What's your phobia?

A friend posted on Facebook this morning about seeing her dentist for some necessary repair work. While I made positive noises in a comment on her post, my insides were clenching at the very thought of dentists...

I have an intense phobia about dentists, and a spin-off phobia that I've come to realise comes from the dentist one - needles. People tell me I'm silly, it's *just* a needle, and there's *nothing* to be frightened about going to a dentist. The thing about phobias is that they're not rational. My rational mind is perfectly capable of telling me the same sensible things. Then someone sticks a needle in me and my blood pressure spikes, my palms sweat, my whole body tenses, and until the needle is out again, I'm a bit of a mess. Even more so with a dentist - with that, I am bathed in cold sweat, I shake, I'm white, and have all of the above going on as well. 

A year ago, I broke a filling - something that can't be ignored. I don't have a dentist in Sydney - and I've been here since the end of 2005... The filling that had broken was a temporary one that had been done in mid 2005 (pretty good temporary filling!). Dragon Dad was in Melbourne for work at the time, and I was due to head down for a couple of weeks, staying with a good friend of mine. A good friend of hers, and acquaintance of mine, is a dentist. I called her and explained my situation, only to find she'd just chipped a tooth and was about to make her own appointment. So, I asked her to make two back to back ones - explaining my utter terror and asking her to warn them at the surgery, and the need to have someone drive me... She did it, but I could tell she was humouring me. That didn't last. She sent me in for the first appointment, because once we got there, I'd started to get the shakes and she realised that sitting and waiting was only going to make it worse. By the time I got out - and our friend the dentist was VERY good - I was a complete mess, and couldn't speak. The dentist had noted a bunch of work that needed doing but said dealing with the filling would be all he'd do that day. He was quick, efficient, very gentle, and hummed most of the time he was working - except when he stopped to tell me what he was going to do next.

I survived. I always do. But it's always incredibly difficult, and knowing that one of the things I'm going to have to do once we're moved and settle is to set up a string of appointments to deal with all the other things that need to be fixed is something I just try hard not to think about. 

And the needles. Dealing with RA for twenty four years means there have been a lot of needles. Far more than the average healthy person is ever likely to encounter in a lifetime. So, based on the concept of aversion therapy, you'd think I'd have managed to get my head around dealing with them. I haven't. Moving from weekly shots of my biologic drug to four weekly infusions has dropped the actual number of regular needles to two every four weeks instead of five (there's a four weekly blood test too...). The flip side is that I have to sit with the bloody cannula stuck in me for anything up to an hour and a half, depending on how busy the clinic is, and how well the infusion goes. They do three sets of obs in that time - at the beginning, during and at the end, so I see the blood pressure spike and changes in my pulse rate each time. It's a real, physical reaction.

So, where did it come from, and why, after dealing with it for decades is it such a big thing...?

I grew up in country South Australia. At the time, there was a free, school-based dental service for primary school children. With what came to be terrifying regularity, a note would go home, and shortly afterwards, I'd be lined up at school along with the other kids for that day awaiting the taxi that would ferry us to the primary school across town that hosted the dental clinic. 

I'm pretty sure, in hindsight, that it was staffed mainly by rookie dentists fresh out of their university course, and that I endured a number of unnecessary procedures. These young dentists had no real idea how to deal with a frightened child, and to this day I can see that huge hypodermic of local anaesthetic being passed across my face in full view. Eventually, my mother pulled me from the program and found a local private dentist. I can still remember, with dreadful clarity, my first visit to her, and her shock to have me shaking and sweating in the chair. She let Mum stay with me and hold my hand, talking nonsense through the whole visit to try and calm me. She was very patient, but short lived, as she was subbing for the dentist who headed up that clinic, who travelled from Adelaide a few days a week to maintain the service. I was transferred to him, and he was also very good, totally understanding that I was traumatised and struggled with the visits. Later, as a young adult living in Adelaide, I found his home practice and would travel well over an hour to get there, rather than try and find another dentist and have to explain. 

Following my Melbourne appointment last year, I've become more and more aware of the deterioration of my teeth. It can be an associated problem of autoimmune diseases, and given I have fairly high maintenance - if neglected - teeth, it's not really surprising that there are a number of issues now. I have two front teeth with significant chips that need fixing, old fillings in front teeth that need replacing, some tender spots further back, and they're WAY overdue for a full professional clean. 

I'll just have to bite the bullet, so to speak. As I do each month for my blood test and infusion. And go on biting the bullet every time I have to deal with a needle, dentist or both. Because, no matter how well I try to prepare myself, my reaction happens. Because it IS a phobia, and the underlying trauma keeps it alive. It's good to know that my Melbourne dentist isn't going to just brush it off, but will tread carefully around it, as the nurses in the infusion centre have come to do. Ultimately, having it recognised and having health professionals prepared to work with it does help a little bit. 

