Ugh. This is going to be long.
Just for a preface, I have been heavy all my life. but I was always healthy. When I was growing up, the main ailment in my life was insane ear infections as a baby ( I was soy formula fed) and environmental allergies. I grew up in Las Vegas, so the dust, the dirt, the tumbleweeds. Everything. I would wake up and sneeze for an hour straight. Grass made me wheeze and after an epic lawn mowing incident where I moved grass that was knee high I ended up in the doctors office on a nebulizer and was diagnosed with allergy induced asthma. I had an inhaler that I used and with the use of a daily antihistamine I was okay. Then I moved to Florida when I was 19 and everything was FINE until I had my daughter at 25. When I say fine, I mean that I did not use allergy meds or my inhaler for 6 years. After that, strange things started happening. I noticed that when I ate (mind you this is all raw) coconut, mango, any type of melon, tomato, cucumber, i noticed that the back of my throat would itch and the inside of my ears. You know how you scratch the back of your throat with your tongue? I would be doing that for like a half an hour, and then be fine. Never really took notice of it though. In April 08 I had a miscarriage and 3 weeks after that I came down with the worst case of bronchitis ever which kick started my asthma again. Well Christmas 08(about 8 months after I had a miscarriage) I had a nearly ana reaction to something. I was at work, removing highlights from someone's hair and all around my bra strap I started itching. I thought the girl had lice or something. I didn't take notice of it and went shopping with my husband. We are standing in the line and I notice that I am scratching myself all over my chest. We get home (which is about 3 hours after I started noticing the itching) and I strip off my clothing and I have red blotches all over me. I get in the tub to rinse my body and then it starts taking over my body. It started at my toes and went all the way up to my face. My palms broke out, everything. I noticed my heart rate went up, my lips started swelling, my throat was itching, my eyes were swelling. My husband quickly went to the store, got me some antihistamine and it stopped the swelling enough for me to sleep. Actually, I had called my doctor and he said "oh, you're fine, just take some benadryl and come in tomorrow". Now I know that he was a quack and I should have been in the hospital. Although it wasn't complete shock, it was damn close. So I go in the next day, covered in hives the size of my palm, and I am given a 7 day dose of prednisone and xyzal ( I love this stuff). I took the meds, but the hives didn't go away for 2 weeks. I ran through everything I ate that day, and what I came up with was this package lunch from the health food store that I had never eaten before and this fake turkey salad that was made with agave nectar. Now, to my knowledge I have never had agave nectar before. I did have tequilla once and it made me feel awful (one shot). It seriously took a month for me to get rid of that allergic reaction and I will never forget the feeling of being in the bathtub swelling shut.
So I find an allergist and they do a skin test on me and tested my asthma. My asthma came back pretty decent. My lung capacity was pretty good and I really didn't show up to asthmatic. She gave me proventil inhaler to control it because she said it was probably induced by the environmental allergies. They do my skin test. I had the standard skin test, which was 56 things on my back. ( I think it was 56, give or take a few). I showed positive for everything except 4 things. All of the grasses just went into one big hive and the foods I didn't show allergic to except tomato. I can't remember what foods she tested me on, but I think it was tomato, egg, milk strawberry and something else. I was told to stop eating tomato, go on a daily allergy medication, my inhaled steroid and all would be well.
So I started taking the inhaled steroid. After about 3 days I noticed that I wanted to jump out of my window. I was getting very angry, very emotional and entertaining bad thoughts. I called my husband home from work one day because I seriously thought I was going to toss myself out of my second story window. I called the doctor, she was like "oh I have never heard of that happening before" told me I could stop taking it if I wanted and that was it. I immediately stopped taking it and read the side effects. Suicidal thoughts, depression, the list goes on and on. Yeah, I am not allowed to take inhaled steroids ever again. She wanted me to do allergy shots and listed me in her top ten of most sensitive patients. She said that she would have to dilute my shots down to 1/1,000,00th and I would have to have an epi pen right near me when we do them.
So that being said, since that whole initial reaction at Christmas, I have been terrified of eating things, taking meds and whatever. I have not been right physically. I am extremely tired all the time, I have bouts of depression, anxiety, bloat and my bowels have never been the same. I was diagnosised with PCOS years ago and after the birth of my daughter and some loss in weight my period came back. Well about 6-8 months ago I gained all my weight back and my periods have gone missing again. But since the weight gain my body is all crazed. My bowels have not been normal since then. No blood, no mucous, but they are always soft, and when I go, I will go 2-4 times back to back. And they sting coming out. I have lots of yeast infections. If I have anything sugary, the next day I itch in my girl bits and I get a tad bready smelling discharge.
Oh! I forgot. A few months after my reaction, I noticed that I was having problems with my voice. I would take and then all of a sudden it would feel like my throat was closing ( I could breathe fine) and it would shut off my voice. I went to an ENT and I was diagnosis with pretty severe reflux. I know chocolate is a BIG culprit with me.
