The Reset Diet Begins Tomorrow

posted in: Sicky 21

The_Women's_Auxiliary_Air_Force,_1939-1945._CH200

 

Thank you, thank you, to the ladies I spent time with in Michigan yesterday. What a great day it was! The leaves on the drive up and drive back were stunning — but they had nothin’ on you, girls.

In other news, I did a lot of food prep in the kitchen this evening because tomorrow, difficult as it’s going to be, I will begin a round of my dreaded-but-amazing “reset” diet. I’ll tell you what I mean in a second.

My guts have been having a hell of a time this year because I’ve been eating with no regard to my intestinal health. Being so gimpy in the gut department, I’m supposed to avoid certain things and generally eat foods that have been stamped “anti-inflammatory.” Yeah, well, guess what my favorite lunch is when I’m zipping from one thing to the next? Pizza, of course — and we’re talking a cheesy, saucy slice from Pauly’s around the corner, not some kind of gluten-free, “mock” pizza made on a cracker and a prayer. (You think that’s gonna get this woman through two classes, an advising session, a trip to Michigan, and three writing assignment deadlines? Ha!)

Beyond that, I’ve been enjoying a falafel here, a coffee and almond croissant breakfast there, and so on. Not a lot of veggies. Lots of pasta. And oh, the sugar … Sophie gave me a whole bag of candy corn punkins’ last weekend and they’re gone, now.

The good news, I guess, is that at least I don’t see that my wack-a-doo grad school diet has gone to my hips; this is probably on account of all the walking and/or literal running I do every day to get to all the places to do all the things. The bad news is that intestinally-speaking, I’ve hit the wall. My tum hurts all the time and I’m so sick of constantly excusing myself to go to the bathroom. I take medicine for this stuff but my belly situation doesn’t have to be this tough. I can manage a few things, diet-wise, and make it better. So it’s time.

 

The last time I did the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) was a couple years back, when Yuri and I were in New York City. I was having a very, very hard time with my health situation at that point, so I did the reset and yes, it helped. Read this and you’ll understand what I’m beginning tomorrow.

I’m telling you about this because I need to stay accountable — and I also need support. Embarking on this “medicine” is not easy. When I wake up tomorrow, I’ll be waking up to a long week of nothing but hamburger, homemade jello, and homemade yogurt. And chicken broth. That’s pretty much it, and it’s not so fun.

Except.

When you bear incessant knocks and rumbles in your belly like I do; when you are exhausted/demoralized from the daily effort of endless bathroom trips; when you want to remember what it was like before you had a bowel disease that took you down hard, a tough diet doesn’t feel so tough.

It tastes like relief.

Quilts + My Brain Fog

posted in: Day In The Life, Quilting, Work 6
Eva Phillips, Lora King and Crystal Cruise on side of quilt frame. Photo: Terry Eiler, 1978.
Eva Phillips, Lora King and Crystal Cruise on side of quilt frame. Photo: Terry Eiler, 1978.

Nestled cozily in the Library of Congress, waiting for me to discover it tonight while doing research, the photograph above shows members of the Meadows of Dan Baptist Church quilting group hand quilting a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt on a frame. Isn’t it marvelous?

Quilts have wrapped around me, covered the ground under me, and been pulled over me my whole life. As a tot, I sat on a lap I had to share with a wooden hoop (didn’t mind.) I played under tables in church basements while quilts were basted above me. Spools of thread were great tables for my sisters and my Sullivan Family figurines. Being immersed like this means I have had a deep love for the American patchwork quilt for a long time, almost like a person loves her country. There’s no question, almost no notice taken of the love and honor one has for it; it’s just who you are.

As a result of this immersion and by sheer osmosis I’ve known a fair bit about quilts and quiltmaking for some time — even when I wasn’t making quilts myself.

My “quilt epiphany” happened right around the time I got sick. Life as I knew it was falling to pieces, and it made perfect sense to tear fabric up into pieces and sew it back together again, but prettier. Growing along with my passion for making quilts grew a deep and abiding love for the history of the American quilt, the story of the thing, the reasons why, the hows, the styles, etc. And so my quilt geekhood has ripened into true geekdom. I could talk double-pinks and madder browns all day, I think. The stories, the people, the quilts themselves never get old. Even when they are old.

