I Can No Longer Be Contained - Part II

Hi Friends…I’m on a healing journey and I don’t want to go it alone. The following post is a continuation of my story thus far. If you would like to read the last blog post, click here. I named these first 2 posts I Can No Longer Be Contained because I have been suffering in silence for quite some time, and I believe that by sharing this journey, I can connect with others who may be having a similar experience with autoimmune illness.

July 12, 2022 - Beneath a persistent headache and general feeling of blah, I am embarrassed. I find myself repeatedly trying to justify to Emergency Room personnel my choice to heal my mystery illness via a functional medicine approach. In other words, even though I don’t really have any gut-related issues, I do believe that changing my diet and lifestyle can promote healing. However, my arguments are not convincing anyone, not even myself if I’m being honest, as it appears that the one day of drinking bone broth has backfired in a big way.

In the ER, the doctor and nurses attending to my case seem to be extremely competent and knowledgeable, and they are very nice to me, but also a bit patronizing. I’m feeling quite defensive about my choice to change my diet and lifestyle as their team clearly does not agree with this alternative path I’ve chosen. I want to shake them by the shoulders and shout that functional medicine digs deep to find the root cause of illness! And your traditional approach to healing, “if you can’t name the illness, just throw a pill at the symptom to make it go away” has failed me multiple times. Can you blame me for trying another way?! I just want to feel better! But alas, I don’t have the energy to argue. I’m sick and this is not the place to have a showdown.

For the better part of 4 hours, I’m hooked up to monitors, blood work is tested and fluids are intravenously replenished. All test results are negative for anything suspicious, my heart rate has returned to normal and I’m sent on my way with a little chiding about stopping this crazy bone broth diet and I should be fine. I leave the ER with my tail between my legs. Sigh…

When we get home from the hospital, I am hungry and thirsty, but afraid to resume the bone broth for fear of having another scare like the night before. I know I need to call the functional medicine clinic and let them know what happened and ask them “what now?” but first, some ginger ale. I feel guilty for drinking it because it wasn’t on the protocol and it’s laden with sugar, but I grew up with a mother who swore by sipping on ginger ale when you’re sick so that’s what I do. We had stopped at the grocery store on the way home and picked up a rotisserie chicken. I eat some of the chicken, drink some ginger ale and begin to feel a little better.

Still feeling like a failure after one day of being on the protocol, I call the functional medicine doctor and sheepishly explain what happened. I worry about what they will think of me. Perhaps I did something wrong to cause me to go to the ER or maybe I am a weakling for not just sucking it up and staying the course. What they reply is not what I expected.

After being placed on a brief hold, the person who answers the phone gets back on the line and says, “Dr. F (for Functional Medicine) said that he’s sorry for what happened to you. It’s not a common occurrence, but it can happen. Instead of just eating the broth, you can now graduate to having meat and veggies in the broth (for all 3 meals for the next 10 days).” That’s it? That’s it. They do not elaborate.

By now, Bob is seething. He just wants me to quit this program. He doesn’t care about the money I've invested, but in spite of Dr. F’s lack of bedside manner, my Libra Sun wants to be fair and give this new healing approach a chance. My 9th house Stellium (Mercury, Mars and Neptune huddled together) in Scorpio is quite tenacious and wants to get to the bottom of why I’ve been feeling this way. Functional medicine digs down deep to find the root cause of illness…all the heavy Scorpio in my chart plus my natal Sun in the 8th House resonates with this. Learning astrology has really helped me to understand why I think, say and do the things I think, say and do.

My astrological birth chart

For now, I win this disagreement with Bob although I must confess, I remain conflicted. I really expected Dr. F and his team to be a little more sympathetic and caring about what happened to me. I decide to chalk it up to the act of caring for someone does not translate well over the phone nor over the internet. Again, my dander is up about “everything is online anymore!” And I begin to follow the updated protocol to now include meat and veggies in the bone broth. At least I will have a little more substance to my meals going forward.

Now before you shrug your shoulders and ask, “what’s the big deal, Diane?” As a fellow soup lover, you may be picturing me feasting on giant bowls of hearty soups and stews brimming with juicy cuts of beef and wholesome veggies like tomatoes and potatoes. Not exactly. I may have left out a tiny detail about this new dietary protocol. For the unforeseeable future, I must eliminate the following: Gluten, Dairy, Eggs, Sugar, Processed foods, Nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplant), Nuts, Seeds, Legumes, Corn, Grains and Alcohol. Remembering these heavy restrictions, my next few meals look like this.

