So Much To Do, So Little Time

November 9, 2010 By 3 Comments

ClockLately I have been so overwhelmed with everything there is to do.  There just aren’t enough hours in the day to fit it all in and I feel like I am getting further and further behind on things.  I just can’t seem to keep up with everything… how do people do it??

Work.  I have been lucky enough to cut down my work schedule to four days a week now.  I have most Wednesdays off and then I come in a bit earlier the other four days to catch up on what I missed.  This has made a huge difference since traffic is much lighter at that time and it gives me an entire day to catch up on things.

Food.  Everything on our new diet is so time consuming to prepare.  I feel like my life is being planned around my allergies.  We can’t go out without first planning what food I need to bring with me since I can’t order from restaurants anymore.  Everything needs to be made from scratch.  This is taking a lot of adjustments for me as I’m used to quick and easy meals, not to mention the amount of dishes I accumulate cooking that way!

Shots.  One of the reasons I chose Wednesdays to be off was that it is my shots day.  Going in for my shots is not a very quick appointment.  After checking in, going over any reactions from last week’s shot, and then getting all four shots… they make you wait in the waiting room for thirty minutes to make sure you are okay before you leave.  I’m gone for at least two hours, on a good week, to get shots.

Life.  Between all the new time demands in my schedule, I haven’t found much (or any) time for fun stuff… no scrapbooking, no reading, not so much blogging.  All of that time has been replaced with extra grocery trips for more fresh foods, chopping fruits and veggies, chopping, more chopping, and cleaning (since I’m not allowed to have dust anymore)!  Plus there are always little projects we need to work on around the house, such as cleaning out the hall closet since it wont close anymore.

My brain is just too full always thinking ahead about all the stuff I need to do next.  I find my self sitting on the couch stressed out about all the stuff I need to get done that day, but I’m stuck there because I just don’t know where to start.

Filed Under: Allergies, General

Gastrocrom for Food Allergies

November 1, 2010 By 3 Comments

I have had quite a week trying to figure out how this new medicine, Gastrocrom, works.  There is a bit of a learning curve on how much to take depending on what food I’m eating and how much I’m eating.  Overall it works fairly well… if I take the right amount.

It comes in these individual ampules of 5mL, and you mix them into water (plain water only) and drink it immediately.  It has no taste so it’s not at all unpleasant.  Then you have to wait half an hour before eating so that it has time to take effect.  I’ve figured out by trial and error that I need to take two doses before eating and then one dose about an hour after eating.Medicine with water

Gastrocrom works by preventing the release of inflammatory chemicals such as histamines from mast cells.  So while the medicine is in my system, my body doesn’t react to the foods I’m allergic to.  The problem I was having this week was that the medicine was wearing off while the food was still in my stomach.  I ate a huge meal (our anniversary dinner at Outback) and was fine perfectly fine for about two hours.  Then it hit me… hard.  I got the super bad headache (from the soy), and overwhelming nausea (from the wheat).  So that’s when I added the second half-dose after eating, while the food was still in my stomach.  I was able to eat my Outback leftovers with no problems.

I think I’ve got it mostly figured out now.  However, I am still experiencing some of the lasting effects of the foods such as needing my inhaler more often again and more ear/throat aggravations.  I think I still need to be avoiding the foods for the most part, but this week we’ve been enjoying lots of the foods we had been missing out on the last couple of weeks.Medicine box

Filed Under: Allergies, Food Reviews Tagged With: ,

Food Allergy Conclusions

October 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

As you know, I have been on the caveman diet to cut out foods that I tested allergic to.  I eliminated any and all forms of eggs, milk, corn, soy, and wheat.  Then I added them back in one at a time to learn how I reacted to each food.  I had absolutely no problems with eggs and milk.  Corn gave me slight discomfort, mostly a feeling of puffiness in my cheeks.  I wasn’t too bad until I ate corn twice in one day.  Then I had a lot of itchiness and got a little rashy across my chest and neck.Soy The worst was soy.  I had a small, small amount of soy milk and got an instant and intense headache.  The soy also made me dizzy and the headache lasted all night.  I had a little bit more soy milk the next night to make sure I had the same reactions, which I did.  The wheat is definitely what has been causing my nausea and stomach pains.  After just a small amount of cream of wheat I had to lie still for a while until my stomach recovered.  I can’t believe how strong the reactions were and that I was never able to put two and two together before.  It’s just so hard to tell when so many meals have multiples of these ingredients mixed in.

It might not sound so bad to find that corn, soy, and wheat bother me, but it’s hard to realize how many things include those three ingredients.  Almost everything contains corn syrup!  And I never realized how many things have soy.  When I was told to cut out soy I thought it would be no problem.  However, soy is an ingredient in things like hard candies, pasta, ice cream, lunch meats, and soups.  Then there are the non-food items such as candles, soap, printing ink, creams, and cosmetics.  You just can’t stay away from the stuff.  We now spend forever in the grocery store reading all the labels.

Today is the last day of the caveman diet and challenge foods.  Tomorrow I can go back to normal, keeping in mind that eating these ingredients will cause the reactions I learned. I think we will keep a lot of our new recipes in place though.  Being forced to cut out so much has helped me learn to be a more creative and better cook.  Not to mention that we both feel so much better eating fresh foods.

I also did some more reading about food allergies on the allergy doctor’s website.  I read that as long as you spread out the foods you react to, your body can handle it okay.  It seems backwards to me.  Like the more you have of something, the more you would get used to it.  But the website suggested that you need to separate these foods by four days.  I hope that adding these foods back in doesn’t get me back to the way I was feeling all the time before… but I sure am ready for some spaghetti!

Filed Under: Allergies Tagged With: , , ,