I believe in Last Hoorahs. I believe in saying goodbye to something you'll miss, or even something you just think you'll miss, through celebration and enjoyment.
I've been Last Hoorahing for the last month I've been on low-dose prednisone leading up to the surgery. I wanted to go easy on myself emotionally during this time and part of how I've done that is through food. I've been less restrictive and enjoying some classic comfort foods, like gluten free pizza, cheese on everything, glasses of wine that would normally make me sniffle, and even a couple of slices of regular gluten pizza (for the first time in over 3 years!) I believe I've remained fairly balanced in this time, still incorporating daily bone broths into my meals, continuing to take probiotics and enzymes, things of the sorts, and I've experienced minimal repercussions in my state of health because of it, maybe. But there is no doubt that I have consumed many SCD/GAPS illegal foods. And it was my plan to do so until surgery was done and medications were finished and I could now focus my emotional energy back at the roots again.
This weekend I'll be finishing up the antibiotics and the prednisone. I've got some gluten-free pizza in the freezer, and a celebrate-my-partner's-new-job date for brunch tomorrow, where I will undoubtedly enjoy a couple of corn pancakes and strawberry rhubarb jam with my poached eggs, hollandaise, potato cakes, and ham. And then it will be back to chicken soup with pureed carrots. And you know, that sounds damned good to me too.
Friday, November 23, 2012
Something To Look Back On
One week ago today I was in a surgery prep room of a local hospital on my way to the operating room. I was laughing through nervousness, woozy and tired from not having eaten since the night before, and taking deep breaths. I had surgery to remove extensive nasal polyps and clear out several years' worth of chronic infection from my sinuses. Several specialists I had seen, including the ENT who performed the surgery, said it was the worst case they seen in their careers. I laughed every time I thought about that, the irony of achievements in life, and yet really hearing those perspectives was incredibly validating to all of those years that I felt like constant crap and somehow got through.
Looking back on the time leading up to surgery and my recovery experience so far is actually fairly emotional. I was scared of the technicalities of the surgery: general anesthesia and its risks, laying about with a breathing tube down my throat for a couple of hours while a surgeon scraped at the insides of my sinuses while trying to avoid my eyes and brain, coming out of anesthesia and how awful that feeling is. But mostly, it felt like a really big deal that I was facing a procedure that could be a major step in relieving years' of suffering. Recovery hasn't been particularly painful. I took vicodin for a day before I realized I probably didn't need it at all and was hating how low it made me feel emotionally. Mostly, I've just been more tired than I've been in my life. Woozy and weak and full of constant dull headaches. And all of that makes me wantmymommy.
It has been a long and exhausting journey.
I am a cliche case that can tell you all about the endless remedies I have tried to minimal effect. I am a hobby herbalist of completely amateur skill who has more so put years into learning and working with the medicinal properties of many herbs than actually harvesting, brewing, and concocting tinctures myself (although that's the next step). I have worked with many handfulls of natural remedies in different combinations for extensive periods of time. I have taken all the OTC drugs, save for the destructive ones like Afrin. I have taken the prescription steroids and the allergy pills and done the allergy tests. I have acupunctured, and meditated, and qi-gonged, and homeopathed, and EFT'd, and downloaded the E-books, and been completely attached to the GoogleMachine. All of these things have often had their benefits in my symptoms, and certainly my overall quality of life. But never did they actually get rid of them. Never did they stop anything that didn't come right back.
In four years, I had never been without a sniffle. Usually a stuffy, thick mucousy sniffle. In that time, most of the time, I often became fully congested and would lose my anunciation. M's become B's, things of the sorts. Sometimes it happened at particular parts of the day- upon waking or in the early evening. Sometimes, it was when I was inside the house. Sometimes it came upon ingesting alcohol, or particular kinds of alcohol, but those reactions were hard to predict. Sometimes it was there all the time and congestion only depended on how much I moved around. Every once and a while, usually every few months, I'd have a handful of days where I was so overrun that on top of stuffiness I'd have brain-fog, mild fevers, and be completely zapped of all life-force.
Four years ago when these symptoms became consistent, I also developed asthma out of nowhere. It was terrifying at first. I didn't have health insurance and was making regular trips to Urgent Care and living off of medication samples, saving pennies for Walmart prescriptions. But since I've had it under control, more importantly since I've had access to public prescription asstance programs and, more recently, health insurance, my asthma has remained mostly mild, controlled on low-dose inhaled corticosteroids and albuterol for exercise. Rough patches have usually been correlated to early spring, summer wildfires, and early autumn, but it would be hard to say there's been a consistent pattern over the last four years, similar to my nasal symptoms.
I've read from others who correlate the development of their nasal polyps with sudden asthma onset, and the process makes sense to me. I'm somewhat convinced that my polyps had been developing for many years before I started having consistent sinus issues. I remember starting daily sinus rinses with a neti pot 5-6 years ago to help mitigate seasonal allergies. I was using it once to twice a day, getting great relief, and yet it took a few minutes to do the rinses and I thought that was normal. It wasn't until after surgery that I did my first rinse this week and it took less than 15 seconds that I questioned what I had gotten used to as "normal."
