o brother, where art thou?

Well it’s been quite a while since I last posted anything. I hope this post will explain why that is and what the future holds.

So what happened you ask? Well to be perfectly frank, I just got really fed up… with everything. I didn’t walk to do any more testing, I was tired of doing all this psychoanalysis on myself, and I really did not want to talk about it. I just wanted it all to go away and pretend like I had never gone through this experience.

Gee that’s a bit extreme isn’t it? It may seem that way, but when people ask me how all the food testing is going my response is “it has been the worst 12 months of my life and I wish I’d been better prepared to make the decision to go ahead, because I don’t think I would have.”

Exhaustion, motivation, and will
The biggest contributor I think to this feeling was the symptoms I suffered from much of the food. Sometimes I felt like I had chronic fatigue. The food and everything related to managing the symptoms were draining. First I’d have to get up to go to work, that was tiring. Then I would have to convince myself to get up off the edge of the bed or bath to actually have a shower. That was harder than you think, and yes it was tiring. Then I would have to talk myself into getting dressed. Well you get the idea. Some days were harder than others. Some days, I should have stayed home.

Once I left the house and got to work I would have to really “turn it on”, you know, be social, talk to people, and actually do some work. This was an unbelievable strain on my body physically and emotionally.

By the time I’d get home, I was so exhausted all I could muster up was making dinner and sitting on the couch. Bedtime was my favourite time of the day because as soon as my head hit the pillow I would literally pass out. The world was gone. Shut out for another little while.

Analysis paralysis
Angry, upset paranoid and depressed were the most frequent visitors of the psychological symptoms. Was it something I ate? What could it have been? I’ve eaten that before without any serious problems so maybe it’s not that. How careful was I yesterday? Maybe it wasn’t yesterday, maybe it was the day before? Is it a new boundary? Does this really make me that angry, upset or depressed? Would I normally be so charged from it? Why am I crying about this?

Every day, for every emotion, for every interaction and feeling, this is what I went through. You really have to ask the question, why don’t any of the symptoms come out with total exhilaration or euphoria?

Feeling the squeeze
Rapid prolonged weight gain and bloating were those acquaintances that just never left, or just popped out but always came back.

So add all of the same questions as above and add on questions about what to wear. I was just so uncomfortable in my own skin I could not comprehend how putting anything on was going to change that at all. And it didn’t. It’s no wonder why it took me so long to get up and ready in the morning.

I wasn’t exercising much either. A little bit of swimming here and there, and yoga once a week, but these were (obviously) not enough to actually reduce the weight or mitigate any symptoms. The bigger I got, the more depressed I got the less I did any form of physical activity.

Breathing is a luxury
Just to keep things interesting, I developed a respiratory problem that continued for 3 months where I was constantly coughing. It was unclear whether or not it was related to the testing I was doing with the food, or if I was allergic to my client site at the time, the colleagues I was sitting next to or my house, so I went to see a respiratory and allergy specialist.

There were a lot of blood tests, breathing tests, x-rays and scans and the threat of doing another round of food baseline and elimination. I moved to a different floor from my project team and at one stage I even had to move out of my house for a period of time. After 3 months, I got a very serious bout of gastro that lasted about a week, and that seemed to eradicate whatever respiratory issues.


So needless to say, it’s been a tough year for me, but we are getting there and I’ll go into more detail in my next post.

Finally, I need to share with you that I would not have been able to do this on my own. My husband has just been phenomenal. He has been patient, kind, supporting, he has done things for me, waited for me, got frustrated with me and at me, but he has never left my side. To be honest, that amazes me. I feel like I have been the most awful person to him but he still loves me. I love you babe, and thankyou.