What's your phobia, and how do you deal with it?

No Knead Bread

For weeks, I kept stumbling over posts about a no knead bread that turned out fabulous artisanal looking loaves of bread, so I finally clicked on one and had a look. Honestly, it seemed too good to be true. I've been making my own bread on and off for years, and the only no knead recipe I had that I really liked was a massive wholegrain brick of my mothers, and even that was mostly best as toast. 

Eventually, I had to give it a go though...and, it is GOOD!!!!! Look what I got...

It slices well, and makes great toast too...

So, the recipe. It was first published in the New York Times cooking supplement, and I used their recipe - it's since been reproduced in countless blogs elsewhere, so I'm adding to that lineup now!

 

You will need:

3 cups bread flour, plus extra for dusting

1/4 teaspoon instant yeast

1 1/4 teaspoon salt

1 5/8 cup water

 

1. In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients. Add water and mix until you get a sticky dough. Cover with plastic wrap and leave to prove for 12-18 hours.

2. The dough is ready when the surface is bubbly. Lightly dust a work surface with flour and scrape the dough out of the bowl. With floured hands, fold the dough over on itself, and then leave covered for fifteen minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to prevent the dough from sticking to you, gently form into a ball. Dust a cotton or linen tea towel with flour and place the dough on it, seam side down. Dust the top of the ball, and cover with a second tea towel. Leave to prove for two hours. It should double in size. If it's a cool day, it may take a little longer.

4. Half an hour before the dough has finished proving, turn oven on to 230C. Put a large covered pot - cast iron, pyrex, ceramic - in the oven to heat. When dough is ready, remove the pot and its lid, uncover the dough, slide your hand under the bottom tea towel and gently flip the dough into the pot with the seam side uppermost. Replace lid and bake for 30 minutes. Then remove the lid and bake a further 15 mins until golden.
Remove and cool on rack.

 

And, it really is that simple. What you get is a bread with a fine, moist crumb, chewy texture and thick crust. It has a slight tang due to the long, slow prove, like a very mild sourdough. I made another loaf the day before yesterday and it will probably last me about a week, unless Dragon Dad has another toast craving hit him! The batch before, I experimented with the flour and did a half/half mix of white flour and a wholemeal spelt. It took longer to prove, and I got a smaller, dryer loaf. Made wonderful toast, but I didn't enjoy it untoasted as much. Might try again with a bit less of the spelt and see if that's more to my taste. I also want to try adding some whole grain to it - my basic bread recipe, when I'm baking it regularly, is a fairly grainy, bran-y mix. 

 

If you've not made bread before, do give this a try. The only thing you really need to consider is the timing. I usually mix my dough somewhere between 5-7pm. That means I'm doing the shaping around the middle of the day the next day, and I have a finished loaf by mid to late afternoon. So, you do need to factor in 24 hours - but very little of that time is hands on, you just have to be around to do those bits. 

 

As a no gadget type (no, I do NOT have a thermomix, nor do I want one!), this is a great bread for when you want homemade bread but you just don't want to make any effort, or you're too tired - or in my case, too sore - to face the kneading involved with a regular bread dough. 

 

And then, when it gets to the toasting stage, it's time for my favourite breakfast/light lunch/no fuss dinner (!) - and yes, I'm a pig for butter...

Brain fog: Sorry, what were we talking about?

This post originally appeared on Creaky Joints in late 2015.

A little while ago, my cousin and I had a mini road trip up to the central coast north of Sydney to watch my eldest son swim his first 1500m ocean race. He’s preparing for the Noosa Triathlon – a full Olympic length race. It’s his first full length triathlon and at the beginning of the year he couldn’t swim, so it’s an awesome achievement. That ocean race was to get the monkey off his back about the 1500m swim. He swam really well, and discovered that not only will he not drown, he’ll also potentially be able to make it through well enough to be not too far behind when he picks up the 40km bike lap, and then the 10km run.

The hours in the car gave my cousin and I a lovely time for some serious catch up conversations. We talked about anything and everything, as you do, and at one point, I said to her, “There’s a blog post for Creaky Joints!” Then, I went to write it, and couldn’t for the life of me remember what the hell the topic was that we’d been talking about… So I emailed her, and got this message back: ‘Yes I do and it’s funny you ask – it was about you being forgetful lol!’

I used to pride myself on my memory, and in some ways, it’s still capable of amazing things… My earliest memory is from when I was about nine or ten months old – which is quite rare. My mother verified it after I described the scene I remembered – it was in the dining room of the place we lived when I was born, and we moved from there before I turned one.