Soupy Meats & Veggies

Almost 24 hours later, I still don’t feel right. I experience occasional heart racing, fatigue and weakness, but not enough to warrant another trip to the hospital. I call Dr. F to explain/complain, and I am instructed to just begin the full dietary protocol implementing the aforementioned elimination diet. It feels like I may be their problem child/patient and they don’t know what to do with me. Perhaps I’m just reading into it as I have a tendency to do just that. I also message Dr. P (my Primary Care Physician) about what I’ve experienced these last few days including the visit to the ER. She is much more sympathetic to my plight and places an order for me to wear a heart monitor for a few days. When I call to set an appointment to have the holter monitor placed, I learn that I will have to wait a couple of weeks and will need to drive an hour away as this is the only time and place for the first available appointment. Still, I schedule the appointment. In a sense, I feel like I'm cheating on Dr. F by continuing to court Dr. P's views as well.

In the meantime, I start eating real whole foods at every meal, and I begin to lose weight and feel a little better. I adhere to the dietary protocol about 95% of the time and begin to notice that when I fall off the wagon, i.e. eat something with gluten in it or have a tiny glass of wine, I get a migraine. Sometimes I get lightheaded after eating bacon, fresh spinach or canned tuna. If I eat leftovers, I feel the same way. Again, I call Dr. F’s office to explain/complain, and I am told that I may be experiencing a histamine flare. Certain foods are higher in histamine than others and can cause symptoms like one gets from seasonal allergies…runny nose, stuffiness, heart racing, dizziness. They send me a list of high histamine foods to eliminate. Of course, the list comprises everything I like to eat, and my diet has become even more restrictive. Again, I'm sensing a low tolerance threshold for my daily calls or emails. I am not feeling their love.

Yet to my delight, I continue to lose weight. To my chagrin, I keep eating the same foods repeatedly (picture the movie Ground Hog Day) and I desperately need to expand my menu repertoire. Thank goodness for Pinterest! While Dr. F’s office did send me a wealth of recipes, most of them did not appeal to me. The diet I now follow is most like that of the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) or Autoimmune Paleo protocol. While I wait these few weeks for my test results, I find some new recipes on Pinterest that are compliant with my diet adding some variety to everyday meals. I also feel a kinship with the bloggers who create these AIP recipes as many of them have ushered their own autoimmune diseases into remission just by changing their diet and lifestyle.

For the first time since I began this healing journey, I no longer feel alone. I feel seen. I still don’t know exactly what is wrong with me…do I have an autoimmune disease that wasn’t detected by the labs Dr. P ordered? Something like Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis or Lupus? Or is it a virus like chronic Lyme Disease? I am about to find out.

To be continued…

I Can No Longer Be Contained

As I write this, the Moon in Gemini is traipsing through my 5th House of Creativity and Artistic Expression. The Moon relates to what we feel…Gemini rules writing…and with Saturn, the rule-maker and timekeeper, stationed in my 1st House of Self, I know it is time to write something, share a piece of myself, and join the global conversation.

For months, I have been met with the worst case of writer’s block coupled with impostor’s syndrome that I could ever imagine. After celebrating the release of my self-published book Written in the Stars: Poems and Pictures in late 2021, I began 2022 with several local book signings. By April, I thought the promotion of my book had ended, but then I took the opportunity to participate in a local arts festival last summer which reignited my zeal for astrology and writing. Or at least I thought it should have done that.

I tried to write more poetry, but I was uninspired. Although I had written over 100 haikus earlier in the year, after that, nothing. I was beginning to believe that maybe I was just a wannabe writer and not the real deal. I totally discounted the facts that I had self-published a book and furthermore wrote over 100 haikus. But when you’re hard on yourself…a perfectionist, if you will, it’s hard to see beyond your failures even if you’ve just achieved success. I’ve long suffered with the feeling of being “not enough” especially given the social media climate we now live in, but more on that later.

For now, I need to rewind back to last summer when something happened to me that I haven’t shared with many people except for family and a few close friends. As I mentioned above, in the spirit of the current astrological placements, I can no longer be contained. My Aquarius Rising prompts a need to “pour forth for all who thirst.” And Saturn has directed that the time is now.

Back in May 2022, Bob and I travelled to Italy, visiting three areas we had never seen before…Le Marche, Umbria and Tuscany. When we travel, we eat the most amazing food, enjoy the locally produced wine and for 10 days or so, we immerse ourselves in the Italian culture. When we visited the village of Assisi, however, I became lightheaded after lunch that day. I thought I might faint. It was also very hot that day and we did have salty cured meats and wine at lunch which could explain this general feeling of unwellness, but I just didn’t feel right and I was scared. As a writer, I was having a hard time finding words to express exactly how I felt.

While the others continued exploring the town, I walked with the tour guides to the pharmacy. Fortunately, one of our guides was fluent in Italian and English so she served as my interpreter. The pharmacist checked my vitals…my heart was racing. She recommended a powdered drink mix that I purchased then we found a café where we could prepare the drink which I believe were electrolytes mixed with the herb hawthorn berry. One of the other guides loaned me her Apple watch so that I could monitor my heart rate which came down after we rested awhile. After returning to the tour bus, I began feeling a bit better though I occasionally had episodes of wooziness and a high heart rate throughout the rest of the trip.

