Dealing with it

Secretly, I was hoping I’d be feeling good effects from the cleanse diet by this point. I kind of hoped that my whole CFS/ME problem was just about a food allergy – I have a lot of unrealistic hope like that. Maybe hope isn’t the word… maybe I mean wish. While I’m at it, I wish for a Pegasus. Oh, and I want to be a Princess, too!

<sigh>

At least the weird stomach aches stopped. That happened within about twenty-four hours. This time, I’m not quite as hungry as I was in the beginning when I did this before. I think this is because I generally eat a low glycemic index diet. There isn’t so much of a carbohydrate addiction to break this time.

What kills me is that I had a bad day on Thursday. I woke up feeling like my head was too heavy for my neck. I had no ambition. I was really cold, despite the thermostat reading 75°. Sure it was cold outside, and a huge snow storm was on the way (we got sixteen inches all told, but it never got terribly cold – maybe just below freezing), but it was warm inside. I had to take three naps, I think. And I couldn’t hold on to a thought. I couldn’t really knit more than a row at a time. I couldn’t read more than a sentence or two. Caffeine didn’t make it better.

Today, however, I had some early morning ambition. I moved some furniture, vacuumed and swept, wrote up and sent a recipe for butternut squash and apple soup to some friends who asked for it, did some laundry…

Maybe two hours into it, though, I felt the wall coming. I have this irrational reaction that leads me to try to outrun it. If I feel the wall coming, I try to work harder and faster. In reality, I think that trying to outrun the wall  just makes it come more quickly due to the stress. Still, I feel compelled to try. I think this is the most frustrating thing about the whole chronic illness thing: I’m a healthy, ambitious person stuck in a sick, lazy person’s body.

I’ve been able to knit some today and on Friday. It made me think about how I said I’d post my current works in progress. It’s been a long time since I’ve listed them. I think I’m just going to mention the ones I am actively working on. All of these projects are for other people. Most have a deadline. The others are just fuzzy memories at the moment.

These need to be done ASAP. Winter seems long, but it doesn’t last forever.

• K’s winter wear. For Christmas, I sent K’s husband (Dr B) a hat and scarf. It’s been so cold where she lives that she confiscated these items a few times so she could be warm when she left the house. I’m making K her own set (with mittens as a bonus!) so she and her husband can be warm outside the house at the same time.
• Dr R’s giant socks. I really need to make smaller friends. He wears a size eleven shoe. Fortunately, he wants warm, worsted weight socks. Totally doable.

This will be due soon enough. I have several friends who are expecting babies, and only one has announced it. I get to know early because I am the knitter and I need time to produce the baby items!

• Crayon Blanket. Jen announced that she’s expecting a little girl. After the blanket, there will be cardigans and booties and whatever else I can think of. That catch is that Jen lives in Florida and is sensitive to wool. This means I need to make cool, wool-free items.

I’ve been working on this for a long time. I’m not sure what about this is taking me so long.

• Gentleman Socks for Michael. I started these in April of last year. On the bright side, Michael already has a pair of socks I made him. I just wish he had more. I wish I had more. Alas, my knitting interest is fickle and I can’t force myself to work on something I’m just not feeling. I keep this one out, though, and put on a row here or there. I’m on the second sock, and I’ve even turned the heel. I can see the end, I just can’t seem to bring myself to get there. I really wonder why.

Oddly, I like the knitting deadlines. I feel like my knitting has purpose. I feel like people are expecting something of me. It’s all I can do to contribute to society these days, a few hand-knit items for people who appreciate them.

I expect to be casting on more things soon, despite my unlisted but definitely unfinished projects waiting in the closet. My acupuncturist is a knitter, but she stopped knitting over 30 years ago. She has admired my hand knit socks when she was busy sticking needles in me. She claims that she is not good enough at knitting to make socks. Everyone who knits by hand deserves a pair of hand knit socks, so at some point she will get some.

I’ve run out of energy again, so I’m going to have to end this post sooner than I’d like. I’m going to try to get pictures of the works in progress for the next post (which I really hope will occur in a day or two). What I’m hoping for the most is to feel well enough to see if the shelter has something for me to foster. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Trying Again

Remember when I started this (the second half of the post)? Yeah, I’m doing that again. Started this morning. I’m hoping to figure out what the new food allergy is that makes me break out in rashes and have random bouts of diarrhea. It’s going to be much the same process as the first time, except I will be able to keep butter and tomatoes in the diet. I am certain these aren’t a problem. All other dairy, grains, and potentially inflammatory meats and nuts are out. On the bright side, I am going to be home the whole time I’m on this diet. It’s a good thing, because eating out while trying to strictly control my diet is really hard. Not impossible, just hard.

In the meantime, I have a lot of knitting to do. I’ve got 3 expected babies to knit for, plus a few projects for friends who want or need something specific. Later this week I’ll put up a list of what I have in progress, plus the list of things I plan to cast on. I am thinking I need to make something to wear on the cruise I plan to take in August. It will be Michael’s and my 10th anniversary this year, so it will be nice to cruise even if I am not much better and not really up to it. I mean, there’s food and a bed on board – what else could I need?

As for the past month, I actually accomplished a few things. The biggest is that I caught up on my newspaper comics. Somehow, it’s nice to only have one day’s worth of comics waiting for me in the morning. I eat breakfast and read the paper, and when I’ve finished, there isn’t a giant stack still waiting for me. It’s just nice to feel caught up.

I also discovered a new treatment that seems to help.  I went to see a chiropractor who uses an acupuncture technique called NAET. When I walked in to her office, I was up front with the doctor. I told her I thought that this was just voodoo and I was only there to say I had tried it. The doctor was very good about the whole thing. She said that it was all right I felt that way, let’s just try it and see if it does anything. She said it works for some and not for others. Given that she was so laid back about the whole thing, I agreed to give her a shot.

Well, the three days after my first treatment were the best I’ve had in about a year and a half. I went back on the fourth day having regressed almost to the point where I was before the treatment, but feeling optimistic that a second treatment might produce the same results. In fact, it did work. I am by no means all cured – far from it. The difference is that I wake up in the morning feeling kind of crappy, I have a glass of tea, then have up to four hours of clear thinking and productivity. I can only do light housework and tasks like reading, but for those few hours, these activities are no longer a complete struggle. It’s improvement, so I’ll take it. As of today we’ve only worked on treating my autonomic nervous system imbalance, so I’ll be interested to see what happens when we actually start trying to clear food allergies.

Unfortunately, I seem to be out of focus for today. I plan on writing more over the course of the next few weeks, especially regarding the cleanse diet. I may need some moral support as it drags on – eating carefully is hard work!