But lets fast forward to today. I am about 90 pounds over weight. I have been this weight before (albeit about 5 years ago) and never been this ill. I struggle to wake up in the morning, my bowels ALWAYS effect me, I have constant reflux and after I ate, for at least 2-3 I am in pain while my food digests. I constantly have sinus problems, headaches and feel dizzy. I get nauseous a lot to. I eat vegetarian, but a pretty high sugar diet. I stopped eating wheat for a week or two a few months ago and I think it helped me. But then I caved into my mother saying "you don't have all these allergies. it's just that you need to pull in on yourself and just get your mind straight". She thinks my lack of motivation from feeling off all the time is just be not using my "inner strength" and thinks that I just want to diagnosis myself with all these things so that I can have a scape goat. Screw the inner strength, I wanna get well.
Here are my thoughts. I think I am intolerant to wheat (not allergic) and that is giving me the insane exhaustion, stomach problems and reflux. I think my body is over run with yeast because of to much sugar. I think being overweight, and having all this crap in my system is just slowly shutting my body down.
So, if I have an idea of what is bothering me, why am I here you ask? Well I have NO clue how to address this. We don't have money to go to a natural doctor, all my normal doctor wants to do is give me meds and tell me to lose weight. We have no insurance so I can't do tests. I know my cholestrol is high and my bp is probably high. So I need to get those under control to. I don't exercise, reason being is that all of this stuff has me so exhausted and so spent that exercising makes me anxious(like real anxiety attack inducing.)I don't know where to start. I just don't. We don't have a lot of money, well hardly any haha. So buying all that gluten free stuff was hard. I did find a rather tasty millet bread for pretty cheap. My husband has IBS so we stay away from dairy, but I think staying away from wheat would be good for him to. I am not opposed to making anything from scratch, I quite like it and am pretty good at it. I just don't know where to start that isn't so darn overwhelming. Oh, we are a lacto veggie family, no eggs please. My daughter seems to be fine with anything. So we are a no egg, limited milk(dairy is my husbands IBS problem) and no tomato.
Since having all these problems I have such anxiety about trying new things and taking ANY type of medication. Even Aleeve or anything like that, I get worried about that stupid reaction coming back. And we don't know exactly what caused it. I think agave, but about a year ago I drank something (about a mouthful) and the next day when I went for another mouthful my husband freaked out and was like that has agave in it. I had no reaction. And the doctor said that she didn't know how to test for that or even if people were allergic to it. WTF! Seriously, you are an allergist and don't know of it?
So any suggestions, I welcome them. Game plans, meal plans. Anything. I am so lost and so run down. I just want to have fun again, enjoy things and stop feeling like an 80 year old woman in a 30 year old womans body ( my 30th was Tuesday and I feel this is a good year for me.)
Thanks!
p.s. you should get a gold star for reading this.
Just for a preface, I have been heavy all my life. but I was always healthy. When I was growing up, the main ailment in my life was insane ear infections as a baby ( I was soy formula fed) and environmental allergies. I grew up in Las Vegas, so the dust, the dirt, the tumbleweeds. Everything. I would wake up and sneeze for an hour straight. Grass made me wheeze and after an epic lawn mowing incident where I moved grass that was knee high I ended up in the doctors office on a nebulizer and was diagnosed with allergy induced asthma. I had an inhaler that I used and with the use of a daily antihistamine I was okay. Then I moved to Florida when I was 19 and everything was FINE until I had my daughter at 25. When I say fine, I mean that I did not use allergy meds or my inhaler for 6 years. After that, strange things started happening. I noticed that when I ate (mind you this is all raw) coconut, mango, any type of melon, tomato, cucumber, i noticed that the back of my throat would itch and the inside of my ears. You know how you scratch the back of your throat with your tongue? I would be doing that for like a half an hour, and then be fine. Never really took notice of it though. In April 08 I had a miscarriage and 3 weeks after that I came down with the worst case of bronchitis ever which kick started my asthma again. Well Christmas 08(about 8 months after I had a miscarriage) I had a nearly ana reaction to something. I was at work, removing highlights from someone's hair and all around my bra strap I started itching. I thought the girl had lice or something. I didn't take notice of it and went shopping with my husband. We are standing in the line and I notice that I am scratching myself all over my chest. We get home (which is about 3 hours after I started noticing the itching) and I strip off my clothing and I have red blotches all over me. I get in the tub to rinse my body and then it starts taking over my body. It started at my toes and went all the way up to my face. My palms broke out, everything. I noticed my heart rate went up, my lips started swelling, my throat was itching, my eyes were swelling. My husband quickly went to the store, got me some antihistamine and it stopped the swelling enough for me to sleep. Actually, I had called my doctor and he said "oh, you're fine, just take some benadryl and come in tomorrow". Now I know that he was a quack and I should have been in the hospital. Although it wasn't complete shock, it was damn close. So I go in the next day, covered in hives the size of my palm, and I am given a 7 day dose of prednisone and xyzal ( I love this stuff). I took the meds, but the hives didn't go away for 2 weeks. I ran through everything I ate that day, and what I came up with was this package lunch from the health food store that I had never eaten before and this fake turkey salad that was made with agave nectar. Now, to my knowledge I have never had agave nectar before. I did have tequilla once and it made me feel awful (one shot). It seriously took a month for me to get rid of that allergic reaction and I will never forget the feeling of being in the bathtub swelling shut.
