Bringing Determination to the Table

Odd title maybe, but I happened to catch a segment on 20/20 this evening about Jenny McCarthy and her son Evan. He was diagnosed with autism and she has put him on a casein and gluten free diet as part of his treatment. The link between Autism and gluten intolerance has been whispered about by so many, as has the link between mercury based preservatives in vaccines and autism. But main stream media doesn't really want to talk about it and the medical community surely doesn't want to talk about it. I admire her determination and her outspokenness. The passion she brought to that interview left me in tears, huge sobbing tears. So few people take charge of the health of themselves and their family and follow their instincts, choosing instead to abdicate control and healing to some supposedly all powerful doctor. It was heartening to see someone stand in the public light and talk about autism and gluten and damn the so called experts. I'm not sure she realizes how strong the opposition to her simple determination to make her sons life better may turn out to be. But you go Jenny! You'll find a whole lot of us Celiacs standing right behind you.

More and more I find it disheartening and disgusting this hold western medicine is determined to have on our lives. They want to sell you a pill or a surgery as the answer to your problems. They don't want you to seek your own answers that lie outside their reign of influence. I find it revolutionary and yet so common sense this idea that diet and how you live your life has more influence on your health and well being than all the pills in the universe. They would insist that any cure lies outside your body and mind, and couldn't possibly reside within it's very fiber; that they must control your health and well being because you don't have their expertise and knowledge. We've been so brainwashed by them that we've abdicated our bodies and souls to them, keeping very little decisions making capabilities for ourselves.

And I am guilt of falling prey to that mindset. I've been itching for ohhh, about ten months now. Some days are better than others. Some days are misery. The best guess I can come up with, because the doctor was absolutely no help, is that it's a result of nerve damage caused probably by B vitamin deficiencies or pernicious anemia and or gluten antibodies. It seems to be a somewhat common symptom among both Celiacs and people diagnosed with MS and other auto immune diseases. I was desperate for something anything that would stop the itching. I was hoping for some miracle drug and I'd searched the Internet for it repeatedly to no avail. I wanted some drug with a complicated name that had side effects I could live with as long as the damn itching stopped. I'd beg my way into a prescription or sell my soul which ever had to come first.

I found nothing, no drug, no pharmaceutical wonder, nothing. What I did find were references to everything from tea tree oil to milk baths. I was sure they'd have some miracle cure. Surely something must be out there since so many suffer from this itching? But western medicine has nothing, nada, zilch, zero to offer. Then I came across references to Capsicum as being useful in treating pain from things like arthritis and *ta da* itching. I will try anything. You don't know till you have to live with it how powerfully the itch can motivate. So I found a local pharmacy that has topical cream with Capsicum in it.

Okay, there's an upside to this story and a downside. Capsicum is basically the pepper family. The hot side of the pepper family. On the upside it's virtually orderless when applied to the skin. It does indeed do a really nifty job of numbing the nerves in the skin. And I do mean NUMB. It's a miracle. Applied to the most common areas where I itch the itching stopped. But the skin is numb, LOL. It's an odd sensation. Oh, and while the numbness set in rather quickly it was followed by a mild BURNING where I applied it too heavily. Still, as I sat there with my left forearm on fire I came to the conclusion that it was preferable to the itching. And soap and water don't really wash it off your hands. I still get a mild sting every time I get my hands anywhere near my eyes nose or mouth in spite of having washed a dozen or more times since applying the cream. I'm gonna need to buy some gloves for this stuff I can see that.

But I came to realize something curious about the itching. It's one of those self perpetuating miseries that is as much about my mindset as it is about my physical body. Now on some level I knew that before I began burning myself with capsicum. I knew that I was allowing the itching to aggravate me and take over my life, but there is something about having the power to stop it dead in it's tracks that gave my brain the ability to suddenly cope much better. I am no longer powerless to stop it, and can stop it any time I choose, and that power is liberating. The endless chasing of my tail so to speak has been stopped cold. Just in a matter of ten hours I've gone from obsessed to relaxed. So then the question is, and this is an old question, could I have gotten here without the capsicum cream? Ha. Who knows. And right at the moment I don't much care.

So there's the whole point. I allow myself to be victim to this western medicine mind set. I think I've kicked it, the dependency on pills and doctors, but I still search for the miracle cure outside myself first. I scream in desperation "Heal ME" when I should be quietly saying "I must heal myself". How many times must that happen before the first thought is not "Someone heal me", but "How do I heal myself this time?"

Holding

I've been in a holding pattern of sorts lately. That's probably why there's been no entries here. It seems I have no choice but to wait on the actions of others. I can't force things to happen that I am not in control of. It's odd, but if you called me a dynamic forceful make it happen kind of person I'd laugh, and friends who know me well would probably laugh. Yet most of the major changes in my life I've forced, I've pushed, I've pulled, I've bullied into happening. And now I find that the things that matter most to me I can't effect.

The downside to having these furry children of mine is that I won't outlive them. The dog is eleven and the tom cat is fourteen now. They've both got medical problems that have been burying me in vet bills. But worst of all I can't fix them, I can't make them young and healthy again. All I can do is what little I can and wait for them to choose their time, and hope they choose it and not me.

