the end of salicylates

Apart from the sudden burst of flavour into my food, the first six day of this challenge were really not that interesting. There had been no symptoms to note. Which is why I was so surprised about what happened on the seventh day and the days that followed.

As part of the talk they give you when they are explaining the elimination diet they provide this analogy of how intolerance limits is really like having a bucket. Your bucket will only take so much, but once you overfill the bucket, even just a little bit, the entire bucket falls over and everything falls out.

This was more than just falling over. This was a catastrophic explosion.

On the last day of this challenge we had gone out to a friend’s place for a birthday celebration, had a lovely evening and came home. As I write this I don’t even really remember what happened, but I got upset about something, and it was all down hill from there. I cried for a substantial period of time before I was just so tired I passed out. Waking up the next morning I felt like I had been hit by a bus. I could barely think straight. My energy and motivation levels had gone into negative gear, which was noted by a friend and work colleague over the next two days. At this point I had stopped eating the salicylates and was back on the baseline.

And then finally, a couple of days later I just went completely loco! I was so hysterical, I think I went into ultrasonic mode where only animals would be able to hear me, let alone have anyone understand me. I couldn’t move off the couch either. My face was numb. My poor Dave didn’t know what to do. Luckily he has the powers to fix almost anything and finally just came over and gave me a really long hug.
While that was comforting and did help calm me down. The whole experience was just completely unexpected. I was prepared when I did the wheat challenge, but neither of us was prepared for this.

Throughout this while week after the challenge, I had soldiered on, and continued to go to work every day. I explained to a friend/colleague how tired and drained I was when I got to work, and he wisely said to me “There are more people who are a lot less sick than you are and don’t come to work. Seriously.” I have always felt an obligation to go to work unless I am physically unable to get out of the bed, but in hindsight, I am definitely going to be keeping that in mind.

So while I was lucky that I didn’t crack at work, I’m sure my behavioural change was noticeable, but worst of all, I had left it to my husband to be responsible for taking care of me again, and that was just unfair on him.

So the final results are, while I had a severe reaction to salicylates, I will be able to have them in my diet again, just in limited amounts. My specialist will explain all that when we get to the end of the testing.