Health Update

Hi everyone!

Over the last three months I haven’t really been updating you guys because I didn’t want to worry you. I haven’t had that much happen that was great and exciting that I needed to share in my little piece of the internet.
However, no I am ‘coming out’ and writing a quick look back to what has been happening.

Lets start off on a great thing: I’ve been sick. I am sick. Three months ago I got hit by a cold (my third one since arriving in February) and Katie took me to the doctor. I have had glandular fever (Pfeiffer) in the past, which was the main reason for going to the doctors. I was feeling really tired all the time, didn’t have any energy to get up and leave my bed. Let alone go to school!

The doctor made me do a whole lot of blood tests, to see what was wrong. A couple of weeks later (that I had spent at home sleeping and eating a minimal amount of food) they diagnosed me with ‘Leaky gut syndrome’ and ‘chronic fatigue’. Leaky gut means that my gut has little holes where toxics escape into my stomach. Because of the small holes, I wasn’t absorbing enough nutrients as I should. This lead to me craving for foods I shouldn’t have, and not getting the nutrients at all! Chronic fatigue is just that: being tired all. the. time. Those two things have one thing in common; they both get worse due to stress and an incomplete diet. Because of the stress, I was working on adrenaline, Adrenal fatigue. This means that I could pump myself up (for surfing for example) and then break down later. I could do the fun things if they lasted for a couple of hours, and would spent the next day in bed because I was too tired to function properly. I would surf on Saturday and Sunday morning for two hours each, and spent pretty much the rest of the week sleeping, only getting up for doctors or naturopath appointments. Not a very fun time… With spending all my days at home rather than going to school, I got really down and didn’t have motivation to do anything anymore. I spent my days in bed. Not just because of that, but one of the main reasons to make an appointment with a counsellor, to learn and cope a bit better. I wasn’t doing anything to cope or solve the diagnoses, even though Katie and Bruce both really tired to find foods that I could have and liked. Which was not much in the beginning because I was used to my ‘normal’ of bread, chicken, pasta and vegetables.

This all happened around two months ago. Today I am doing a lot better. I have made major changes in my diet, thanks to Katie and Bruce. My diet gave me back a bit of energy, and even though I was still struggling, I learned the difference between my ‘adrenal energy’ and my healthy energy. Again, this wasn’t easy because if I felt okay, I wanted to do everything I could and more so I wouldn’t feel like I was failing.

I really had to learn how to listen to what my body needs. I’m still learning, but I have gotten a lot better I think.

A couple of weeks ago, and the final blood tests later, the doctor changed my chronic fatigue to ‘post viral’ fatigue. A huge weight got lifted off everyone’s shoulder because this meant that I would be able to fully recover. Post viral still wasn’t great, but I started feeling better after two weeks with new medication.

Since then, I have learned that I have to try and have a protein and a fat with each meal. Each meal meaning every two or three hours. From eating two or three meals a day to five was hard because I never got hungry. I really have to plan when I eat, and what I want to eat. Avocado has become my new best friend (kind of) and gluten my enemy ;) I can’t have as much gluten as I had because I showed a slight reaction to it in one of the results. Side track: I bought a binder to keep all the doctor and naturopath papers in, because in the first lot of testing, we got over 50 pages with results… Bills, results and tips are all in there!

Anyway, since two weeks I have been slowly getting back to school. At the moment I am only going to three subjects: Art, Photo and English. Those subjects are the ones that I really enjoy and feel that I can handle. After the July holidays I plan on going back full time again!
Since then, I have been getting out more, doing things with friends and getting ready! I have been working on a gift for my dad, my painting for Art, and reading texts for English.

I feel a lot better now about myself and am a lot more positive that I am getting better than I was before. I am happy that I am starting to wake up in the morning with energy, rather than feeling tired and sad. I am really looking forward to going back to school next term, and making the absolute best of the 160 days that I have left in Australia. I know that I will probably have to take some medication for the rest of my time here, maybe even for the rest of my life, but right now they make me feel better and they seem to work so I don’t see that as a problem anymore! All of them are Naturopath medication, so nature based, which makes me feel a lot better about taking them.

I do sometimes want to have pasta or my nice slice of bread with chocolate sprinkles! How wouldn’t? But when I had a baby pizza two weeks ago, I got stomach cramps and it didn't give me the same ‘excitement’ as it used to… I guess my taste buds are changing and starting to actually like the ‘better choices’!

Once again sorry for not updating for a long time. As I am trying to find a new routine that works, I will hopefully be able to write a bit more :)