During this time I had a colonoscopy. No problems there. I was 50 so Dr. S wanted all these test done along with the lab work. I also had a bone density test. All looked fine except some osteopenia in the hips.
It ended up that it wasn't my fibromyalgia getting worse. After some work, the verdict was hyperthyroidism (graves disease). I had a goiter on the thyroid too. So the treatment for this autoimmune disease was to kill the thyroid with radioactive iodine and put me on synthroid for the rest of my life. That sounded terrible to me, but I felt I didn't have much of a choice. It was that or surgery. A radioactive pill sounded much safer and less intrusive so that is what I chose to do.
What they usually do is give you antithyroid meds before they give you the radioactive iodine so as to avoid so many hormones dumping into your system. What happens is when they kill the thyroid with the radioactive iodine, the thyroid dumps way too many hormones into your body and that will make you really sick. It can be really hard on the heart. I, unfortunately was not a candidate for these because my liver enzymes had gone way up. So now during this time I am going to a liver specialist too. I had to ask him if the thyroid specialist can give me the antithyroid medications and after he looked at my liver levels, he said no. I guess the antithyroid can be hard on the liver. He thought I might have fatty liver (although he wasn't convinced of fatty liver because I weighed 127 at the time and I was 5'7") or something worse, but wanted me to take care of the thyroid first.
So I went o the hospital and they administered the radioactive iodine. My thyroid specialist gave me some beta blockers to protect the heart. It was a good thing she did because the pulse was fast during this time already. Well I did end up getting really sick. I was in bed for around 2 weeks except to use the bathroom and to eat. I was in so much pain, couldn't sleep, gosh I felt horrible. I saw the Dr. every 3 weeks. She was hoping to catch me before I went totally hypo but missed. I went totally hypo and so I continued to be sick and not sleeping. What a horrible experience, I'm glad it's over. My muscles felt like someone punched each one especially the legs. I'm on synthroid and doing well now.
During this time my motherinlaw is sick in the hospital. She had a stroke and within 6 months she died. That was a diffficult situation. We didn't know she was dying, the doctor said she would recover. It was hard on everyone.
About 1 month after getting on the synthroid, I began having pain where the leg and torso meet. It was swollen and I was about to have my yearly checkup so I asked the nurse practitioner I go to for that to see what she thought. She thought it might be a hernia and said I use go see my primary care physican. Well Dr. S was on maternity leave so I went to a doctor that was taking her patients until she came back from leave. He checked it and said it was tendonitis. I asked if the pain would go away and he said he didn't know and gave me mobic to take for the pain. It's a year later and the pain is still there. I live with it day in and day out without pain medication. I try to walk every day. Sometimes it will make the area swell. I am hoping to feel well enough to go to the gym and do water aerobics.
Another thing going on during all of this is that I was going to the dentist. I was having so much pain on the right upper teeth and the pain was into my head. Previously I had 2 different root canals done on one tooth and one done on another. This dentist was referred to me by family members that were happy with him.
So he looked at the teeth and took xrays and said he could help me and did 2 more root canals on the two teeth. Well, long story short, he didn't help me. The pain was even worse. This dentist said the only thing he could do was to pull the teeth. I went to another dentist and he said there was some surgery that needed to be done and I might need to have this continually done for the rest of my life. I was so tired of the pain in my head that I had been putting up with for over a year that in a desperate attempt to relieve the pain, I had all my teeth pulled.
Oh my gosh was that the worse experience. It was so painful and what a time of healing the gums and getting use to dentures. I would have had implants if I could afford them but my gosh they are so expensive. I think I read 2-4 thousand per tooth. Ok so now I have no teeth, I am trying to get use to dentures. I wouldn't take the dentures off in front of my husband for awhile because I was so embarrased about the way I look without teeth. It takes awhile before you can eat solid food, at least for me it did. And guess what, the pain is still there. This pain is so excruciating that it is difficult to make it though the day. I had a cat scan done and all is well there.
Okay I think I've covered everything I was going through during this time. If I think of anything else I'll edit, but I think that is everything.
So I, after all of this now have a report that my pressure and cholesterol are high and the doctor is wanting me on medications. Well not so fast my good doctor. So she agrees to allow me 4 months to bring both of those down or she was putting me on meds.
I left the office thinking how in the world I'd do this in 4 months. I was at least going to try!
To pick up where I left off, I heard about Dr. Fuhrman, read his book, "Fasting and Eating for Health", and joined his website as a member, downloaded the free book for becoming a member, "Eat To Live", and began the diet.
This was the hardest diet I have ever been on. Eating SAD (the standard american diet) for my whole life and enjoying it to going to E2L was oh so difficult. I was depressed, and even cried. I just didn't think I was going to make it through this new way of eating.
I like salads once in awhile but my gosh, every day and twice a day. Forget it!!! Also, you can't use regular dressings from the store. You either have to make your own or find some with no fat and very little salt if any. We are not allowed oil and are only allowed 300 mg of added sodium per day. I really thought I would never enjoy food again. So basically, here is the diet for the first 6 weeks.