The one area of adjustment that has absolutely made a difference in my symptoms and quality of life has been in diet. I am a long time nutrition enthusiast who fully believes in food and the ability of a supportive diet to cut straight through the roots of most of our imbalances. My path with my own diet has been through trial and error, experimentation and tracking of results. Over the past four years, I have eliminated gluten, which I continue to live without. I have gone in and out with dairy. I have gone corn-free, soy-free, sugar-free, grain-free, nightshade-free. And honestly, what all of it has taught me is the value of a whole-foods diet. These are concepts that for many years as a vegetarian I aspired to live by, yet still depended on cheese sandwiches, soy meat substitutions, and highly processed "organic" food products. The same food products, or variations thereof, that became my staples as I started eating meat again but went gluten-free. Food products that had become my go-to comfort food, lazy food, too-busy-to-cook food.
There has been much value discovered in these last few months of misery that inevitably brought me to surgery. In becoming hypersensitive to all kinds of foods (sudden allergic reactions to almonds, stomach sickness in response to coconut milk products, stuffiness and sinus pain upon ingesting ANY alcohol and not just the obvious culprits like wine and cider) I have discovered outlines for healing diets that I cannot believe took me so long to find. Eight months ago I learned about the Paleo diet, and I slowly jumped into it after I weighed the benefits I had a year earlier on a low-grain, lower-carb Dr. Mercola backed diet. Much of my hypersensitive reactions started to calm down, but after a few months, the more strict I got, the more my sinus symptoms suddenly started increasing for the first time in a year. At first, I thought it might be some kind of "die off" or a cleansing reaction of sorts and I thought I'd wait it out. The rest of me was feeling better than ever! Weight loss, muscle tone, physical endurance and stamina, digestive improvements, less mood swings and hormone fluctuations, yeah! But as my nasal symptoms got worse and worse and were completely non-responsive to OTC meds or herbs, I started to look at whether I had unknowingly increased an undiscovered problem food.
To make a long-story short, in my search for elimination-friendly recipes, I started learning about the GAPS diet and the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and my perspective completely shifted. I started seeing the gut and gut health as central to everything. I started recognizing my sudden food allergies and increasing sensitivities as a product of a leaky gut, and I started recognizing my nasal polyps as the way chronic inflammation was manifesting in my body. I learned about salicylate sensitivities and feel I've found perhaps the most important contribution to the development of my polyps and asthma. I do, indeed, have moderate asthmatic reactions to aspirin products, and that sensitivity developed seemingly out of nowhere 4 years ago with all of my other symptoms. Most importantly, I learned that I can heal these sensitivities through working with my gut health. I learned that it will likely take time and commitment and a whole lot of effort. But I've also learned that I have that kind of will. When it is the difference between being so sick all the time and feeling great, the choice is easy.
After all the changes I've made these past few years in my body- my diet, my exercise routines, my spiritual and emotional health, and now this major (to me) surgery- I am currently at a baseline of health that I have never had in my life. It's an inspiring feeling. Sure, I'm still in recovery right now. I'm coming off of a round of antibiotics and low-dose prednisone (two things I avoid like the plague but believed they'd be in my best interests in the time around such a critical surgery). I'm still dealing with the headaches and the blood clots and overall fatigue, so I'm not exactly ready to be pushing my physical stamina yet. But I've got the plans to. And I hope to document this next leg of my journey on this blog. Because other people's stories have helped me. And because in time, I'll have something to look back on to see how far I've come.
Looking back on the time leading up to surgery and my recovery experience so far is actually fairly emotional. I was scared of the technicalities of the surgery: general anesthesia and its risks, laying about with a breathing tube down my throat for a couple of hours while a surgeon scraped at the insides of my sinuses while trying to avoid my eyes and brain, coming out of anesthesia and how awful that feeling is. But mostly, it felt like a really big deal that I was facing a procedure that could be a major step in relieving years' of suffering. Recovery hasn't been particularly painful. I took vicodin for a day before I realized I probably didn't need it at all and was hating how low it made me feel emotionally. Mostly, I've just been more tired than I've been in my life. Woozy and weak and full of constant dull headaches. And all of that makes me wantmymommy.
It has been a long and exhausting journey.
I am a cliche case that can tell you all about the endless remedies I have tried to minimal effect. I am a hobby herbalist of completely amateur skill who has more so put years into learning and working with the medicinal properties of many herbs than actually harvesting, brewing, and concocting tinctures myself (although that's the next step). I have worked with many handfulls of natural remedies in different combinations for extensive periods of time. I have taken all the OTC drugs, save for the destructive ones like Afrin. I have taken the prescription steroids and the allergy pills and done the allergy tests. I have acupunctured, and meditated, and qi-gonged, and homeopathed, and EFT'd, and downloaded the E-books, and been completely attached to the GoogleMachine. All of these things have often had their benefits in my symptoms, and certainly my overall quality of life. But never did they actually get rid of them. Never did they stop anything that didn't come right back.
