Lupus

Life After Keto

Hey, y’all.  🙂

It’s been so long again since I’ve even opened the blog. 

It’s the same ol’ same.  Health hell a hundred different ways.  But mostly digestive system. 

It was 2 years ago this week that I was put on those 6 months of antibiotics and I’ve never been the same since.😢

I’m seeing a new GI doctor 2 hours away next week so I’m trying to be hopeful that maybe she will have some answers.

One good thing that has happened recently is I finally stopped obsessing over keto. 👍 🧁 Keto / lchf messed me up so much.  I got so emotionally attached to the idea of it being the ‘best and only right way’ and for the last two years I’d spent way too much time trying or wanting to get back to it. Only to get worse and set myself back every single time I tried. 

For whatever reason my body cannot tolerate meat or fat anymore without carbs to buffer my stomach.  I know there will be those of you who will say I didn’t try hard enough or whatever.  You’re wrong.  I’ve done nothing but obsess and try for the last two years.

No more.  For real this time.

That’s actually why I haven’t been posting on insta for the last 6-ish weeks. I’ve been forcing myself to stay away from all the keto talk on social media.  So many of my favorite follows are from my keto days and I just couldn’t allow myself to backslide.

Because…

Yes this is an actual published book. I first read it back in May when we took a little pre-summer trip to my beloved galv. 

I tried to start practicing it that week…and I did.  I ate all the thangs.  😋

But then before I even made it back home, I was already obsessing about trying to force keto/lc/carnivore as soon as I got back.  And of course, I tried.

Several more times.  Each time my stomach ended up worse than before.☹️

Don’t you dare ever call me a quitter. 😉

The final straw came in August.  It was record heat. The house air conditioner broke and we got a new car on the same day. I was outside transferring all the stuff from the old car and I ended up having a mild heat stroke.  It was beyond scary.  That day I was in the middle of my millionth time trying to force keto and when I overheated I started throwing up the worst grossest stuff yet.  That night I said enough.  The next few days I stayed bundled up in blankets drinking coke icee and re-reading the F*ckit book.

It’s an easy read and should be relatable to every single person who has ever tried to out diet their DNA.  

It’s taken me 37 years (allegedly 😉 ) but I’m finally done fighting mine. 🎈

It was hard and I talked myself into “trying keto just one more time” many times but thankfully I didn’t give in.

Keto / LCHF and carnivore are fantastic in the right body, but I won’t try again because my body is not the right body. Even (when?) I finally get some digestive answers I’ll always have Lupus. And I will always be on some kind of meds. Most of which need some carbs to buffer the stomach. 

That’s the lot I’ve been given in this one short life.  I’m done fighting it. 🙂

This is not in anyway a paid endorsement. I purchased this book on my own and it was worth every cent.  There are other books that fall in the anti-diet category (I read two others) but most of them are still focused on weight loss. This one is not. 

I can’t waste whatever time I have left on this earth worrying about the size of my clothes or a number on a scale.

ps. I’m still following all of my favs because I like you for reasons beyond how you eat. 😊 If you eat keto that’s great. If you WW that’s great too. If you’re vegan…cool. If you’re preachy about your chosen food I’ve already unfollowed you. 🙂

Y’all have a great weekend. 😊

Here’s were you can find me on insta where I’m usually more active. 👍

Just a Little Update

Hey, y’all. 🙂


It’s been forever again. 🙁

The TLDR version of the rest of this: health hell for 15 months…all kinds of tests…finally found out what was wrong…new med…feel like a new person…back on keto…super happy.


I have been to hell and back with all the health stuff. 🙁 Every time I thought I was finally turning a corner boom the lupus would hit me with something else.


I also made myself worse by eating wheat/gluten for months. In October I had to have an endoscopy and colonoscopy to try to figure out why I was coughing up and passing blood. So I wanted him to look at the celiac stuff while he was in there. I’ve tested positive twice and negative once. I’ve honestly never really thought I had it because I’ve never fully reacted to wheat the way I read about other people reacting to it. So anyway for the test you have to eat wheat for weeks (which turned into months). I did and of course it didn’t end well. At all.


BUT we finally seem to have some answers to all of the digestive issues. It hasn’t been my stomach (well not the primary cause anyway). It’s been my pancreas. I’m not producing the enzymes to break down food and after all the testing my dr put me on this miracle med:

I’m not exaggerating when I say this saved my life. Emotionally I’d slipped to a dark and scary place. I didn’t want to live in so much pain anymore.


I hadn’t slept thru a night without reflux in 15 months. I was on so much stomach / acid blocker meds and was having breakthrough reflux almost every single night. Basically the way I understand it now is that I wasn’t producing the enzymes to break down my food and that was in turn causing my stomach to way way way over produce all the acid.


The acid blocking meds are known iron blockers and my iron also plummeted to dangerously low levels.


2 DAYS on the CREON and I was like a new person. The stomach pain…the horrible never ending reflux almost immediately gone.


I went back on keto and feel like a completely different person.


So where I am now…

I started keto / low carb high fat on September 6, 2018. Between then and October 2, 2017 I lost almost 80 pounds. Then the ear misdiagnosis and all the unnecessary antibiotics sent me on a year long spiral.


I gained 35 back.


Happy to have not gained it all back but also not happy ya know?

Anyway that’s just a long update that wouldn’t fit on insta where you can find me more regularly. 🙂

scratch & grain cheesecake brownies

Hey, y’all.

