I can also continue working on my astrology business. That’s pretty important, but while I’m in pain and on pain meds, much more difficult to focus on.

Oh, something else I need to mention – once again with the forgetting.

I panicked yesterday because I have no memory of phoning my father on Christmas Day. I called his cell and left a message but he didn’t call back. So last night I called his wife’s cell. She laughed, said she doesn’t remember, either, and then declared my forgetfulness to be the onset of menopause. I told her I’m only 36 years old, and NO, it’s not onset of menopause because I still have a very regularly-spaced period. I told her I hadn’t really talked about it openly with friends and family until this year but I have a HUGE problem with my memory ever since The Car Accident in ’94.
She remained convinced that it’s onset of menopause, so I let her have her view of reality and then talked with my dad. He assured me that I did in fact call him on Christmas Day.

However, I had neglected to tell him about Uncle B. So I broke the news. Dad and and my Ma’s sister used to be buddies, and my aunt still has fond memories of my dad, so I told him he should give them a call. He said he would.

Anyway, the forgetting still pisses me off. I truly panicked – I truly had no recollection at all of having phoned my dad on Christmas Day. My dad’s wife doesn’t help matters by saying the obvious, “it’s not going to get any better, you know”.

YES. I KNOW. THANK YOU. This is why I often wonder if I’ll have early onset dementia.

Blah. Anyway.
Right now, someone is outside clipping trees or flowers or something outside and it sounds like nail clippers, a sound I hate.
And it doesn’t help that I have a headache from having drunk only a little bit of tomato juice. Guess I’m still allergic to tomatoes after all these years. I get this lovely headache every time I have tomato soup, too.

*deep breath*

*exhale*

Ok.

My man is home all day today. It’s Saturday afternoon. Life is good, honest.

This is the THIRD time this month that I’m sick. >:(

Last night I went to bed and immediately my stomach began to hurt. I thought, “oh great, I took pain meds on an empty stomach and now it’s killing me.” So I got up and ate a bite of a protein bar, and chugged some water and went back to bed. However, the stomach pain remained, and I even had low-grade nausea.

Woke up this morning to minor george pain in both front and back, but still barely bleeding. And the stomach ache was dulled but still there, as was the nausea.
Late in the morning, my man was on Internet chat and told me he’d be coming home early from work because he felt achey and was slightly nauseous.

GREAT.

That’s when it occurred to me that this was not george up to new tricks – I could actually be sick again.

Pissed off, I sent an email to as many people as I have emails for, who I could remember were at the party on December 25th. There was a household of about 17 of us.

SEVEN of us are ill as of last night or this morning.

It can’t be food poisoning – none of us have diarrhea and we’d have gotten sick sooner than 72 hours after hanging out. Only one person has puked so far. The rest of us have the achey bodies, stomach ache, and are VERY tired/run down. A couple people have been coughing.

Blah.

First I had a bacterial (sinus) infection with george at the beginning of the month. Then it went away. Then it came back and I took antibiotics for it. Then george came back (on time, 27 days later) and a virus hit me.

DECEMBER IS FIRED FOR HEALTH HAZARD.

This makes me not want to go out at all from November to January ever again. :p

On the george front, the bleeding ramped up today. It’s moderate and manageable. I’ve been medicating every 4-6 hours, alternating with Ibuprofen 600mg and Tylenol 3, so the pain too has been manageable. This means that should I become re-employed, I still have to take time off work because of the heavy medicating. That’s okay with me though, but just sayin.

Oh, and I made $100 today for doing charts for a family. And I spoke with a business contact in town, who wants to coordinate advertising with me. And yesterday I emailed a local independent bookstore about linking to them from my biz site. I’m feeling positive about my astrology business. :)

And now… more sleep.

On December 25th, we slept in. When we finally dragged our asses out of bed, we had breakfast and opened presents. As usual, my man got me more presents than I got him – I think I just have to accept this as a fact of life, heh.

I got him “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier”, and a DVD of “The Shield – The Complete First Season”, as well as a HUGE book called “Tour:Smart: And Break the Band” by Martin Atkins.

