It all started back in September.
We had moved to Grand Junction after Tyler graduated as an Optometrist in Philadelphia (Oh, how I miss it sometimes!). We settled into our new home, Lyndi started First Grade at a new school, Emerie was invited to participate in a new preschool group, and Levi was becoming a very active little 18 month old.
Then one night I woke up with what I thought was some mild pain and discomfort from a stomach bug. I was up the rest of the night and it went away late the next morning just as quick as it came on. A few days later, the exact same thing happened. This occurred two more times in less than two weeks. I called my sister and she told me sometimes there are certain stomach viruses that last about two weeks. All seemed to point to that, because after that weird 4-time occurrence in two weeks it went away.
About a month later in October it came back. In the exact same way. Four times in about two weeks. It wasn't anything really concerning to me yet, I still thought maybe I was just adjusting to the different strains of bacteria since we were living somewhere completely new. I was a bit paranoid that I would spread it to my kids, so I spent those nights and days trying to quarantine myself (quite a feat with small kids at home). But just like in September, it went away after that two weeks.
In November it became more frequent. It started occurring once a week. Every week. By this point I was trying to tie it to different foods or things that I was doing those days. I thought I had it tied to avocados, then tomatoes, then salad, then the tap water, and so on and so forth. Nothing was making any sense!
In the craziness of December I was trying to deal with being up all night sick and not feeling well all the next day at least once a week and at the same time trying to keep up with holiday festivities, birthdays, traveling and making goodies for friends and neighbors. I still hadn't gotten anywhere with tying the sickness to food, but I finally was able to tie it to some stress. It got significantly worse a few days before Christmas. The day of Lyndi's birthday I was up on my feet all day baking a cake, babysitting a friends kids, my own running kids to and fro, going to the school to celebrate with Lyndi at lunch, and making treats to take to the Page family Christmas party. That night I woke up sick yet again, only this time it lasted well into the next day. We traveled to Utah and I was still sick at Tyler's brothers house. By this point I thought that just traveling and stress had triggered my extended symptoms. We got back home and I still wasn't feeling well (this being the 3rd day). The next day I woke up feeling better, but had a ton to do. It was December 20, and I still hadn't made treats for friends and neighbors and co-workers. I was up again all day baking (and I mean ALL day) and not paying attention to what I was eating. That night I took one bite of a sugar cookie and felt sick immediately. I was sick before I even went to bed. I was in pretty intense pain all that night, ALL the next day and most of the next night. I cried a lot, I couldn't get anything to alleviate any of my symptoms. By now I knew something more than just a random stomach bug was causing my body to retaliate. And I mean retaliate. I've never had anything happen to my body that I couldn't fix myself, or couldn't get a doctor to fix with pills immediately.
I went in to the doctor the day after my "episode" or "flareup" and found out I had lost 15 lbs. I was so sick I couldn't put any food other than small amounts of applesauce or yogurt into my body for almost 5 days. On Christmas Eve my sweet husband (who had already pulled his and my weight for months now) made a nice dinner for us consisting of steak, sweet potatoes and salad. Food had never tasted so good! I didn't eat very much of it for fear of getting sick again. I woke up Christmas morning and just felt awful. In addition to not feeling well, Levi binged on some candy from his stocking and within 5 minutes of us being into Christmas-morning-mode, Levi threw up on my pants. After we got all the presents opened, I went back to bed. I felt so lame and so angry that my body was doing this. After all, I didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't do drugs, ate what I thought was best for my body, so why would it be freaking out when I was only 28?!?!?
My doctor gave me a muscle relaxer to help with flareups, and they were my lifesaver. Note: this was not like the muscle relaxers you see in movies, it didn't make me act high or crazy haha. It simply just allowed my body to digest the foods I was eating without such extreme consequences. My brother and his family came to stay for New Years Eve and I prayed SO HARD that my body would be able to behave until after they left. And surprisingly, it did, until the last night they were here. I made a soup that apparently didn't cook properly. I ended up making my family sick as well as my brothers family... but my body reacted much more severely than theirs did. But my sweet sister-in-law came to the rescue and somehow managed to pack up her family and clean up my house while I was stuck in bed. Again, I felt so lame and so helpless, and I even ended up throwing up my muscle relaxer that morning, so there was no help for me that day. I found out that 3 of my siblings have also experienced this, but none of them experienced the extremes that I was, and theirs was temporary.