I've spent most of the day today anguishing over them. My poor boy is mostly deaf now and he's begun to use the carpet instead of his litter box. I'll take him back to the vet next week, but I fear his various illnesses have brought on a senility of sorts. He's always been a stubborn son of a bitch to begin with, and now he wants death his way too. Figures.

The dog is so much more gentle and apologetic about her illness. She takes her pills without a fight and if she could speak would bow and scrape the floor with apologies every time I have to get up in the middle of the night to let her out. She's a dear sweet old soul of eleven with a pancreatic insufficiency that's making it hard for her to keep food down. I've ordered some pancreatic enzymes for her and I dearly hope they'll help. If they don't I'm off to find pig pancreas at the nearest slaughterhouse. I've done many a thing for the furkids, but this will be a new high or low depending on your point of view. Still, she'd do anything a dog could for me. In that way alone she outranks and outshines my own human family.

I'm still waiting on my oldest sister to figure out that she needs to move on. Why the four of us siblings all turned out so differently I cannot explain. Nor can I explain why she refuses to move from that wreck of a house who's ceilings threaten to fall in on her with every minor tremor. She and I are total opposites. I've made every change in my life happen, and she has not changed her life one inch more than circumstances have forced. I've lived in ten different houses and apartments in the last ten years and she's lived in one house, clinging it to it as if her life would end were she to leave it.

And this is what I tried to tell the dog through torrential tears this afternoon. Your leaving will hurt more than anything has in a long long time, but that is what life is, a series of leavings. It's one of the signs that you're truly alive, this depth of loss and sorrow. And from that sorrow and often because of it, more joy eventually finds it's way to you. And that is living; an ever changing existence. To change is to live. To refuse to change is to stagnate and never live. The opposite of living is not death, it is refusing to live.

ARRGGGGGGG!!!!!!

It's a good thing no one is reading this because I'd be boring the shit out of them. I can't help it. It always comes back to how bloody unfair this all is. Why not foist this disease off on someone who's a size one and lives on 800 calories a day of celery and lettuce? Why not give it to someone who wants it? Come on, there have to be millions of women out there living on lettuce and green beans who'd never even fucking notice! Give it to one of them. Giving it to someone who loved to cook bake and eat is just severely twisted cruel and so below the belt the Gods should be ashamed.

I chanced on a "dieters" thread on ROTW. The damn thing made we want to puke. The poor dears have been eating at McDonald's again and regretting it. Give me a fucking break! If you regret it so damn much STOP DOING IT. Better yet, how about we make it so you become hideously sick and physically damage your body and severely drain it of iron and B C and D vitamins every single time you stuff down a Big Mac and fries, thereby increasing your risk of intestinal cancer ten fold? Would that finally do it for you? Somehow I think not. We want what we want and society has taught us that by Gods, we should have it. I don't think any diet can succeed until someone gets past the feeling that they have a Gods given right to do the easy thing. I don't think a diet can succeed until someone finally figures out that they matter. Their health matters. Their body matters.

I know Celiacs who just can't stop themselves from eating a sandwich or a donut or a cookie. The answer to why is always without fail "I was stressed". Have they been so thoroughly indoctrinated by the whole suggestive hypnotic consumerism trance control squad that they can't think of themselves first and the great God of Consumerism second? Why are they so convinced that eating a donut is in any way shape or form going to alleviate stress? Which commercial did they memorize and internalize that sold them that one? Show me where its documented in the medical annals that eating something bad for you in anyway affects your stress level? I don't understand it. I know I've never knowingly eaten gluten since I was diagnosed. Hey, here's an idea. Stressed? Eat some ice cream! Have a potato chip. But for Goddess sake don't ingest something that will kill you! I don't know. Maybe it's like the pink elephant thing. We can't have it so that's all we think about and all we want. I truly hope there comes a time when I can get past the pink elephants and just accept this.

I'd pay money at this point just to have someone else make me dinner, even McDonalds. One dinner. That's it. One positively gluten free dinner that won't make me sick and that tastes half decent and most importantly THAT I DON'T HAVE TO COOK. Well, okay, Mcdonalds, and indeed every fast food restaurant out there can't do that. With the exception of the Sushi restaurant, there really are no safe options up here at all. Big Bear specializes in resort dining. Again, it's that "You can have whatever you want no matter how bad it is for you" mentality. That's what reigns up here. If I lived down there I'd stand a fighting chance in restaurants. L.A. is more sophisticated. Yeah, I live in a backwoods gluttony haven. It would just be nice to have someone else somehow make dinner. The idea of three meals a day prepared by me stretching out in front of me for the next thirty or forty years is depressing.

I was thinking of this very thing the other night. I was terribly sick with some stomach bug. It appears that from now on things like that are going to hit me harder than they did before. Joy. But I was laying in bed desperate for a cup of crushed ice. Two pairs of eyes stared back at me as I moaned and wished, one pair leaf green, the other pair amber brown. Neither of the owners of those eyes posses opposable thumbs. I dragged myself out of bed and crushed my own ice. There is no telling how much I would have given right at that point to have someone else there to crush the ice for me. But that's the rub isn't it? How much would I have to pay? Am I willing to put up with all the nonsense of a relationship and the grief and the pain on the off chance that someday when I'm sick that man would actually be willing to go crush me some ice? What are the odds?

Argggg. I just hope there comes a time when I just accept this. Dragging myself through all this over and over again is just too hard.