Loose Ends

In no particular order, the status on a few things I've mentioned in the last few weeks.

1.Food allergies/sensitivities. They seem to have resolved. I haven't tried cucumbers yet and there's a threshold with chocolate at which I get heartburn, but no more nose swelling shut with tomatoes! Woot! I can eat salsa again!

2.Bio-identical Hormone Replacement. Well, I started progesterone. Then, I stopped progesterone. Currently the doc and I are tinkering with the dose, trying to get it right. I had a really great day right before I had to stop it, so I remain optimistic.

I am deficient, my levels are pretty much zero, so replacing it has to have some positive effect. I just need to get the dose right and be on it long enough to see it in action. I should be starting up again next week.

3.Yoga is hard. It makes me sweat. It makes my knees and wrists hurt, but relieves my neck pain, so hopefully the other joints will get used to it. To my surprise, I'm kind of flexible. The big downer is I took off my medical id bracelet in the middle of the class and left it behind. So far, no one has found it.

4.Mean mommies. One of the moms felt really guilty for standing by and saying nothing and came clean to everyone else. Almost everyone knows now. So all of a sudden, my in-box is full of apologies. Except for the mean mommy, who, I'm now told, has always been like this and I grossly misjudged her character.

Social dynamics among girls/women kind of interest me now that I've had to navigate mean girl territory with my daughter. I've read several books on the topic even. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

The mean mommy has one friend left--the two of them make up what remains of the group and are close friends. With the rest of us gone and avoiding the one mom, will mean mommy then target the other mom? (That may sound strange, but many times I've seen bullies who've been isolated turn on their friends because there's no one else to kick.)

Will the other mom clue in to the fact that she's now socially isolated because of mean mom? Or is she on the same page and in agreement with mean mommy?

Or will mean mommmy surprise everyone and apologize?

As to what my future will be with the mommies now? I am not sure. I still don't drink (they do) and am often too tired to attend the events necessary to bond with everyone. So who knows?

Alternative Medicine Check-Up

Saw the altnernative doc. They think I look much better, which I guess is true, since I'm no longer dying of bronchitis. I am more tentative. I've been in this place before, feeling like the worst is behind me only to realize that the 'new normal' comes with limitations. I'm afraid to be optimistic because that just gets me burned.

Their plan is 6 to 8 months of IV nutrition therapy and also bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.

My plan is to sell a kidney to pay for all of that because this is getting seriously expensive. I wish the clinic had been more forthright about costs, because I was told it was $50 an IV session and it's not even close.

Waaaaay more money.

Add in the herbs and shit?

Even more money.

It's hard not to feel a little hoodwinked when they say one thing and then steal your wallet.

If you see the money fairy, send her my way, okay? Meanwhile I'll be writing as fast as I can (which is still slow as I'm a slow writer, totally the wrong speed for the output I need to achieve asap).

If I can get another release out this month, I'll be happy.

On the food allergy front, Dr. Alternative says it should be transient, a side effect of the IV therapy and its impact on my body. I hope that's true as I had some salsa the other night and my nose swelled shut. Chocolate, on the other hand, has been better, which gives me hope.

My big question, which remains unanswered by either. Dr. Google or Dr. Alternative is, if I have low progesterone (which I do) and progesterone is a precursor to cortisol production, how does that limit production capacity of cortisol? Or not? What fail-safes are built into the system and what impact does that have on health?

I've actually been researching this quite a bit and can't find anything. Apparently no one else in the webiverse has ever had this question. Sometimes I've stared at biochemistry charts hoping to intuit something, but, while I love Biochemistry, I never took more than the basic class in college, so it's beyond me.

Or maybe I just haven't found the right chart yet. Cue more googling and chart staring.

Dr. Alternative says it was a good question, but had no answer ready other than to move up the bioidentical hormone piece to sometime next month vs. waiting six months--which I was happy about because I think this is all connected. I don't know if it comes through on this blog, but it is clear to me that my whole body is shutting down. Nothing is working right and I think the answer lies in getting all my hormones balanced, not just cortisol.

I've been reading a lot about hormones and anti-aging (as this is the only area of medicine that seems dedicated to getting hormones right) and want to share a quote with you from a book I'm reading. T.S. Wiley is an "anthropologist focusing on evolutionary biology and environmental endocrinology in molecular medicine and genetics."

She was interviewed by Suzanne Somers (yes, from Three's Company fame) for the book Ageless. If you haven't read any of Somers' books, you are missing out because she interviews the thought leaders in alternative medicine and science. The ideas and information are very thought provoking, even if you don't agree with them.

