As my first post in 2016, I am amazed to look back over 2015 and all that I went through. It was one of the most difficult years of my life. Over the next few weeks you will see that over 2015 I endured four rounds of treatment for SIBO (herbal, herbal/essential oils, elemental diet/herbal, and essential oils), until we eventually took a break. I walked into 2015 so sick I can’t believe I made it through the harsh Rocky Mountain winter alive, and somehow ended the year by walking into 2016 the healthiest I have been since I was 15 years old. Over the next few weeks I am excited to share the ups and downs of 2015, and bring you up to date to where I am now!
The following journal entry is from the end of 2014 when I was diagnosed with SIBO for the second time. It reveals the heart break I experienced with the new.
Yesterday, I found out my SIBO infection returned. Not only did it return but it is exponentially worse than before antibiotic treatment.
I am so sad. So very, very sad. I want to run. Run away as far and fast as I can. If it wasn’t so cold outside, if it was summer, I would put on my running shoes and run, and run, and run up into the mountains until my feet could take me no further. And then I would curl up in the warm sun beneath a tall tree away from civilization and sleep until I could sleep no more. There is a dark mass of emotional energy clouding my heart today.
I have been on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet or on a no carbohydrate diet for an entire year.
My mother says I have lost too much weight. She is right, my hips and ribs protrude too much from my flesh. I’m not a skeleton, but I am the smallest I’ve been since I was a tiny teenager.
I cried with my doctor. She was very hopeful and encouraging with the new information she has been learning and her recent time spent with some of the SIBO experts in Portland. But I feel as though the SIBO is winning. All of the work, all of the weight lost, all of the time spent, all of the reading, the implementing, the money, the energy spent on SIBO, it all feels as though it was a huge waste.
A year of my life has been given to the healing and recovery of this infection. And for what? For what but an infection that is worse than when we began. I want to throw my computer across the room. I want to jump on a plane to Hawaii and live on the beach for a month.
I just want to be away and done with this.
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