The Health Post

My health hasn't been the greatest for a while. Seven years, at least, when my thyroid started to fail and lots of things started to trip up on me. Billy's birth didn't make things better, either. But things are looking up.

1. I don't have celiac disease. I have malabsorption of fat-soluble vitamins and iron, along with thyroid symptoms and Hashimoto's, and I'm Irish, so it was worth testing. But no. This wasn't the answer, which is good and bad. Good because who wants an auto-immune disease (I already have one), bad because it would be easily fixed. So then

2. Time to work around the malabsorption. I started taking liquid vitamin D. You drop it under your tongue and let it mostly soak through the membrane there into the veins. And you know what? My heels don't hurt anymore. It was kind of scary how quickly I felt better.

3. When I went in to buy the vitamin D, I talked with my pharmacist about malabsorption and he asked me if I'd ever been on any heavy doses of antibiotics. In fact, I had. Six different ones and I can't remember all their names, for an e.coli infection I contracted in the hospital when Fiona was born. I was on an IV for 2 weeks full of it and then oral antibiotics for weeks. "Your intestinal flora is probably all out of whack," he told me. But I took acidophilus when I was nursing babies, I thought to myself. But I let this toss around my brain for a few weeks and then went to the doctor.

4. She sat at her desk and totally nodded up and down as I told her this theory. "It could be the root of a lot of problems," she acknowledged. "Health starts in the gut. Seratonin, weight management, absorption of nutrients, all kinds of things." And if I were on such heavy-duty antibiotics, who knows what all I wiped out of my system. So among other things (eating more fermented food, for instance), I'm now purposefully consuming pills full of bacteria. Good bacteria. Acidophilus is only one, she pointed out. The one she put me on has 6 latin names inside it.

5. While I was there, well, I was really there for my inflamed jaw muscle, and she did a myofascial release that made me cry it was so painful. It was so painful. And then it wasn't painful anymore. I'm tired of the magic. But she put me on boswellia. I went home and looked it up. Frankincense. I'm taking frankincense. It's been through clinical trials for inflammatory diseases like Crohns and more basic stuff like osteoarthritis. It's an anti-inflammatory that doesn't tear up your stomach like ibuprofen can. And, knock on wood, it's doing the job. She also wants me at the cranial-sacral therapist I see more often than I have been going. Like every 2 weeks. Which is fine. I always leave there feeling all right.

6. And I've started working out. In the wintertime. It's been a long time. And I'm doing a lot. Have been since the start of the year and I can't believe I'm still doing it but every day it's in my brain nagging me until I do. It helps that I got a sports bra that is AMAZINGLY AMAZING. We are late spring to mid-autumn exercise people, but last year we weren't even that and it's been bad for us. Getting started in January means that those bikes in the front hall will look like an easy transition in April.

I'm going to hike in the Smokies this summer. I have to feel better. I keep trying to focus on that and it's working. All my willpower is going into this area, though, and so Jake has to be in charge of things like money and time and such. Joan's stroke was a wakeup call, too, but mostly, just feeling like shite for so long got really old.

So that's the health post.