zero to blogging in 6,000 days
If upon reading this blog title you didn’t immediately start singing along to Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads you can just stop right now and enjoy the tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1wg1DNHbNU
Good, now that we have a strong musical foundation let’s get on with this.
For someone who doesn’t journal, I sure have a lot of journal notes lying around in various notebooks. I have also made a practice of saving my weekly calendars since college, with the sad exception of June 2010-Dec 2013. Whoops!
Now that I decided to get on with this business of blogging I went searching through my notes to see when exactly my health took a turn. Aha, there it was, in fall of 2003, I noted in a notebook that I had developed severe GI problems. Like real bad. Think liquid coming out of your backside about 20 times per day. Yes, like you’re dying. Significant weight loss, and hair loss. Pale complexion and complete exhaustion. That was me.
Sometime in winter 2003 I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease and was advised of needing to get about 2/3 of my large intestine removed. I remember with crystal clarity being wheeled out of the hospital feeling confused and devastated and wavering between thoughts of non-acceptance of the prognosis and thinking my life had just ended.
I was put on a whole host of drugs, prednisone, asacol (yes, you can giggle), levsin, etc. I can’t even remember the 15 or so pills I was taking every day. They said I needed to get injections the rest of my life after surgery. I just remember thinking that This is Not My Life, This is Not My Story. I made a commitment to wean myself off of the meds.
How in heck can the doctors be so righteous about what to do about a condition that they don’t even understand? I wasn’t having any of it.
I started counseling to deal with a lifetime buildup of life experiences, you know, the kind we all have and the challenges we all have. Everyone could use some help sorting themselves out. Nobody is perfect and everyone could be better at life – like being truly honest with ourselves, honoring ourselves, forgiving ourselves and others, and learning how to really listen to someone and be present.
I also started yoga and meditation. After my first session I had immediate results. I woke up to the first solid bowel movement in months! I knew I was on to something and that I would overcome the Chron’s. And I did. It took a while and I’m not sure how many months it took or how exactly I did it but lets just say in about a year or so and I was doing just fine. In fact, I have been fine ever since and symptom free with the exception of a brief tangle with major stress that flared up my insides in Fall 2016. When I went in to make sure I wasn’t really dying the docs gave me a practice injection device to get used to injecting myself with immunotherapy. I threw away the practice kit. That flare up resolved in two months and I was back to being symptom free.
In the mean time, from about 2005-2012 I was cruising along in “perfect” health.
Then there was a series of unfortunate events that happened in 2013. I was starting to get a rash on the back of my neck every time I colored my hair. It would last a few days then go away. I had colored my hair right before a long holiday weekend where we went to a huge pool party. Before getting into the water Andy pointed out that the pool edge had algae. Sure, it was kinda gross but we were there to drink beers and bs with friends in the sun, so we got in. The rash on the nape of my neck was bugging me so I tried to cool it off by soaking my head in the pool. We carried on with the day and everything seemed fine.
That next morning I woke up with my entire scalp covered in weeping sores. My hair was a solid crust, the pillow was stained, it was so freaking gross. I went to the doctor and they said it was a staph infection. Here came the antibiotics.
Within a month, in the wake of the staph infection/antibiotic treatments, I also developed a severe case of full-body psoriasis. The only place it didn’t express was on my face. Hint, hint, it was EVERYWHERE ELSE (ugh!)! The psoriasis came along with a yeast infection and an immediate jump in weight by 10 whole uninvited pounds. I’ve barely varied in weight by 5 lbs my entire adult life, so I knew this was bullshit. I knew it wasn’t me.
My life changed dramatically. My skin was burning and itching all over and everything hurt, even the softest fabrics. I couldn’t don my cycling gear without great discomfort and the sweat from cycling burned my skin even more. My sister found a mom’s group online that suggested using Vic’s Vapor Rub on psoriatic skin to help cool and sooth the inflammation. Well, it worked. The psoriasis didn’t go away but the Vic’s sure helped. It did, however, require changing the sheets with great frequency.
The vapor rub also made me smell like menthol, which constantly reminded me of that scene in an episode of Three’s Company where Larry thinks that a sixty-something woman has designs on Jack, so he decides to save him by seducing her to lure her away from him. He compliments her on her “sensual” perfume and asks what she calls it. Her answer? “Ben-Gay.” After wincing, Larry remarks, “It’s so…you!”
I tuned out when being told by doctors that both 1) I needed to do a round of chemotherapy and then get on biologic injections for the rest of my life. (Gee, where have I heard this before.) and that, 2) I was naive in thinking that the psoriasis and yeast infection could be related (even though they both showed up on the same day). I’m not a doctor but I am a trained and licensed scientist so I know that the doctors were full of shit and probably scared to death of being sued for malpractice. In science anything is possible and theories need to be tested before they are disproved. So don’t give me that “I don’t know what I’m talking about” nonsense you lab-coat wearing body technician. (Most doctors are highly-skilled technicians, not scientists).
About 9 months in to the nightmare of psoriasis I came upon the Candida diet and this is when things started to change. This is when I got here, but not all the way here. I’ve been doing the Candida diet dance for the past four years only for the Candida to return time and time again, with an approximate recurrence frequency of about 6 months. So now I am HERE. HERE WRITING THIS LONGWINDED BLOG to showcase my grand finale as I square off with Candida one last time. It only took 6,000 days to get here.