This post has taken me well over an hour to compose and it’s still not right. My brain is in a fog. The diet is very difficult. My guts feel better — honestly, they do. In fact, there are several reasons to be extremely happy with the results of this major change so far.

But I’m slow. And I’m foggy. And I keep looking at those women quilting and I would like to crawl under the table and be six.

Changes, With Gelatin and Yogurt.

posted in: Day In The Life, Fashion, Sicky 12
Homemade yogurt. Image: Wikipedia.
Homemade yogurt. Image: Wikipedia.

 

I have a mission in life: I am going to save my j-pouch.

If you don’t know what a j-pouch is, that’s good, because it means you’ve never been personally introduced. If you do know what a j-pouch (or “ileal-anal” pouch) is, you and I could sit down and talk about a lot, I’ll bet.

Either way, if you’re new around here you might want to read Part I and Part II of my health history timeline because you’ll want some background for tonight’s post. Warning: It’s not a fun tale and I wouldn’t recommend eating while reading, so put down the snacks. 

If you don’t have time to go through all that, here’s what you should know:

1) I was/am a gimp** because of Ulcerative Colitis (UC);
2) I was treated for UC but made more gimpy in some ways because of not-so-successful surgeries, each with new and exciting complications;
3) Today I am less gimpy than I was but still a gimp and now have a decision to make: Do I opt for a permanent ostomy bag or continue living with my dubiously successful j-pouch and its attendant woe?

While an ostomy bag isn’t the end of the world — I know firsthand, having had one for a total of three years — it does blow. More than what I’m dealing with now? Hard to say. But I’m not giving up my internal ileal pouch without a fight. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make my ruined gutscape look and feel like a damn prom queen. Think sunshine on a field of daisies. Think kittens frolicking in strawberry patches. Think pretty — the opposite of what I got.

*     *     *

Back in the 1960’s, a woman named Elaine Gottschall had a young daughter with Ulcerative Colitis.

Elaine and her husband lived in New York City. They went to specialist after specialist and their poor kid went on massive steroids and other drugs only to face surgery, anyway. Then the Gottschalls had a stroke of luck. They met a doctor who stared down the hopeless mother and asked:

“What have you been feeding this child?” None of the 15 docs they tried had asked that one.

“Um, food?” was the answer he got.

The doctor put little Judy on a very strict diet: zero starch, zero sugar, and lots of homemade yogurt. Within ten days, surgery was not a pressing concern. Within a year, Judy was growing like a weed, no longer bleeding, no longer living in the bathroom. The kid was better. No, no: She was a lot better.

Elaine was hoppin’ mad that her little girl had been through so much, how she had narrowly escaped being super sick and having an ostomy for the rest of her life, or, you know, dying. She decided to check out how it was that food could cure digestive maladies — and why she hadn’t known that till it was almost too late.

Elaine went to the library. She read many books. Elaine came of age during the Depression, so she never had the opportunity to go to college. She decided to go. At 47, she went to college to find out more about why the diet helped her kid and how it could help other people, too. She got degrees in biology, nutritional biochemistry, and cellular biology. Then she wrote a book. Then she wrote another book. Twenty years and a zillion testimonials later, Gotschall’s work is still in print and many lives have been saved, many more vastly improved, all through the science of nutrition as it applies to sorry souls who are smote with intestinal disorders.

Look, Elaine Gottschall was just a person. But she helped a lot of people. 

Along with some other treatments — and under the care of my physicians — I’ve begun Gottschall’s Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), which is designed to starve out harmful (to me) bacteria in the gut and repopulate it with healthy bacteria. It’s a rebalancing act, a total, very much “natural” intestinal renovation. “Gut remodel” would be an appropriate, if too cute, way to put it.

Above all, it’s a major change. “Lifestyle modification” begins to describe it. I can’t use the wooden spoons I use for Yuri’s food because of cross-contamination. “Puree” is a word I have to get comfortable with for awhile. I have to eat an insanely limited number of foods the first phase of the thing, though after the first period I can start to branch out. If I thought about how I can never have chocolate again, ever, I would give up this second.

Maybe not, though.

Because it’s funny how any food becomes far less delicious-looking when it makes you cry a couple hours after you eat it.

Ninety days. Then we’ll see.

**Yeah, I can say “gimp.” We can call ourselves that, but if you’re not a gimp, you can’t call us that.