In four years, I had never been without a sniffle. Usually a stuffy, thick mucousy sniffle. In that time, most of the time, I often became fully congested and would lose my anunciation. M's become B's, things of the sorts. Sometimes it happened at particular parts of the day- upon waking or in the early evening. Sometimes, it was when I was inside the house. Sometimes it came upon ingesting alcohol, or particular kinds of alcohol, but those reactions were hard to predict. Sometimes it was there all the time and congestion only depended on how much I moved around. Every once and a while, usually every few months, I'd have a handful of days where I was so overrun that on top of stuffiness I'd have brain-fog, mild fevers, and be completely zapped of all life-force.
Four years ago when these symptoms became consistent, I also developed asthma out of nowhere. It was terrifying at first. I didn't have health insurance and was making regular trips to Urgent Care and living off of medication samples, saving pennies for Walmart prescriptions. But since I've had it under control, more importantly since I've had access to public prescription asstance programs and, more recently, health insurance, my asthma has remained mostly mild, controlled on low-dose inhaled corticosteroids and albuterol for exercise. Rough patches have usually been correlated to early spring, summer wildfires, and early autumn, but it would be hard to say there's been a consistent pattern over the last four years, similar to my nasal symptoms.
I've read from others who correlate the development of their nasal polyps with sudden asthma onset, and the process makes sense to me. I'm somewhat convinced that my polyps had been developing for many years before I started having consistent sinus issues. I remember starting daily sinus rinses with a neti pot 5-6 years ago to help mitigate seasonal allergies. I was using it once to twice a day, getting great relief, and yet it took a few minutes to do the rinses and I thought that was normal. It wasn't until after surgery that I did my first rinse this week and it took less than 15 seconds that I questioned what I had gotten used to as "normal."
The one area of adjustment that has absolutely made a difference in my symptoms and quality of life has been in diet. I am a long time nutrition enthusiast who fully believes in food and the ability of a supportive diet to cut straight through the roots of most of our imbalances. My path with my own diet has been through trial and error, experimentation and tracking of results. Over the past four years, I have eliminated gluten, which I continue to live without. I have gone in and out with dairy. I have gone corn-free, soy-free, sugar-free, grain-free, nightshade-free. And honestly, what all of it has taught me is the value of a whole-foods diet. These are concepts that for many years as a vegetarian I aspired to live by, yet still depended on cheese sandwiches, soy meat substitutions, and highly processed "organic" food products. The same food products, or variations thereof, that became my staples as I started eating meat again but went gluten-free. Food products that had become my go-to comfort food, lazy food, too-busy-to-cook food.
There has been much value discovered in these last few months of misery that inevitably brought me to surgery. In becoming hypersensitive to all kinds of foods (sudden allergic reactions to almonds, stomach sickness in response to coconut milk products, stuffiness and sinus pain upon ingesting ANY alcohol and not just the obvious culprits like wine and cider) I have discovered outlines for healing diets that I cannot believe took me so long to find. Eight months ago I learned about the Paleo diet, and I slowly jumped into it after I weighed the benefits I had a year earlier on a low-grain, lower-carb Dr. Mercola backed diet. Much of my hypersensitive reactions started to calm down, but after a few months, the more strict I got, the more my sinus symptoms suddenly started increasing for the first time in a year. At first, I thought it might be some kind of "die off" or a cleansing reaction of sorts and I thought I'd wait it out. The rest of me was feeling better than ever! Weight loss, muscle tone, physical endurance and stamina, digestive improvements, less mood swings and hormone fluctuations, yeah! But as my nasal symptoms got worse and worse and were completely non-responsive to OTC meds or herbs, I started to look at whether I had unknowingly increased an undiscovered problem food.
To make a long-story short, in my search for elimination-friendly recipes, I started learning about the GAPS diet and the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and my perspective completely shifted. I started seeing the gut and gut health as central to everything. I started recognizing my sudden food allergies and increasing sensitivities as a product of a leaky gut, and I started recognizing my nasal polyps as the way chronic inflammation was manifesting in my body. I learned about salicylate sensitivities and feel I've found perhaps the most important contribution to the development of my polyps and asthma. I do, indeed, have moderate asthmatic reactions to aspirin products, and that sensitivity developed seemingly out of nowhere 4 years ago with all of my other symptoms. Most importantly, I learned that I can heal these sensitivities through working with my gut health. I learned that it will likely take time and commitment and a whole lot of effort. But I've also learned that I have that kind of will. When it is the difference between being so sick all the time and feeling great, the choice is easy.
After all the changes I've made these past few years in my body- my diet, my exercise routines, my spiritual and emotional health, and now this major (to me) surgery- I am currently at a baseline of health that I have never had in my life. It's an inspiring feeling. Sure, I'm still in recovery right now. I'm coming off of a round of antibiotics and low-dose prednisone (two things I avoid like the plague but believed they'd be in my best interests in the time around such a critical surgery). I'm still dealing with the headaches and the blood clots and overall fatigue, so I'm not exactly ready to be pushing my physical stamina yet. But I've got the plans to. And I hope to document this next leg of my journey on this blog. Because other people's stories have helped me. And because in time, I'll have something to look back on to see how far I've come.
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