My man got me several astrology books for my business, the fifth season of Absolutely Fabulous, a documentary from the 1970’s called Harlan County, U.S.A. – but it’s the criterion edition, woo! I’m drawn to this documentary because my gramma was a coal miner’s daughter and grew up in Harlan County, Kentucky, where this documentary takes place. Although my family was not directly involved in the particular strike documented in this film, it is an excellent snapshot of the lives of people very much like my own family. And when they sang the striker song “which side are you on”, I knew the tune and lyrics, cuz my own Ma had sang it on the line when she was on strike a few times from her grocery store job.

And lastly, but most fun, for December 25th, my man got me Godzilla slippers:

Oh! And my soon-to-be father-in-law got us a SIX QUART crock pot!!! Lordy, it’s humangous. This is because we were so interested in his chili recipe last month, and I had my dad and his dad swap their recipes. Now WE can make these recipes, woohoo!

In more boring news, george arrived tonight around 7:16pm. I’ve been pre-medicating with Ibuprofen 600mg for the last 48 hours, so the pain was minimal leading up to the bleeding. I’ve had thigh/leg pain pretty bad this time around; it goes from the pelvic region, down the front of my legs to the knees. I always get the thigh pain but not always to the knees. It’s a dull, continuous deep pain associated with george. I took no chances when george arrived, and popped a Tylenol 3 when the bleeding did hit. I feel the pain, dulled, wanting to come forward through the fog, but it can’t. MUWAHAHAHAHA!
I shall have continuous doses of pain medication every four hours for the next friggin three days in an effort to keep the pain dulled, if not muted. That is my latest attack plan.

Regarding the Budwig diet and food in general, oh it’s all been out the window because of the holidays. There’s junk food out the wazoo here, and I have NO control whatsoever. My body is saying, “Hmmm, what could POSSIBLY be THEE worst thing I could put in my body right now, food or drink-wise?” And then my body drives my brain to go for it with gusto, no stoppin me.
So this is a bad month to see if the Budwig diet has any effect whatsoever. That and I reached Pill Overload and stopped taking EVERYTHING in the last two weeks. I was taking eight of the “Xue Fu Zhu Yu Wan” herbal pills twice a day for menstrual pain, taking eight of the “Xiang Sha Yang Wei Wan” herbal pills twice a day for my liver/stomach cleansing, and at night I was taking a calcium pill and a vitamin C pill. Then I got sick and was constantly drinking green tea on top of all the pill chugging, and popping cough drops. I tried Robitussin cough syrup for a total of two doses before firing it because a) it has CORN SYRUP in it and b) it tastes nasty. Then I went to the doctor and got on antibiotics, so I was taking one antibiotic pill per day.

PILL OVERLOAD.
Red lights flashed all around and sirens went off in my head, I swear. ;)

Alas, pills are my life … on the advice of my surgeon when I spoke to her around the middle of this month, I decided that a few days before george, I’d try the premedicating route again. I used to do this about eight to ten years ago, but stopped. Don’t remember why – probably, like everything else, it didn’t work.
Yeah, yeah… try, try again, and this time I’m DOCUMENTING it.

Of course, it’d be nice if I could adhere to a diet without sweets or any kind of junk food, and adhere to no booze, for 6 months straight, in order to rule out whether such abstaining is also worthless to the onslaught of the pain of this disease.

Things that never stopped the Endometriosis pain for me:

• Taking up to 1000mg of Tylenol until I was told that doing that will kill me… but less of it didn’t work. Can’t remember if 1000mg was working, it’s already 20 years ago. I went to Advil instead cuz my doctor said it was safer.
• Taking up to 1200mg at a time of Advil as soon as the bleeding started – nothing less than 1200mg worked. Taking that much only worked for a few years. My body got used to the dosage and I plateaued, and taking more would not have any further effect, I was told.
• Exercise by bicycle, gym workout, stretches, just walking, etc… it makes the pain WORSE.
• Praying to God (I was raised Southern Baptist Christian Fundamentalist, and I listened to Coretta Scott King every week on the radio up through my teen years)
• Taking the doctor-prescribed amount of Naproxen as soon as the bleeding started (later it was called Anaprox, and later still it became over the counter in Aleve form, but it never worked for me for very long).
• Having sex to orgasm during the pain to stop the cramps (I swear, this idea is STILL pushed to this day by ‘experts’ and doctors) – I tried this on at least three occasions over the years and it does NOT work for me – it makes the pain WORSE.
• Going vegetarian for six years.
• Omitting corn syrup from my diet.
• Omitting yeast and gluten from my diet.
• Getting chiropractic care (for over a year and it didn’t help).
• Surgery (the surgeon removed what she could of the Endo, but there’s still some on the back of my uterus at the bladder which can’t be removed due to fear of puncturing the bladder. The fact that it’s ON the bladder and can’t be removed means that even a hysterectomy will NOT stop the pain of this disease).
• Smoking pot (I’ve tried both street pot and medical marijuana) – it makes the pain worse AND makes me extremely bitchy for the next three days.