So. The following stood out to me because it talks about hormones and the HPA axis, a topic near and dear to my heart.

T.S. Wiley says "So the pill's synthetic hormones and dosing regimen derange the original HPA axis, which is sort of a global positioning system, to tell your systems the time of day and year based upon your location to the planet. Unfortunately, whether or not the axis ever rights itself depends upon childbirth.

If you have babies after the pill, that's a start, that helps. Whether or not this axis can stay righted as you continue to reproduce depends upon lifestyle. How late you stay up, how much sugar you eat, how old you are inside.

But once the HPA axis is deranged you need a jolt, like cardiac paddles, you know, when they jump start your heart to get your hormones back in sync with the planet. You can use bioidenticals, if you use them in rhythm and use them the right way, to make peaks that feed back to the brain, and then the brain talks to the lower half.

You have to make up the part of the song that is missing."

Yeah, totally missing the melody and harmony over here. I think all I have is a slow drum beat left to my song.

The entire book is fascinating as is another book by Somers dealing with cancer, Knockout. Check them out if you have the chance. Everyone who has done so on my recommendation has been amazed.

Still with the Allergies

The asthma has remained activated since salsa Sunday. My nasal passages are inflamed and swollen, similar to how I couldn't breathe through my nose after an allergic reaction to Cipro a few years ago.

Energy is in the toilet (when is it not?) with lots of weakness. I was not seriously considering sleeping on any flat surface yesterday like I had been on Sunday, but I was only a hair above that. I really probably should've stress dosed, but I didn't.

Take that, adrenals.

Here are some pics. I'm still working on a food project and I have cute dogs.

This is our beloved black lab. 12 years young and wise beyond her age. Best dog I've ever known. It was 90F+ on Monday so we got the pool out for the dogs.

Here's our yellow lab. Yeah, he looks cute, but his beauty regimen consists of eating poo.


This was breakfast a few days ago. Sauteed kale and onions topped with scrambled eggs and seasoned with tumeric and paprika. It was good.


Vegetarian taco salad: salsa, guacamole, beans, peppers, lettuce, cheese. I took this before I realized I can't eat tomatoes or peppers anymore.


Wild blueberry sorbet. Delicious. I was going to add low carb ice cream, but it didn't need it. Incredibly decadent for a one ingredient dish.

Allergic Asthma?

Yesterday was full of surprises.

My energy was low and it took me a while to figure it out.

I forgot to take my nightly dose of licorice. And my body really cared about that. It missed it like some people miss Bill Clinton's presidency.

By the time I was a slumped lump with the toddler in the church nursery, literally unable to keep my eyes open and trying to figure out where on the floor I could lay down without anyone seeing me, I realized I probably should stress dose.

There was a lot of breakfast and my morning vitamins in my stomach so it seemed like it took forever for 5mg to hit me, but ever so gradually, I could keep my eyes open.

Yes, that was the big battle of my day. Not sprawling across frayed church carpet and staying conscious. I still konked out later, in my bed, at home, without any public drooling, which I count as a win.

It's interesting to note that my am cortisol a few weeks ago was 15. Not too shabby. Quite good in fact. I continue to believe it's an issue of responding to stress--that I don't have the full spectrum of functionality. Which is almost impossible to measure with blood work. I would need an ITT or OMM to even come close to understanding the failures in my HPA axis.

Anyway, from there, I had some salsa. Tomatoes are an iffy food for me these days, sometimes okay, sometimes not. This time not. Or rather, I think the big chunks of pepper were the problem.

The interesting thing, it caused an asthma flare. I began hacking, my throat began to itch (an itch I've known to be asthma in the past) and I got a little flash of heart burn (although, thankfully, no eruption of Mt. Acid).

Okay, so now I want to say I don't think I've had food allergies all along. I think this is a new development. That I had GERD, which is currently controlled with the enzymes, but now allergies are coming up. I've had some sensitivity to peppers off and on since my 20s, but food triggering asthma is completely new, never experienced before.

The reason I back track is I was remembering when GERD started for me and I ate no trigger foods for weeks and weeks and it didn't improve. So the GERD is not as simple as never eating another tomato or pepper.

I think I have new food allergies, which is not great news. It would've been better the way I originally took it, that they'd been there all along. The last thing I need is an even more hyper-sensitive system!

Now what do I do about it? Avoid the offending foods and what? Am I really never going to eat chocolate again? Or tomato bisque? Or cucumber salad? Ever?

I did test some organic cocoa powder in a smoothie. It did not cause heartburn, but I did have some nausea. I want to try it one more time with a smaller dose.

My mind is just boggled by this. I don't want any allergies!