Moved my posts to my Diary thread, so I can discuss the trip and the accident both and not be off-topic. Here is the plan so far: Robin will come here this weekend, then the three of us will fly to Spokane and drive to Kettle Falls, where my son Michael lives. Not sure how long we will be there, but since he is home and not hurt and in the hospital, we will probably have a couple days to visit and then come back to Alabama. Both my kids have to take time off work to do this, so probably Robin and i will be flying back to the Netherlands sometime late next week , just guessing. Then, she has a dr. Appointment around the end of September, so we will come back together for that, giving me around a month to spend with her and see the ‘Old World”, which I am SO EXCITED about doing ! Plus, I get to ride the 3-wheeler that she got for me back when I was going to visit two years ago, and then my heart went back into afib, and I ended up in the hospital for the AV node block and pacemaker update procedure. It has taken me a long time to actually feel pretty much recovered from that episode, but this summer, I have been doing a lot better and feel like I can make the trip there and back safely.
For the last two weeks, I have been hobbling around with a really bad attack of gout/arthritis in my foot; so I have not been swimming like I wanted to. The pool is fine, it was the having to walk somewhere to get there and back home that was the issue. My foot has been swollen up like a bright pink mushroom, and even my largest and loosest shoes would not go on, and the pain of trying was horrible. I have been sitting with my foot in a little tub of cold water most of the time, which is frustrating; because i like being up and doing things, and I missed swimming. Thank goodness I married a chef and Bobby didn’t have to rely on me to cook him food or do laundry ! The cold water helped the most of anything we tried. Yesterday, I went to the doctor (wearing Bobby’s SIZE 13 stretchy shoes !) and he gave me a prescription for the gout, and today it is much better and I can walk again, thankfully. I can actually get my foot into my own stretchy shoes now, too. We might have gone swimming, but first thing this morning, I got the call from Christina about Mike and the accident, so that ended any other plans for today.
It looks like the trip to the Netherlands is postponed again, since my son is doing fine and some problems came up where my daughter works that are going to require her to be putting in extra time for at least another month. For sure, she should be here in September for her MS doctor and scans, so we will just plan the trip whenever she shows up and depending on how her job is going. I am still amazed that my son was not hurt from the accident, and I really think that God must have been looking after him for him to escape from that squashed up truck and not even have more than scrapes and scratches. I am very thankful ! Our mullein has been growing good, and it is about time for me to harvest more leaves and dry them for Bobby to make his mullein tea. He has bad lungs, probably from all the years of heavy smoking; and the mullein helps his breathing a lot. We have some that is going to seed and I am going to collect some seeds just in case it does not self-seed enough to come back next year.
I'm glad your son is doing OK, Yvonne. He certainly had an angel on his shoulder that day! How's the gout in your foot? I know how miserable that is. The only thing that helps me is to take naproxen when I feel the first "tingling" of it starting, or to take a steroid dose-pak once it has bloomed into a full-blown gout attack. So miserable.
The gout is gone, @Beth Gallagher , which is SO wonderful ! When i went to the doctor, he gave me some gout medication to take for a few days and it cleared it right up. I have been even more careful that usual about not getting too much meat protein, since the uric acid can promote a gout attack. It is awesome to be walking around (vs. hobbling on one foot), and being able to get in and out of the fitness center to swim again. I have really missed the swimming !
So….. after the gout experience, I have been looking at things that might help prevent another attack, and reading about what excess uric acid does to the body. One of the problems concerns kidney function, which my doctor mentioned also, and since I have kidney failure, that might have been part of the reason for the gout. Anyway, one of the things that kept coming up in my searches was a mushroom called “Cordyceps”. It has been used in Chinese medicine for hundreds of years, and for all kinds of ailments, and it is supposed to help kidney function, lower uric acid, help blood pressure, cholesterol, libido, arthritis, and a whole bunch of other things. (See screenshot from the video) I am linking a video that shows pictures and tells what all it is used for. I ordered some from Amazon to try and also a mushroom coffee that has several other kinds of mushrooms in it; so I will be starting the Great Mushroom Experiment by this weekend when the amazon packages arrive.