I left off The Pill, because when I took it in 1990 and in 2007, it did stop the pain …but it made me a danger to myself and others, so overall it too has failed.

Soooo, this is a big, interesting puzzle, isn’t it? So I cock my head and say, “Let’s try it from THIS angle now….”

But you know, I have Godzilla slippers. And Tylenol 3. And kitties to chase through the house.

I just spent the past hour talking with my aunt and uncle. They got the Budwig books, yay! Uncle B says Aunt B has been really reading through them since they got the books yesterday.
He says he’s keeping a positive attitude, and he sounds like he’s always sounded. His laugh is still hearty, too.
I told them about my friend’s sister-in-law, and how she beat the doctor’s death sentence by five years. Uncle B really liked to hear that, and said he’ll read the budwig books too.
The only bad thing though – Aunt B says their doctors have told them to AVOID fresh fruits and vegetables, because of all the contamination scares in the last couple years!!!
Aunt B says she’s afraid of not washing a fruit or vegetable thoroughly enough, and having Uncle B get even more sick from that.
*headdesk*

Kinda defeats the whole idea of the Budwig diet, I said. But she replied, “Well it’s something to think about.”

I know she’s saying it out of fear of losing him sooner. There’s no way to convince her that she will wash the vegetables thoroughly enough – the doctors know all, of course. And come on, this is Michigan. Even I grew up on canned goods. Fruits and Vegetables have always been wilted, half rotting and small in that state. Confirmed when I went back for a visit in 2004 – nothing’s changed. Unless it’s an apple – Michigan is known for its apples – the produce is crap. But you know, there ARE farmer’s markets there. Lots of people go to them. And again, you CAN be trusted to thoroughly wash the fruits and vegetables, honest.

Bah. Anyway….

I admitted I didn’t know what to say or how to act because our family and our culture is not equipped to talk about cancer for some reason. Aunt B told me it’s totally ok, she understands, and thanked me for my sincerity.

Here’s the timeline of Uncle B’s illness:
October, 2007: Began having stomach pains, so he’d run out to the store to get some Advil or other pain medication. The pain would go away, then crop up again in a different location a day or so later. This went on intermittently for about a month.

November, 2007: Went to the doctor when the pain wouldn’t go away. Was prescribed antibiotics and vicodin. Had a cat scan. Went back two weeks later for the results – they couldn’t find anything wrong so gave him more antibiotics and vicodin, and sent him for a colonoscopy and other tests.

December, 2007: Before finishing his second round of antibiotics, aunt B had to take him to the hospital because the pain was so bad. He had a second cat scan, and something showed up, so they kept him for observation.
While in the hospital (around December 13 – 15), he was given dilaudid but it didn’t work, so they put him on morphine, and then gave him his own button for it. Eventually they would give him a break from morphine and instead give him more dilaudid and vicodin.
They performed a biopsy of his stomach, and put him on an epidural for that. Uncle B really liked that a lot, hehe.
Uncle B wasn’t allowed to stay on epidural so they gave him a fentanyl patch, along with methadone and continued dilaudid.

When the test results came back after the biopsy, it was stage IV stomach cancer of an unknown primary, with six weeks to live.

Aunt B went through all the ‘what if’ stuff, and even got mad at Uncle B for not having gone to the hospital sooner. They were both totally sideways emotionally, trying to grapple with the news. Definitely normal and expected.
They talked with the doctors and the doctors told both Uncle B and Aunt B that they did in fact do all they could in a timely fashion, given the symptoms, and that there was nothing else they could have done. So that has set Uncle B’s and Aunt B’s minds at ease, at least that’s what they say to me and the family.

Uncle B got out of the hospital on Dec. 15 and has been home. Three of their four sons live in-state and have come home to be with their dad. I’m not sure if the fourth son has come home or is on his way.