I’ve been having a really rough time with all the health stuff. 🙁

Last time we met I told y’all about the bone infection and the 6 months of antibiotics I’ll be taking. They are brutal, y’all. I’m taking 3500mg a day. My stomach and digestive system in general is a complete mess. I can’t keep anything really solid down at all.

Guided injection into my sacroiliac joint. My doctors have been trying to get me seen for several issues while I still have insurance. So in the middle of all of this bone stuff I’ve also been seeing a joint and pain specialist for some ongoing joint issues. They promised me that two guided steroid injections wouldn’t cause the same weight gain issues as ingested steroids.

Yeah, no. 🙁

In the 6 days between injection one and injection two I gained TWENTY pounds. From my face to just below my abdomen I puffed up like a water balloon. Of course a good chunk of that is fluid (that’s already coming off pretty easily) but still it’s so frustrating given how hard I’d been working for the last year.

And then the hits just keep coming. Tuesday of this week I went in for the first follow-up for the bone infection and he gave me some additional bad news. During the diagnosis phase for figuring out the bone stuff they ran so many tests and I had multiple scans and an MRI. Well all of the tests results were finally back in and one of scans found a lesion on my frontal cortex. The ENT thinks it’s probably lupus related (and a former rheumatologist did think I probably had some mild CNS lupus once before).  They’re in the process of getting me back in to see the neurologist and I’m just hopeful that they will be able to see me before the end of the year when I’ll lose my insurance.

I’m so scared, y’all. 🙁

 🙂

If you follow me on insta …and I’m sorry for the lack of posting there too…you know the brightest spot in the last couple months was birthday week trip to my most favorite place. 🙂

Take me back…please. 🙂

Now…the chocolate.

Have y’all seen this? scratch & grain gluten free baking kit.

All ingredients color coded for easy follow instructions.

Y’all this is the best boxed treat I’ve had since having to go gluten-free in 2013. The only place I’ve ever seen them is Target. I don’t know what kind of voodoo they’ve got going on with the flour in the brownie mix but it is perfect. Perfect fudgy texture.

Also…if you go to Target looking for it be careful. scratch & grain has other mixes and not all of them are gluten free.

Now…that brings me to this. Keto and lchf are completely out the window for the foreseeable future. I can’t do it. I tried going back on keto this week and I thought I was going to die. And I’m not being overly dramatic here. What these antibiotics are doing to my stomach…I just can’t fight thru it without some starch to buffer them. If you can do it. Great for you. You’re much stronger than me. But guess what? There’s no prize for that. 😉

My goal now is to get the real steroid gain off and then just maintain my losses from keto. If I can do that I’ll consider it a win.

In the meantime I will enjoy indulging in some gluten-free treats and I’ll share when they’re worthy…like these brownies. 🙂

Today would have been my pappy’s birthday. It was super bittersweet this year. He loved him some ‘stros baseball. I’ve written about this before but for the last 2 years of his life I saw him every single day. Each day when there was a day game we’d sit and watch it. Today was the parade. Papa B and I both cried for him a little more than usual. I also had some crack coke.  An Icee…he always used to call it my crack coke. 🙂

Allrighty…that’s all for today. Y’all have a good weekend and I’ll see you soon-ish. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

Mastoid Bone Infection

Hey, y’all.

It’s been a while again.

Just wanted to write a little bit today about what’s been going on.

I’m going through some very serious health stuff.  🙁  Last time I wrote about how I was seeing multiple dr’s and getting a bunch of tests run.

It turns out I have a very serious bone infection.

The mastoid bone.

I’m on a ridiculously high dose of antibiotics to treat it for SIX MONTHS and they are just rough. Rough, rough, rough on the stomach / digestive system.

I’m still eating sugar free / low carb but not strictly keto right now. I’ve raised my daily carb count to 50g / day and am allowing some potatoes to try to buffer the stomach a little bit.

I’m so very glad we got this figured out now since I probably won’t have health care soon.

PSA for the day…

If y’all ever have persistent ear pain with no visible inner ear symptoms please press your doctor to investigate deeper. This has been going on for me for several years. My inner ear always looked fine when doctors would look. I would always been massaging around my ear and you could feel the inflammation (but NOT a huge red spot which would have been an instant clue). Anyway with my SED Rate being sky high all the time all of my doctors thought it was just lupus related temporal joint inflammation. (Which it turns out I actually do have too.)

But the main problem is that I have a chronic mastoid infection not acute. The only way to have seen this would have been with a ct scan or mri. (Which is how this was finally diagnosed.)

So please, if you ever experience anything like this (or especially if your kids do since ear infections are so common with the littles) please press for more testing and maybe it won’t have a chance to get so deeply embedded / infected.

From the very bottom of my heart, thank you so much, President Obama for getting me the health care that allowed this to finally be diagnosed. The testing was long and costly. Without the pre-existing condition coverage mandate that allowed me to get excellent health care this would still be undiagnosed. Thank you, thank you, thank you…and thank you again.  🙂

And to the @sshole who followed you (and those of you who put him there) and are now condemning plenty of us to certain deaths…you are an even worse disgusting piece of garbage than we ever thought you were.

And guess what, y’all…you know what’s gonna happen now? Every single time people need heath care they’re going straight to the ER. Y’all know who’s gonna pay for that? You. You will pay for it in the form of higher priced everything related to health care.  Y’all go ahead and enjoy that.

Always and forever. 🙂

Ok that’s all for today. Sorry no food pics or recipes today but I do have a few in the works…just need to tweak and don’t have the energy right now.

Y’all have a good weekend. 🙂