So I find an allergist and they do a skin test on me and tested my asthma. My asthma came back pretty decent. My lung capacity was pretty good and I really didn't show up to asthmatic. She gave me proventil inhaler to control it because she said it was probably induced by the environmental allergies. They do my skin test. I had the standard skin test, which was 56 things on my back. ( I think it was 56, give or take a few). I showed positive for everything except 4 things. All of the grasses just went into one big hive and the foods I didn't show allergic to except tomato. I can't remember what foods she tested me on, but I think it was tomato, egg, milk strawberry and something else. I was told to stop eating tomato, go on a daily allergy medication, my inhaled steroid and all would be well.
So I started taking the inhaled steroid. After about 3 days I noticed that I wanted to jump out of my window. I was getting very angry, very emotional and entertaining bad thoughts. I called my husband home from work one day because I seriously thought I was going to toss myself out of my second story window. I called the doctor, she was like "oh I have never heard of that happening before" told me I could stop taking it if I wanted and that was it. I immediately stopped taking it and read the side effects. Suicidal thoughts, depression, the list goes on and on. Yeah, I am not allowed to take inhaled steroids ever again. She wanted me to do allergy shots and listed me in her top ten of most sensitive patients. She said that she would have to dilute my shots down to 1/1,000,00th and I would have to have an epi pen right near me when we do them.
So that being said, since that whole initial reaction at Christmas, I have been terrified of eating things, taking meds and whatever. I have not been right physically. I am extremely tired all the time, I have bouts of depression, anxiety, bloat and my bowels have never been the same. I was diagnosised with PCOS years ago and after the birth of my daughter and some loss in weight my period came back. Well about 6-8 months ago I gained all my weight back and my periods have gone missing again. But since the weight gain my body is all crazed. My bowels have not been normal since then. No blood, no mucous, but they are always soft, and when I go, I will go 2-4 times back to back. And they sting coming out. I have lots of yeast infections. If I have anything sugary, the next day I itch in my girl bits and I get a tad bready smelling discharge.
Oh! I forgot. A few months after my reaction, I noticed that I was having problems with my voice. I would take and then all of a sudden it would feel like my throat was closing ( I could breathe fine) and it would shut off my voice. I went to an ENT and I was diagnosis with pretty severe reflux. I know chocolate is a BIG culprit with me.
But lets fast forward to today. I am about 90 pounds over weight. I have been this weight before (albeit about 5 years ago) and never been this ill. I struggle to wake up in the morning, my bowels ALWAYS effect me, I have constant reflux and after I ate, for at least 2-3 I am in pain while my food digests. I constantly have sinus problems, headaches and feel dizzy. I get nauseous a lot to. I eat vegetarian, but a pretty high sugar diet. I stopped eating wheat for a week or two a few months ago and I think it helped me. But then I caved into my mother saying "you don't have all these allergies. it's just that you need to pull in on yourself and just get your mind straight". She thinks my lack of motivation from feeling off all the time is just be not using my "inner strength" and thinks that I just want to diagnosis myself with all these things so that I can have a scape goat. Screw the inner strength, I wanna get well.
Here are my thoughts. I think I am intolerant to wheat (not allergic) and that is giving me the insane exhaustion, stomach problems and reflux. I think my body is over run with yeast because of to much sugar. I think being overweight, and having all this crap in my system is just slowly shutting my body down.
So, if I have an idea of what is bothering me, why am I here you ask? Well I have NO clue how to address this. We don't have money to go to a natural doctor, all my normal doctor wants to do is give me meds and tell me to lose weight. We have no insurance so I can't do tests. I know my cholestrol is high and my bp is probably high. So I need to get those under control to. I don't exercise, reason being is that all of this stuff has me so exhausted and so spent that exercising makes me anxious(like real anxiety attack inducing.)I don't know where to start. I just don't. We don't have a lot of money, well hardly any haha. So buying all that gluten free stuff was hard. I did find a rather tasty millet bread for pretty cheap. My husband has IBS so we stay away from dairy, but I think staying away from wheat would be good for him to. I am not opposed to making anything from scratch, I quite like it and am pretty good at it. I just don't know where to start that isn't so darn overwhelming. Oh, we are a lacto veggie family, no eggs please. My daughter seems to be fine with anything. So we are a no egg, limited milk(dairy is my husbands IBS problem) and no tomato.
Since having all these problems I have such anxiety about trying new things and taking ANY type of medication. Even Aleeve or anything like that, I get worried about that stupid reaction coming back. And we don't know exactly what caused it. I think agave, but about a year ago I drank something (about a mouthful) and the next day when I went for another mouthful my husband freaked out and was like that has agave in it. I had no reaction. And the doctor said that she didn't know how to test for that or even if people were allergic to it. WTF! Seriously, you are an allergist and don't know of it?
So any suggestions, I welcome them. Game plans, meal plans. Anything. I am so lost and so run down. I just want to have fun again, enjoy things and stop feeling like an 80 year old woman in a 30 year old womans body ( my 30th was Tuesday and I feel this is a good year for me.)
Thanks!
p.s. you should get a gold star for reading this.