So I’m feeling good because they’re feeling good. I told them to come visit California and start their world tour to live life like there’s no tomorrow. They liked hearing that and said they’ll see what they can do. ;)

I’m sad but not devastated. I know Uncle B is in a lot of pain – he and Aunt B have told me so. But they sound so upbeat, so why should I be mourning – he’s having a good day today and that’s all that matters – the here and now – from moment to moment. And so I will be happy in this moment. It’s all good.

Regarding the Endometriosis, Aunt B says oh yeah, she definitely had that since she was a teenager. She went through all the symptoms (heavy bleeding, massive pain) and what happened to her (doubling over in pain, puking from the pain, actually passing out from the pain, sitting cross-legged and rocking and crying from the pain, praying for death, etc…), and I said “yep!” and we shared horror stories. We also cracked jokes about my Ma (her sister) being so callous to the pain we were in. I told Aunt B that my Ma once said, “I used to laugh at my sisters cuz I couldn’t believe they’d be in such pain, until you started having it”. But still, my Ma would tell me to shut up and take another Midol pill, and that it was part of being a woman, so she never even understood what I went through, either.
Aunt B understands and says “your mom was a bitch back then!” LOL
She was though! She had no clue. Aunt B told me that my Ma once told her about childbirth – she said “oh I had some lower back pain and I went to the hospital and I was in labour and I had the baby, no big deal.”
Aunt B says she called my Ma several names, hehehe

Though Aunt B says for her pain, she got on The Pill and that lessened the pain, and then later when she started having kids, the pain was reduced further. Aunt B says that from time to time, she would get really bad pain again but not consistently every month and to the degree that she did before getting on The Pill and then later having children.
I told her about her other sister J and J’s daughter, about her other sister M, and about her Ma – how they’d all told me in 2002 that they too suffered from really bad monthly pain. I wish there was a simple blood test that could confirm an Endometriosis gene, so I could map it out and rule out whether it runs in the females of families or what.
But for now, my gut says yes, they all did have Endometriosis. For most of them, childbearing helped. For gramma, it didn’t. It’s different for every woman.
But this info is good to know.

I won’t be passing this disease on to a new generation if I can help it.

My Ma called this morning and what was supposed to be a “hi how ya doin kid'” turned out to be a lecture from Ma to go to the doctor, heh.

OOOOkaaayyy fine.

Went to the doctor (hooray for same day appointments!) and here we have it:

Sinus/Bacterial infection.

Woohoo!

I’m on zithromax and still drinking my weight in green tea. Bought some Ester C, too.

The old lady 30-year-pack-a-day-smoker voice is AWESOME.

I’ve only puked once from trying to spit up SnotGlue™ …

But this shit will NOT continue for much longer. I am wielding pharmaceutical Do0m!

At the beginning of last month, my friend’s brother told me about the Budwig diet in relation to helping me with the Endometriosis. I couldn’t find the books in the local libraries, so I ordered them.

Yesterday was my first day trying the Budwig recipes and you know, they’re pretty tasty! Though there’s no meat, so I was pretty loopy all day yesterday because my blood sugar was going WTF?
I’ve incorporated more nuts and a protein bar today.

I can’t seem to find coconut fat – it’s a main ingredient in the Budwig diet. I’ve gone to two chain stores and called a third. I was directed to a Latino grocery but I only get a fax line there. I just called a health food store in Pacifica that I used to frequent when I lived over that way, and they have coconut oil, so I’m gonna go check them out this weekend.
In the meantime, I’ve omitted that recipe, even though it’s one of the primary parts of this diet.

There’s other changes, too. Like, I can’t have cottage cheese – it brings on the pain even before my cycle is due. I’ve been subsituting yogurt in place of cottage cheese (the book says I can do that). I can also have the small amounts of milk called for in recipes – it only make my stomach gurgle and I can live with that.

And the Linomel™ meal – I might still need to order that. In the meantime, I’ve been creating it myself with flaxseed meal, some milk and some honey, cuz that’s what the Linomeal is made of, anyway.

Today I’m not so loopy. My blood sugar feels stable.

All of this is just another step in the series of holistic self treatment for the Endometriosis and cancer prevention. And for years I’ve had GI tract issues anyway, so this diet can only help with that. Of course, I’m definitely hoping that it helps calm the Endo.