Frustration and Hope: The Eternal Round

I am often upset by the fact that I am still limited by my body. Here I am home from Church again. I see people all around me, people I’ve mentored and other raw-foodests, who can make the smallest changes and see amazing results. I’m a year in to this and still rather ill. Somehow I’ve hung onto this wild hope that, in time, my body will heal. I’ve been carried this far on the wings of faith. Today’s issue: Several years ago, when I was pregnant with my second child, when I drank water I could hear and feel bubbling just under my left rib cage. With my third pregnancy it came back, and this time when I would turn to the left I would feel something “catch” under my ribs. I had one of my interns at my husband’s school palpate my abdomen and she said everything felt fine. Following that pregnancy I’ve had a lot of painful gas up the side of my descending colon and, most recently, sharp stabbing pain under the rib (where the transcending and descending colon meet) that goes through into my back. When it happens I go down to the floor. I can’t stand and I can barely inhale, so I take tiny, short, sharp breaths. It usually happens after a bowel movement, and then I’ll often have another (and maybe even another) and that will ease the pain. When it happened several days ago I did an enema and that helped, but I can’t do enemas most of the time because I’m alone with 3 small children. It terrifies me that this problem is getting worse. Lately I’ve pondered seeing an M.D., worrying that I have colon cancer or some such thing. I’m pretty freaked out. I’m still struggling to go 100% raw with hypoglycemia. The past 2 days I drank my first green juices. I want so badly to do the 92-day juice feast, but even the modified version (where you also consume green smoothies and raw soups with blended avocado) worries me. First of all because I have yet to met a raw soup I could swallow, nor a blended avocado for that matter. Second, because I tried all green smoothies for a day and had a terrible hypoglycemic reaction. I haven’t felt a big difference with the green juice I’ve drank so far, but I’ve only been drinking 1 qt a day. A regular juice feast calls for 6 qts a day, and a modified feast 4 qts. I do feel very unbalanced and I know my body is screaming for more greens (I currently consume about 2 heads of lettuce per day, one of them blended and one as a salad). I also feel an intense need for exercise, but I still am clueless as to how to do that with 3 children. I’ve been SOOOO tired lately. I’ve been falling asleep sitting up during the day everyday, normally I wouldn’t even sit down during the day in the first place. I’m scared that if I try to exercise I’ll black out or something. I’ve always been afraid of the sensations that come along with a workout. Once my heart starts pounding, I panic. As a result I’m super weak and tired and have a lot of pain in my body. I do, however, have one good thing to report! The swelling in my feet has gone down a ton and my eczema has DRASTICALLY improved, like, I can wear eye makeup now and there are no traces of it on my elbows or knees. So… that should mean my digestion is improving… so why the stabbing gas pains?

Goals: Lately I’ve been starting the day off with several Master Cleanse drinks (2 TBS fresh lemon juice, 2 TBS maple syrup, dash of cayenne pepper, and 8 oz. water). I follow that with a green juice and (if my blood sugar will allow it) follow that with a green smoothie. The idea (my idea) is to extend my night fast and give my digestive tract as much rest as possible. I’d like to work it up in a full day of nothing but liquids. I’ve also been working the sprouted grain bread out of my day. So the one big problem that is still in the way of 100% raw is that dang creamy French salad dressing. I still cannot find a raw dressing I can even tolerate, much less enjoy, and greens without dressing, even when covered with other veggies, are just plain chokey and dry. But really, in the average day, my only issues left are sprouted bread, organic unsalted peanut butter, and creamy French dressing. I’ve got my vices down to three!

My most troubling symptoms currently:

Exhaustion

Weakness

Muscle tension pain and headaches

Abdominal pain, gas, nausea

Hypoglycemia

To me it all points to weak digestion and the liver and gall bladder troubles that come along with it. The cure for weak digestion is feasting on (mostly) green juices, but that can’t be done with severe hypoglycemia… sigh.

A Few Words Before I Cleanse

I’ve done cleanses before. A couple, maybe 4 or 5, Isagenix cleanses, a yeast cleanse, and a parasite cleanse. But it’s been almost a year since my last one (which was a 30-day Isagenix cleanse), and I haven’t done one quite like this before. For this cleanse I will be using a kit from The Herbalist (www.theherbalist.com) called the Detox-It Kit, which is for the digestive tract, liver and gall bladder, adrenals, and hormone balance. I will also be doing gall bladder/liver flushes and enemas, as well as healthy practices like yoga, aerobic exercise, deep breathing, dry brushing, etc. These things are all very new to me!

Why this cleanse? All of my pregnancies have been hard, but this last one really tore my body up. My last child was born in November of 2008 and since then my health has really not been good. During that pregnancy I discovered I was hypoglycemic, rather severely, and am still very much struggling with that. I was swollen all over for almost a year after he was born. For about 6 months I couldn’t walk up the stairs in our house because my knees hurt so bad and were so swollen. I topped out at 190 lbs. I was just plain sick all of the time. Most of the time I can’t even drive my kids anywhere because I have random bouts of dizziness, they come out of nowhere and can last for up to a day. I used to have little black outs too, but haven’t had one of those in a while, maybe 5 months or so. Because of all of this (if you haven’t read previous posts) I began transitioning to a raw vegan diet about 8 months ago. I’ve lost about 68 pounds and my health has been improving, but I feel like I’ve hit a wall. I’m still having a lot of digestive issues, which I have had since my baby was born. At any given time I can hear and feel gas moving around and it comes it without warning wherever I am… how embarrassing! My bowel movements (btw if you don’t want to hear about bodily functions you’re listening to the wrong girl) are indicative of liver toxicity. Hypoglycemia is caused by digestive and gall bladder problems. I’ve been told by several healers that my gall bladder is very toxic, though I’ve yet to have an attack (knocking on wood). I have also heard that a woman who has had multiple pregnancies should always do gall bladder flushes, that they use to take women right to the OR for gall bladder removal after the birth or her second child because gall bladder problems in multigravida women are so common. Despite eating a raw food diet I am still tired most of the time and having trouble staying asleep at night. My fibromyalgia symptoms have improved some but I am still in pain (muscle tension and pain is a common symptom of colon issues). I guess in general I feel I should be moving forward in health with my diet, but I’ve stayed the same for months. Also, my body is a size 2, except my midsection, which is a size 10. That’s not normal or right or healthy! That alone tells me there are issues going on in there. The average person has 10-15 lbs of fecal matter stuck and rotting in their colon. I’d like not to have that in there. The fact that my uncle died of colon cancer just a few short weeks ago gives me all the more reason to begin chipping away at all the sludge I’ve put into my body my whole life now, before its too late. Colon cancer is the 2nd leading cause of death by cancer in this country. Someone dies from it every 9.3 minutes. I am not going to one of those people, are you? The choice is yours.

This cleanse is for my Uncle Gene. I promise you the pain you suffered will not be in vein, because I will take what I know and teach those who want a better life for themselves so that they will not have to endure the same pains, and I know that you’ll be there to guide me. I love you and miss you so much, and am so grateful for the man that you are, for the impressions you left on me, and more than anything for the times you stood up for me when no one else had the guts. Thank you!