When we returned home, I scheduled an appointment with my primary care doctor who ran some labs. Nothing out of the ordinary showed up except that my cholesterol was up including the LDL or “bad” cholesterol. This had me concerned immediately because heart disease runs in my family. My doctor said, “let’s just keep an eye on this,” and I was satisfied for the time being.

In June, I began working with a functional medicine practitioner. My Aquarius Rising persona is always wanting to try something new and since I felt like I couldn’t lose weight or feel as well as I wanted to especially since the episode in Italy, I consulted with a well-known person in this field knowing full well that it would cost me a lot of money. When it comes to my health and well-being, the money part wasn’t as much a determining factor as was getting to the bottom of why I felt so poorly, and the basis of functional medicine is “getting to the root cause of illness.” Maybe this person could help me find the underlying cause of my migraines as well. I was excited to take a new path towards better health.

My first step on this new path was to have a consultation with the doctor. Even though his office is relatively close by, his practice is tele-health only. I resisted for a moment as I am one who believes a healthcare professional needs to see you in person not just over the internet. Also, I had already been angry at “everything is online anymore!” especially since the pandemic and learning that I would need to “see” this doctor over the internet made me think twice about going forward with this. But I was determined to feel better so after completing paperwork and questionnaires, I scheduled a FaceTime consultation at which time my husband and I met with the doctor and explained what I hoped to gain by approaching my health concerns in this new way.

After the consultation, I was given instructions to get a battery of blood tests performed plus the clinic sent me several kits to test my urine, stool, and saliva which I eagerly completed and sent away for analysis. When I had my bloodwork done, the phlebotomist took 17 tubes of blood from me! No traditional medical doctor ever took that much blood, not even when I had breast cancer. I could only imagine what this new doctor would find. But I would have to wait about 6 weeks to find out what they believed caused my illness.

In the meantime, I was given a food protocol that I could begin even before the test results came back. For the first few days, I was to eat nothing, but bone broth. Up to 8 cups a day. I could make my own or buy the brands sanctioned by the doctor. So, a few days before I was to begin the protocol, I roasted beef bones before cooking the bone broth for nearly 24 hours. I also bought the allowed brand of chicken bone broth so that I could have some variety. I get very bored if I must eat the same thing day after day. But I figured I could do this for a few days before I was permitted to add meat and vegetables to the soup for up to an additional week to ten days.

On July 11, 2022, I enjoyed drinking bone broth alternating between chicken and beef throughout the day. Late in the afternoon, a headache set in. I wasn’t surprised as I was not permitted to have any coffee for at least the first 2 weeks of this protocol. I don’t drink a lot of coffee, but even missing my one or two cups was enough to trigger a headache. By evening, I felt saturated with bone broth and didn’t feel well even though drinking so much fluid kept me in and out of the bathroom all day. My head still hurt, and I may or may not have taken 2 Tylenol (which did nothing) so I went to sleep early hoping that a good night’s sleep would at least cure the headache.

I sat up in bed shortly after Midnight, my heart pounding so loudly I wondered if Bob heard it too. In a panic, I nudged him awake and told him what was going on. My heart was racing, I felt dizzy and still had the headache. Bob took my blood pressure, and it was high. The heart rate was over 100 while I was lying in bed. What was happening? All I did was drink bone broth all day. That doesn’t sound so bad.

I tried to fall back to sleep, but unable to settle down, I got out of bed and went into the living room to make a cup of herbal tea…I was allowed to have that. I tried to distract myself by playing a word game on my iPad, but my heart continued to race, and the headache persisted.

I climbed back in bed about 3am only to toss and turn for the next few hours. By 6am, I asked Bob to take me to the emergency room. Two hours later, I was seated with a throng of other masked sick people in the waiting room at Shadyside Hospital’s ER. It was only Day 2 of the protocol and already I was beginning to realize that perhaps the functional medicine plan of attack had malfunctioned big time.

To be continued...

"Every adventure requires a first step,"

...advised the Cheshire Cat in the classic Alice in Wonderland. His borderline ancient wisdom never goes out of style in my humble opinion. He also said "imagination is the only weapon in the war with reality" and "not all who wander are lost." Brilliant!

This Sunday, July 31st, I'm jumping down the rabbit hole a la Alice to participate in the Vandergrift ArtFest. This adventure is a first step for me as I've never sold my book at a fair or festival before. I'm nervous, but excited at the same time. This year, the ArtFest has the theme of Wonderland.

If you'll be in the area, please stop in to the old JC Penney building on Grant Avenue where I will be stationed selling and signing my book, Written in the Stars: Poems and Pictures.

The ArtFest runs from 11am - 8pm on Sunday. There are so many vendors, live music on 2 stages and food galore! If you do plan to attend, please stop and say hello!