Since I have been doing the OMAD again, my body has adapted fairly well to burning fat as fuel, and I eat my OMAD meal after we get home from the fitness center, so somewhere between 12-3 pm each day. I vary what I eat, some days maybe a salad with lots of veggies and something for protein, some days mostly just veggies, and other days when I feel like I need more protein, then I have a meal with mostly protein. My body has stopped grumbling at me for food any other time, for the most part, and usually only happens if I am THINKING about food. When I focus on something else, then the tummy-grumbling stops. I started making the L.Reuteri yogurt, and it does seem to block hunger also, which is what I read it should do. Yesterday, all I had was 2 cups of kefir with the LR yogurt (1/2 cup) added to it, and I was fine, even though I didn’t have a regular meal. I have as much energy today as I usually do, and will be going to the fitness center and swimming soon. My last actual meal was Monday afternoon, so this will be my first over 24 hour fast, excluding the kefir/yogurt. I feel much better, way less aches and pains, my body can walk easier (if that makes any sense), and I am gaining a confidence that I like this WOE (way of eating), and can continue doing this until I have lost as much weight as I need to lose, and probably even after that, because of all of the health benefits I am reading about. (I still think that my hair is getting darker again) I am not doing this every single day, some days I take a break and have more than just one meal, and if we go out to eat (occasionally) then I just order what i want and enjoy the meal, but that is then my meal for the day. After spending most of my life thinking about food and being hungry when I tried to lose weight, this seems to be giving me more freedom and peace of mind, way more than I expected.
I got a new mushroom powder supplement. This one has 10 different kinds in it, and a really tiny scoop; so it should last a long time. It is supposed to help with energy and a nootropic brain health as well. I have been taking the Cordyceps powder in my coffee every day, as well as a spoonful of the acacia prebiotic powder. Sometimes I add the raw cacao to it , and maybe a dab of cinnamon. It actually still tastes like my morning coffee, except for when it has the cacao and cinnamon and I am used to the taste now and like it fine. My diet has changed a lot, but I seem to be doing fine, feeling good and slowly losing weight , so that is all good news. I made some fiber almond flour muffins with flax meal, psyllium, chia, sunflower and sesame seeds, and I have one of those along with my L.Reuteri yogurt for my main meal. (I have to get ready to turn 79 in January !)
A friend of mine's mother had cancer and was not happy with her chemo. She said she was done and thinking of trying turkey tail mushrooms. Just happened to have some and gave it to my friend for her. I asked a while later and she said on her mother's next visit they could not find the cancer. Had the chemo done it's job? or the mushroom? We normally eat mushrooms just cuz they are yummy.
Just got back from my doctor appointment, and he went over the labs that I had done earlier this month, and he was extremely happy with the results. He said that everything looks good (assuming my age, heart, and kidney failure conditions) and that I do not need to come back until late in January. So that was all good news and made me happy that he thinks everything is going good health wise. Next time I go back, I will have had my January birthday, so I will be 79 when my next checkup happens.
I also have some great news, healthwise. When I heard about myofascial release, three years ago, I went in search of a practitioner. I had experienced plantar fasciitis and from that pain long ago, which I fixed with orthotics, I found a similar pain in my leg that got progressively worse over the last 7 years--crippling pain. I have been looking for the solution with chiro, back injections, accupuncture-- whatever I could. There is a particular myofascial release developed by a man named John Barnes. Within the last three weeks I finally found a practitioner who knows the technique well and my pain was brought from an 8 to a four!!! I recommend it to everyone. After the pain is gone, I will rebuild my leg and the rest of me, made crooked by using a cane all this time. Now that I can stand the pain, I got on my stationary bike, which I could not ride for years, to start to rebuild it--and lived Yay!
Bobby went in last month for his annual eye exam and new glasses, and since it has been 4-5 years since I went in for an eye exam, I thought it would be good for me to get one , too, since our Humana Insurance covers an exam and glasses each year. When I went before, they said I had beginning cataracts, but not bad enough to do anything about; so my main concern was whether my eyes had gotten worse in the intervening years since my last appointment. The glasses I got last time were nice frames, but I didn’t see any different with or with out the glasses; so I basically stopped wearing them and they have just sat around in the back room in their nice case. I took them along because i wanted to re-use the frames for my new glasses. The exam went well, still only a small sign of cataracts (and next time we will have something to measure against to see if they are getting better or worse), and I explained about the old glasses not really doing anything. The doctor put my glasses on himself, took them off and looked at them and tried it again, and then he said he didn’t think that there was anything in there but plain glass. He took them back to check and came back and said that they were just like the ones you try on out front, and nothing except plain glass in the frames ! ! So…… no wonder I didn’t see any better when I was wearing those glasses . It never occurred to me that the glasses were bad, I just thought it was my eyes. Anyway, in a couple of weeks, I should have REAL glasses that help me to see better.