So I took my Vee to an informative meeting last night on avoiding inflammation foods. She is interested in nutrition.
A lot of the people there were Lyme patients and the speaker was a doctor from the Netherlands with a compelling story. He studied medicine and takes a more holistic approach and is one of those doctors that focuses on food allergies and candida. For a while he was against antibiotics but he started realizing more and more that while nutrition can strengthen the body to work properly, it alone cannot kill some diseases and that antibiotics have their benefits too. He stressed very much that we eat so much crap that antibiotics alone will not do anything if you refuse to clean up your eating too. His thinking is very much aligned with mine in this and I liked him.
He entered the Lyme world because His wife thought she had chronic fatigue syndrome for years and it turned out to be Lyme. His son had Lyme too and it gave him learning disabilities. The amount of symptoms varies so much. The information was abundant! Too abundant!
Then he said something that made my ears perk up. He's been seeing a lot of these mysterious strep patients. C was diagnosed with a strain of strep! Her blood showed a gluten sensitivity as well. Her doc had said it might be what's causing her weird head episodes but its hard to tell. I told this to yesterday's speaker and he said not to rule out that it could be a secondary infection caused by Lyme.
The testing available for Lyme is woefully inadequate and hugely under diagnosed in this area where its actually a pandemic in the PA, NJ area. He recommended certain labs and certain Lyme tests that are more reliable than others.
But he is big on food allergies as well. He recommended ordering food allergy kits, eating a low fat plant based diet and getting her off gluten ASAP.
The amount of kids with GI issues he sees is staggering. (I thought of Midge). Teens with unusually high anxiety issues that are actually infected with Lyme that has affected the brain is growing. (I thought of Z). He talked about foggy brain, short term memory loss and word loss. I thought of me and my real frustration recently with trying to remember simple words for objects!! I thought about Vee having been diagnosed with Epstein Barr years back and how she has been tired ever since. I thought of those hours spent geo-caching in the NJ woods and finding tons of tiny deer tics on our clothes and bodies.
You see where my mind is going with this? Typical me. I'm convinced there's something wrong with all of us.
If I were rich, I would rush over to his office and run every test available. Realistically I can't pay for each of us to see this doctor. What I can do for now is start with diet changes. We have been wanting to eat in a more healthful way for a long time.
Vee is frustrated. She knows me and knows I never stick anything out. I start big and fizzle out. It's all or nothing for me. I realized she was giving me the lowdown in the car about how we would buy this and plan that. But she wasn't excited. Her expression looked like a tired mother's. I could see Vee mentally rolling up her sleeves and taking on the burden of her parents problems no doubt a result of inconsistent parenting. I felt dread thinking she feels she has to babysit ME! I know the feeling.
She's also worried about her dad. Hubby is turning 50 next month and is procrastinating about getting a physical. Her voice grew tremulous at the idea of having to convince her dad to make changes. I had to remind her that she is neither my spouse nor Hubby's and its not her job to fix anything. It didn't help.
Wow. My daughter thinks I'm her slightly retarded adult child. I cant tell you how that makes me feel. Its probably one of my biggest fears. I felt sad. Hubby did too but for different reasons. He doesn't want to be seen as the old chubby guy who's about to die from a heart attack.
Long story short. Guess who's going gluten free?
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