However, about a week and a half after I got these amazing muscle relaxers, I found out I was finally expecting! I hadn't been able to get pregnant for a few months so I was excited. But that meant I couldn't take my muscle relaxers anymore. I got a new kind that was safe to take, but, of course, it didn't ever help. A few days later though, my body seemed to progressively struggle with being so malnourished and pregnant. I was only able to eat a few spoonfuls of food at a time, a cup at most. I couldn't stop a flare-up once it started, and I couldn't figure out what was causing them. They were becoming more frequent, longer-lasting and more intense. I finally came across a diet called the "Low FODMAP Diet". It basically broke foods into categories according to the sugars in them and told me which foods were "safe" (caused little to no issues) and "unsafe" (major no-no's). There were a lot more foods I couldn't have than I could, and it was extremely difficult to stick to, but I had no other choice. After doing this for about 6 weeks I had seen small improvements, but still woke up feeling so awful all the time. I was beginning to think this was going to be my new normal, and I was so worried about what that meant for my future and my abilities. I had no energy, my hair was responding poorly to this diet too, it became coarse and almost straw-like. I couldn't even get down on the floor to change my son's poopy diapers. He constantly had diaper rash. I ended up having people come over to help me clean a few times because my body and my mind were saying completely different things. My mind was screaming to just get up and do something, but my body was at such a low point that I couldn't do a single thing. Poor Tyler, he was getting just as burned out as I was. He was pulling so much weight and doing everything. Everything. He's a lot more graceful than I am though. I ended up throwing tantrums, crying, getting angry for no reason because I felt so alone. My body was doing this to me. My body was the one responsible for this baby. My body was not handling the two things very well at all. And I couldn't help it heal.
One night in February I was just watching the kids play and all of a sudden a line from my Patriarchal Blessing popped into my head. At this point I had basically been begging and pleading through prayer to heal, and fast. I went and read through my blessing and had forgotten about the last paragraph. It is entirely about my health. It was like the words were in all caps in brightly colored letters. "Follow the Word of Wisdom strictly and you will enjoy good health." I had read through my blessing a hundred times and had never read that paragraph so clearly. It mentioned other things to help my body as well, but the Word of Wisdom stuck in the front of my mind. I had always, like most members of the church, thought I followed the Word of Wisdom because I don't smoke, don't drink, don't do drugs. But what I had never studied before that moment was just how much MORE there is to the Word of Wisdom. There are so many do's that members don't follow. Ironically enough, my morning sickness as well as the IBS sickness subsided long enough the same night I read through my blessing that I requested McDonalds French fries. And paid for it dearly with another severe flare-up, and lost more weight.
A few days later, I found out that I lost the baby. At that moment, I had nothing left. I was completely broken. I was angry, lost, confused, beyond hurt. My mind was an absolute mess, my body couldn't handle ANYTHING. I went to that appointment alone, and when I finally made it home, I just collapsed into myself. I felt even more alone than I had before. I received comments from some family that were just awful and made me feel even worse. I felt so angry for God allowing me to get pregnant right then, and making me struggle with too many physical things... and then taking that baby away from me. I didn't understand and wanted to throw in the towel. It's isolating because it's such a taboo topic. It's extremely painful to talk about for a good long while, but it happens to so many women.
The morning after the miscarriage I felt better physically. My body responded to that alleviated stress so quickly that it made me feel so guilty for feeling so much better. I felt like I deserved to feel awful for a long time. My body couldn't even sustain me, let alone another person that was entirely dependent on me. Two days after the miscarriage I was able to change my sons diapers and start cleaning again. I can't really describe the conflicted feelings. I dropped the awfully restricting FODMAP diet. I needed to be able to grieve, and since I had been so restricted in so many ways, food was my outlet at that moment. I took my muscle relaxer that same day and started eating what I wanted instead of what I thought my body needed. And I was able to do that and gain 5 pounds back in less than a week. Now I was only (and still am today) down 20 lbs instead of 25. On my birthday, all I wanted was my health and my baby back. I still didn't care about much. At this point I refused to even try to get pregnant again, I knew my body couldn't handle it.
A few days later as I was studying more on what it meant to follow the Word of Wisdom strictly, I came across several articles about a Whole Food, Plant Based Diet. It aligns so perfectly with the Word of Wisdom, I am still asking myself why it's so uncommon in the church! Don't get me wrong, I know the Word of Wisdom means different things to different people, I'm not trying to say that this is the only way, but I found myself conflicted with how I was raised to eat (tons of dairy, tons of meat, eggs, sugar, etc) and what I was discovering with my body and my new found knowledge. I found several books (I'm still studying and learning), articles and people to talk to about it. There is a couple in our ward that follows this diet and voluntarily helped me get started. I started this right after my birthday at the beginning of March, and have only had 3 flare-ups since then. 3!!! After having at LEAST one every week since November (and some of those weeks I had 3 in one week...) and several before then, I was ECSTATIC. I'm still healing, my body is still reacting to things that I'm still figuring out, but I'm getting there. I'm feeling better and I'm not so terrified of getting pregnant again. I found a pill packed with digestive enzymes that has allowed me to get off my muscle relaxer (unless I have a flare-up), and I'm eating really genuinely healthy food. My kids are eating better, which is a huge accomplishment. My husband is on board (he questioned it at first, but after seeing the impact of this diet on my broken body, he's all for it!). It seemed drastic at first and really hard, but the longer I do it, and the more improvements I see (not just with IBS) the more I don't want to ever go back. This year is still all about me gaining my health back, and I am definitely on the right track. I found my answer, and know now, after months of prayer and searching for more help, that God KNEW I needed a big reason to stick with this. That lost baby is still serving as that for me. I had our ultrasound picture on our fridge so every time I walked in there I remembered why I was doing something that at first seemed so hard. It's now been 5 months since I lost it and some days it still feels fresh, but I know that it happened for a reason and the progress I've made since then has been remarkable.
Sorry for the novel, I'm going to write another post about just how I've gone about this lifestyle change.
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