Ready, Okay!

Hitting the reset button. During the past 19 days I've:

1. Sent my husband to the hospital.
2. Contracted a disease.
3. Broken two more bones.
4. Dyed my hair an appalling shade of red that was supposed to be, well, strawberry blonde, but turned out to be something more like "Unclaimed Luggage from the 1970s."
5. Stayed away from the gym (and the hill) on doctor's orders.
6. Eaten a terrible meal that doubled me over.

Which of these disasters shall we start with? Husband's recovering rather too well from major back surgery, undertaken because cortisone shots didn't do the trick. Now, instead of lying quietly in his recliner, like a good patient, he sends me to the grocery store multiple times a day for juice, Oreos, and other things humans shouldn't ingest. And asks me what I'm doing. And uses the bathroom I was just about to use. And watches Dr. Who on the classic movie channel.

Isn't it the sick one who's supposed to be grumpy?

My own disease du jour? Chronic lifelong urinary tract infections. A bad one kicked in during camp, but I get weird symptoms and always mistake UTIs for.... I don't know. The flu. Or cancer. Or Elephantiasis.

By Wednesday evening I was feeling too awful even to cook dinner, so I herded the teens (yes, we now have multiple teenagers living with us. That's a good thing. Especially since one of them drives.) into town and went to a Mexican restaurant.

Big, BIG mistake.

In my foggy brain, I imagined that if I just ordered vegetarian food I'd be fine.

I forgot about the slug trail.

There's a theory amongst Raw Foodists that folks who eat animal-based foods and even those who eat cooked, otherwise-healthful foods, build up a mucus trail through their gut that runs from the sinuses to the, uh, well, the end of the trail.

The theory is that this trail of slime (called the gastric mucosal barrier, or MUCOID PLAQUE (ewww)) is the body's mechanism to protect itself from the toxins and creepy substances found in animal byproducts and cooked foods. The theory holds that as you cease poisoning yourself with charcoal, lactade, gatorade, fromage, pig snouts, parasites, toxins, hydrogenated crisco, BHA, MSG, NFL, and other contaminants, your body eventually stops building up the protective barrier of gut slime, and allows you to get the full nutritional benefit of the healthy raw fruits and veggies you're ingesting.

I forgot.

And I ate a platter of cheese quesadillas with sour cream and guacamole.

Then spent the next 24 hours doubled over in pain.

The other five people who ate the same food (and worse) had no adverse reaction at all. Just me, the chick who normally has a cast-iron stomach. Nausea. Bloating. Cramps. Diarrhoea. (It's not embarrassing to have diarrhea if you use the British spelling.)

I spent the entire day curled up in bed between bathroom runs. (And I use the word "runs" advisedly.)

By Thursday evening, I was feeling much improved. Which was a relief. Y'know. Because of the Elephantiasis.

By the time we got home from camp on Saturday, however, I was in pretty dire straits. By then, the UTI was eating a hole in my kidneys, and I was doubled over for all new reasons.

... (to be continued).