A minimum of 4 fruits per day
1 oz on nuts/seeds
1 oz of avocado
1 Tbl of ground flax seed
work towards 1 lb of raw veggies
work towards 1 lb of cooked veggies
1 cup beans/legumes
After the first couple of days I was so tired of salads. I was having a hard time finding any of the dressings with no fat and low sodium. I think if I had been able to find something to put on my salad that tasted good, it wouldn't have been so difficult. So instead of salads, I began to drink a salad smoothie. I would put everything I would eat for a salad, along with some fruit for sweetness and blend it all together and drink my salad.
That was okay for a couple of weeks but that got old pretty quickly and I wanted to chew some food. So I decided that I was going to find a store bought dressing somehow if it was the last think I ever did. I was determined! ;-) I looked online and went to every store until I found one. I began with Newman's raspberry walnut dressing but it had oil in it and sodium but it was tolerable. I figured I'd start with it until I could find something else. And then a couple of weeks later I saw Vidalia had a raspberry vinagrette. It didn't have oil nor sodium but had some cane juice. Well, we are not allowed sugar on the diet either so I thought, which is worse, the oil and sodium or the cane juice. I decided to buy the Vidalia and if it brought on food cravings I would not use it but that never happened so I continued with it. Then I found that Lighthouse has a pomblueberry dressing with no fat and no cane juice but has within limits sodium. So I use both of them for my dressings for now.
The reason I don't make my own is because we are living in our RV for now and the refrigerator is a little small. My husband worked for a national company that was bought out and the new owners had to decrease their employees and my husband was one of them that lost his job. We really toughed it for awhile and were able to see how the Lord provided for us when the going was so difficult. God provided for us in so many ways. My husband is now making a little more than half of what he was recieving as a salary with the other company and we are getting bills paid and hopefully within another year or two we'll be able to buy a house.
So now that I have some salad dressings, I need to begin with some new recipes for vegetable dishes. That was depressing too because I ended up throwing so many dishes out because I didn't like them. That made me leary to try new dishes because of all the money I threw away. But I did keep at it and slowly I have a few recipes I really love.
This new way of eating really grows on you if you can make it through the first 6 weeks. Becoming a member of the website and being able to talk with others about their journey in the forums was so helpful. They all were so supportive and helpful, offering suggestions to anyone with a question. I also read the archived posts and recieved allot of wisdom without having to ask every question I had. I was even able to ask the doctor questions and read his archived "ask the doctor" questions too. It is so wonderful to be a part of a group that is so positive and willing to help out in any way they can. Okay, I need to stop again here but will continue next time with how this diet has helped me so far. See you then and "Eat To Live"!!!
It ended up that it wasn't my fibromyalgia getting worse. After some work, the verdict was hyperthyroidism (graves disease). I had a goiter on the thyroid too. So the treatment for this autoimmune disease was to kill the thyroid with radioactive iodine and put me on synthroid for the rest of my life. That sounded terrible to me, but I felt I didn't have much of a choice. It was that or surgery. A radioactive pill sounded much safer and less intrusive so that is what I chose to do.
What they usually do is give you antithyroid meds before they give you the radioactive iodine so as to avoid so many hormones dumping into your system. What happens is when they kill the thyroid with the radioactive iodine, the thyroid dumps way too many hormones into your body and that will make you really sick. It can be really hard on the heart. I, unfortunately was not a candidate for these because my liver enzymes had gone way up. So now during this time I am going to a liver specialist too. I had to ask him if the thyroid specialist can give me the antithyroid medications and after he looked at my liver levels, he said no. I guess the antithyroid can be hard on the liver. He thought I might have fatty liver (although he wasn't convinced of fatty liver because I weighed 127 at the time and I was 5'7") or something worse, but wanted me to take care of the thyroid first.
So I went o the hospital and they administered the radioactive iodine. My thyroid specialist gave me some beta blockers to protect the heart. It was a good thing she did because the pulse was fast during this time already. Well I did end up getting really sick. I was in bed for around 2 weeks except to use the bathroom and to eat. I was in so much pain, couldn't sleep, gosh I felt horrible. I saw the Dr. every 3 weeks. She was hoping to catch me before I went totally hypo but missed. I went totally hypo and so I continued to be sick and not sleeping. What a horrible experience, I'm glad it's over. My muscles felt like someone punched each one especially the legs. I'm on synthroid and doing well now.
During this time my motherinlaw is sick in the hospital. She had a stroke and within 6 months she died. That was a diffficult situation. We didn't know she was dying, the doctor said she would recover. It was hard on everyone.
About 1 month after getting on the synthroid, I began having pain where the leg and torso meet. It was swollen and I was about to have my yearly checkup so I asked the nurse practitioner I go to for that to see what she thought. She thought it might be a hernia and said I use go see my primary care physican. Well Dr. S was on maternity leave so I went to a doctor that was taking her patients until she came back from leave. He checked it and said it was tendonitis. I asked if the pain would go away and he said he didn't know and gave me mobic to take for the pain. It's a year later and the pain is still there. I live with it day in and day out without pain medication. I try to walk every day. Sometimes it will make the area swell. I am hoping to feel well enough to go to the gym and do water aerobics.
