and another year bites the dust...

Well, another birthday has passed and I can honestly stay it will not rank in the "Best Birthday Years" list. Why is that? Well, let me explain.... I've not felt at my best for several weeks. In late November I had a doctor appointment and they decided that my insulin levels (I'm insulin resistant) were high enough that they felt a change in diet was required. Now, I eat pretty healthy as it is and my coworkers can attest to that, so what they thought could be improved was beyond me but okay, I went along with it. I met with a nutritionist who prescribed eating according to the Exchange List, which is used primarily by Type I diabetics (those who are born with diabetes). I didn't question it and started thinking of meals in terms of numbers of starches, fats, veggies, etc. as allowed by the sheet they gave me with recommended numbers of each food area. Almost immediately I began to be ill after eating. Quicky, in succession, I had to eliminate foods from my diet -- Diet Pepsi, carrots, celery...and so it continued for over a week until there seemed to be nothing left to eat except eggs and toast. It was ridiculous! At the same time, I began to use sugar substitutes such as Splenda and Sweet-and-Low. BAD IDEA. Splenda has always aggravated my stomach but I assumed it was a lack of use. Um...wrong. Apparently I'm one of the many Americans who has an intolerance to it. So, eliminate Splenda....but the damage was done. Everything I ate was making me have stabbing pain in my stomach so...when all else has been tried, I called the doctor on Friday (my generalist in whom I have absolute faith) and she was able to see me that afternoon.

She was astonished that they would prescribe an Exchange List diet to someone who was not diabetic. She said it was supposed to be common knowledge that doctors not prescribe that any longer and I was to stop following it immediately. I already had simply because I was tired of feeling ill. We looked at the lab tests that had been taken in late November and she told me to eat normally but to try to eliminate in-between snacks. I had been told for years that I needed to eat six small meals in a day and that was what I was used to doing. She said that new research was showing that eating six times a day was making insulin resistance worse. Now I have an amount of calories that I'm supposed to consume three times daily and adjust ratios of carbs & proteins as needed to prevent hunger between meals. She also wanted me to check my sugars before breakfast and then 2-hours after breakfast (when I would feel the need to snack), so I got to spend some time waiting at the pharmacy for a glucometer, reading strips (for the machine) and lancets to prick my fingers. Oh joy. My first sugar testing would be on my birthday.

This alone was not enough to ruin my birthday. However, unknown to me, I had also picked up a circulating GI virus. You guessed it. I spent the weekend lying on the couch praying for food to just STAY PUT. Accompanied by a fever, I haven't felt this awful in a long time. I managed to make a trip to the grocery store on Sunday morning so I would have chicken broth, crackers, and Sprite for when I felt like eating. I was nearly at that point anyway but that short trip really brought home how bad off I was. The grocery store is only 5 minutes away from my house but my stumbled shuffling down the aisles, leaning on the cart with only a few items in it, obviously screamed "sick woman!" (I couldn't carry a basket because one of my dogs had accidentally sliced open my palm with her claws -- I also had "large bandages" on my list to get.) Walking back to my truck with my single bag of goodies, I realized that I was slightly weaving and, when standing still, that the landscape in front me was shifting side to side in front of my eyes. I knew I'd be back on the couch as soon as I got home.

So that is how the day progressed and finally last night I could eat a little bit of solid food without feeling ill. My fever broke this morning and now I'm going to spend the rest of today lounging on the couch and filling my tummy with food and liquids. I wonder if there's anything decent to watch on tv?