A Spoonful of Sugar

Thanks for all your notes and calls and emails and prayers. I felt like I had unintentionally made a cry for attention with that last post, but I have to tell you that I HAD to write. I had to. Because believe it or not, I was not strongly inclined to run around talking with people about colonoscopies, cancer, or stomach-strangling panic.

So the update is that now that I am a little more than a week into my uber-strict diet, I feel a LOT better. A lot. Not perfect, but remarkably improved. I have a consult with the colon specialist scheduled for Jan. 27, and I'm still going to go ahead and get all the tests, but I'm hopeful that my system was inflamed by a late-onset food sensitivity and possibly some minor-ish GYN issues rather than a body-ravaging disease. I feel a little better every day, and have seen some unexpected side benefits too, like clearer skin and feeling generally more limber and lighter. Hopefully I won't really have to cut out all grains and sugar permanently - I would seriously miss chips and salsa, brownies, and the occasional biscuit. Did I mention that people know how to do biscuits in The South? Real, ridiculously fluffy, warm and flaky biscuits? They're a delicacy I was really hoping to sample across our new homeland. They are certainly not worth acute abdominal pain (are they?), but they are an art form around these parts.

It has been a weird week and a half. I got over my crying and nightmare jags around the end of last week, and had only lingering symptom-obsessed stress throughout the weekend. Stress which probably contributed to the symptoms themselves. But now that I have been grain-and-sugar-free for 9 days, I think I've finally turned a panic corner. Praise God.

And Praise God that I haven't had the withdrawal symptoms I expected either. Just a few mild headaches. Detoxing from sugar is a big deal, and I've been trying to curb it by eating fruit (apples and dried fruit for me, the frutiaphobe) and trying agave nectar in my coffee. If I were really going to do a detox, I should have probably cut out coffee and all dairy as well, but I just didn't know what to do with myself when I looked at days worth of spinach leaves, veg broth, tofu, and raw carrots. I'm not convalescing yet.

So there is some new hope. And I'll take it. I converted to optimism, after all.