Love & Hate

Yeah, we all have something we both love and hate, for both different reasons and for the same reasons. For me it's food. I love to eat but I hate to eat because almost all foods aggrevates the bleeding in my small intestine and I only get fatter as I've had a hard time excercise thise last few years.

So I love reading about food, seeing good photographs of foods, and imagining what all foods I read about or see would taste like, if only to sample it. It's why I have a kitchen full of gourment cooking utensils and appliances because used to love to make food to taste. Just taste and then trash it.

I love some of the foods I've created, roasted orange chicken among them, but mostly mixes where I add a variety of things to make it better, potpies with more veges, Rice-a-Roni with meat and veges, omelettes and scrambled eggs with all sorts of ingredients, and so on. All sitting silently waiting for another day.

And over the last few years I can't even taste it because I don't know how my body and especially intestinal tract will react. So food is off-limits. The kitchen stuff sits little used. The recipes cut from magazine and articles and recipe books collect dust. I miss them all and persist on a diet you can write on a 4x6 postit note.

It's not boring and it is tasteful, just not much more than what it is, a few fruits, a few vegetables, some cheese, protein drinks, a few types of natural/organic meat, poultry, seafood or fish, one brand of bread and one cracker, and at least my all time favorite, peanut butter and jam.

Foods I can't eat now? Anything with seeds, nuts, berries, breads and crackers save two, most meat except some pork products and some seafood, most cheese except a few I really like, rice and other grains, any green vegetables except peas, all starch vegetables, potato chips (just one brand of corn chips), milk products except lactose-free, fat-free milk (mostly for the cholesterol).

You get the picture, but then the foods I can eat are brand specific too. I've spent the last two years with once or twice food experiments to know this and create this least. And yes, all foods were tested 3 times before being eliminated. Some foods are on the occasional list to keep trying, but often end up still off the list.

So that's the story. Food and eating. Love and hate. What a world we create for ourself. Mine's food and eating.

Update

Well, after a nearly a week of pain in the right leg, from full blown drop down on the floor withering pain from the hip to the toes shaking the whole time pain, the pain has subsided to just the pain from the numbness. I got to the Urgent Care center and after an examination and MRI, the diagnosed degenerative vertebra disease, common in people over 40, and bulging discs in the L4 and L5 vertebra, the ones where the Siactica nerves branch out to the legs.

This last week I was able to walk but not much more because the right leg is numb from the top of the knee to the ankle and any pressure from the body, lifting, exercising, etc. causes the leg to collapse, where I have to watch how I walk up/down stairs, and other situations which stresses the right leg.

But now I can sit and stand with little pain, and even walk to some degree. Right now it's just time. Time for the pain to fully subside and the numbness to disappear. The latter will likely take another 4-6 weeks, similar to last year's problem with the left leg, but that was only the calf and foot, but back for more if not.

Nothing like trying to do anything with a numb knee. Anyway, I'm a human being again, just older with TMJ (half the face shallow with all the fat gone), bleeding small intestine and a numb right knee and lower leg. Well, it could be worse as I discovered last week and not something I want to experience again in my life.

Nothing Like Pain

There's nothing like real pain to give you a reality check about life, your life, and about the fragility and good or bad fortune of your body. It started about three weeks ago when I felt a sharp pain in the upper right hip. It dissipated but left my right leg numb from just below the knee, down the shin to the toes.

Then I noticed when I went up some stairs the right leg buckled. I realized something wasn't obvious right. But it was similar to last year with the left leg, the pain at the top of the hip, down the leg to the foot. Then it went down the outside of the calf, leaving it numb to the foot. I had to watch walking as I couldn't feel the outside of my left foot.

The numbness this time went right down the front of the shin to the middle toes. I decided it would go away as it did last year in the normal 6+ weeks. But alas it didn't as this last weekend and week through the Independence Day holiday showed. Saturday was the last good day, relatively speaking.

Sunday the episode got very worse but recovered later in the day. Monday was the day it became a full blown severe pain in the right leg and total numbness from the knee to the toes. The doctors found the two disc for the siactic nerve had a moderate bulging but thought the pinch nerve was "down the line" since the pain wasn't in my lower back but just in the leg(s).

Since Sunday I've been lying on an air mattress since it's the only position where there is little if any pain. By today the pain has dimished to only the area with the numbness, which is the knee, shin and foot/toes. My knee has no response to the reflex test. Yes, totally numb, and the surrounding muscles hurt from compensating or not working.

So that's why nothing is new in a week. I couldn't sit until I found a way to kneel with two pillows in a chair to sit here now, and the pain is bearable. I can only walk for a few minutes before the leg hurts but then the pain stablizes where I can limp around. I have an appointment next week after this week's visit to the local urgent care clinic.

After that it will be specialist(s) to see what, if anything, can be done to overcome what is initially diagnosed as degenerative disc disease. Last year it took 6 weeks to fade away. This looks longer without some medical intervention. It's worse and more widespread.

Today I went to Office Depot and replaced my old style wood banker's chair with a lumbar support one and am back in front of the computer. The pain is minimal but the numbness hasn't changed. In the end, it's the story of just one's genetics with your spine and back muscles, how you work and live, and how you take care of them.

As they say, nothing like a little pain to remind you of yourself.