Another thing going on during all of this is that I was going to the dentist. I was having so much pain on the right upper teeth and the pain was into my head. Previously I had 2 different root canals done on one tooth and one done on another. This dentist was referred to me by family members that were happy with him.
So he looked at the teeth and took xrays and said he could help me and did 2 more root canals on the two teeth. Well, long story short, he didn't help me. The pain was even worse. This dentist said the only thing he could do was to pull the teeth. I went to another dentist and he said there was some surgery that needed to be done and I might need to have this continually done for the rest of my life. I was so tired of the pain in my head that I had been putting up with for over a year that in a desperate attempt to relieve the pain, I had all my teeth pulled.
Oh my gosh was that the worse experience. It was so painful and what a time of healing the gums and getting use to dentures. I would have had implants if I could afford them but my gosh they are so expensive. I think I read 2-4 thousand per tooth. Ok so now I have no teeth, I am trying to get use to dentures. I wouldn't take the dentures off in front of my husband for awhile because I was so embarrased about the way I look without teeth. It takes awhile before you can eat solid food, at least for me it did. And guess what, the pain is still there. This pain is so excruciating that it is difficult to make it though the day. I had a cat scan done and all is well there.
Okay I think I've covered everything I was going through during this time. If I think of anything else I'll edit, but I think that is everything.
So I, after all of this now have a report that my pressure and cholesterol are high and the doctor is wanting me on medications. Well not so fast my good doctor. So she agrees to allow me 4 months to bring both of those down or she was putting me on meds.
I left the office thinking how in the world I'd do this in 4 months. I was at least going to try!
To pick up where I left off, I heard about Dr. Fuhrman, read his book, "Fasting and Eating for Health", and joined his website as a member, downloaded the free book for becoming a member, "Eat To Live", and began the diet.
This was the hardest diet I have ever been on. Eating SAD (the standard american diet) for my whole life and enjoying it to going to E2L was oh so difficult. I was depressed, and even cried. I just didn't think I was going to make it through this new way of eating.
I like salads once in awhile but my gosh, every day and twice a day. Forget it!!! Also, you can't use regular dressings from the store. You either have to make your own or find some with no fat and very little salt if any. We are not allowed oil and are only allowed 300 mg of added sodium per day. I really thought I would never enjoy food again. So basically, here is the diet for the first 6 weeks.
A minimum of 4 fruits per day
1 oz on nuts/seeds
1 oz of avocado
1 Tbl of ground flax seed
work towards 1 lb of raw veggies
work towards 1 lb of cooked veggies
1 cup beans/legumes
After the first couple of days I was so tired of salads. I was having a hard time finding any of the dressings with no fat and low sodium. I think if I had been able to find something to put on my salad that tasted good, it wouldn't have been so difficult. So instead of salads, I began to drink a salad smoothie. I would put everything I would eat for a salad, along with some fruit for sweetness and blend it all together and drink my salad.
That was okay for a couple of weeks but that got old pretty quickly and I wanted to chew some food. So I decided that I was going to find a store bought dressing somehow if it was the last think I ever did. I was determined! ;-) I looked online and went to every store until I found one. I began with Newman's raspberry walnut dressing but it had oil in it and sodium but it was tolerable. I figured I'd start with it until I could find something else. And then a couple of weeks later I saw Vidalia had a raspberry vinagrette. It didn't have oil nor sodium but had some cane juice. Well, we are not allowed sugar on the diet either so I thought, which is worse, the oil and sodium or the cane juice. I decided to buy the Vidalia and if it brought on food cravings I would not use it but that never happened so I continued with it. Then I found that Lighthouse has a pomblueberry dressing with no fat and no cane juice but has within limits sodium. So I use both of them for my dressings for now.
The reason I don't make my own is because we are living in our RV for now and the refrigerator is a little small. My husband worked for a national company that was bought out and the new owners had to decrease their employees and my husband was one of them that lost his job. We really toughed it for awhile and were able to see how the Lord provided for us when the going was so difficult. God provided for us in so many ways. My husband is now making a little more than half of what he was recieving as a salary with the other company and we are getting bills paid and hopefully within another year or two we'll be able to buy a house.
So now that I have some salad dressings, I need to begin with some new recipes for vegetable dishes. That was depressing too because I ended up throwing so many dishes out because I didn't like them. That made me leary to try new dishes because of all the money I threw away. But I did keep at it and slowly I have a few recipes I really love.
This new way of eating really grows on you if you can make it through the first 6 weeks. Becoming a member of the website and being able to talk with others about their journey in the forums was so helpful. They all were so supportive and helpful, offering suggestions to anyone with a question. I also read the archived posts and recieved allot of wisdom without having to ask every question I had. I was even able to ask the doctor questions and read his archived "ask the doctor" questions too. It is so wonderful to be a part of a group that is so positive and willing to help out in any way they can. Okay, I need to stop again here but will continue next time with how this diet has helped me so far. See you then and "Eat To Live"!!!
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