I can remember all sorts of weird, random things from my childhood, from things I read, conversations, places I’ve been, and so on. I trained myself to memorise words (usually in a language other than English) and music for my time in an opera chorus – because we couldn’t head out onto the stage bewigged and costumed carrying the score!

It always has played some odd tricks on me though. I’m useless in exam situations – unless it’s essays. Anything else, and everything I’ve studied til I know it inside out vanishes like my head has been erased. It’s the same when I try and make a list of things – like names for invitations. Suddenly, it’s as if I have no friends, and I have to reach for my address book and work through that to make my list. Mind you, if I make a shopping list and then land at the shops without it, I can remember everything on it…but heaven help me if I didn’t make it in the first place.

Then, enter RA, and RA drugs…

Brain fog. The first time I saw that on the list of potential side effects of a drug, I laughed. It looked so bizarre in the middle of a list that was, otherwise, made up of legitimately medical sounding things. Then I started that drug. And stopped laughing. I have no memory from July 2013. None. The drug knocked me out – literally…it wasn’t sleep, it was something much more solid than sleep – for the rest of the day that I took it. After that, the rest of the week was a blur. I might have a day or so with a clearer head, but then dose day came up and it all started again. As I say, I can’t remember very much of that month. Hearing Dragon Dad describe it to other people – including my doctor – is horrifying. I couldn’t drive. I wasn’t functioning. My doctor stopped that drug, and says I can’t ever take it again.

What I’m left with though, is three other drugs that also list brain fog amongst the various potential side effects, and then there’s the effect of chronic pain, which can also impair normal cognitive function. So, basically, I’m screwed!

I find myself, all too frequently these days, mid sentence with no idea of what I was going to say next. Half way through conversations, I can completely lose track of what I have been talking about. I have conversations with people, then turn around and ask them a question, only to be looked at oddly, to have them tell me we just talked about that…

If I don’t write appointments down, I forget them. Actually, if I don’t put them in my phone calendar with a reminder set for a couple of hours ahead of the appointment time, it would be entirely possible that I’d not make it. I have forgotten appointments. I’ve turned up on the wrong days, THINKING I had an appointment, when I didn’t. I love those of my doctors and other para medical people who send reminder texts…because then I can double check that I have my reminders set up on my phone.

I do my regular blood tests on the Monday before I start a new box of my biologic drug – and I’ve had days when it’s been lunchtime on that Monday before I remember I have to go do it. I’ve even started occasionally to forget to do my biologic shot, which is set for first thing in the morning on a Tuesday.

Standing in a café trying to order a coffee and food can get really embarrassing when I can’t put the words together to do the order. My close friends and family have slowly grown accustomed to my memory failings, and are less likely, now, to be irritated. Strangers are something else again.

Forgetting things to this degree, on a regular basis, is not normal for me. It is something I’ve acquired due to both the RA and the drugs I use to treat it. It’s possibly one of the least understood effects of chronic illness, and it’s really difficult to explain to people who lack the necessary background medical knowledge. It is irritating to be on the receiving end of me having a memory moment – I get that. But it’s not something I can control. I can put checks and measures in place to try and minimise the impact on my daily life, but that I have to do that rankles.

My old memory – pre RA and these drugs – was an odd and patchy thing. But I miss it. I miss that with most things, it was very reliable, even if I made a mess of exams. I struggle with the fact that I can still remember our phone number from the house I lived in from three and a half to nine and a half, but I can’t always finish a conversation without having to be reminded of what the topic was. I hate the fact that I find myself making jokes against myself to ease a memory glitch in a conversation with someone who has no idea that there’s an actual issue. Most of all, I hate the fact that the drugs I need to treat my RA and keep it at bay are doing this, so I have no choice but to keep taking them, and dealing with this particular side effect.

May 2016

 

The brain fog persists. I managed to completely forget a rheumatologist appointment at the beginning of the year. Much grovelling ensued with the receptionist, to avoid having to pay…thankfully, they were understanding. If he's having a good day, Dragon Dad is understanding of my fuzzy brain. But on a not so good day, things can get tense. I can't help it. He knows that. But I know it frustrates him.

And an update this morning about my son – he ran the Sydney Half Marathon this morning, coming 128^th overall, from a field of 12,000 runners, and 58^th in his age division. Whether he’ll do another triathlon is questionable. For now it appears that his running and cycling are the main priorities – perhaps a race that just has those two in combination!

'Yes Optus' ... Uh...actually, NO Optus...

I swear I must be turning into a grumpy old woman... Then again, try as I might, there DO seem to be irritations piling up - things that really shouldn't cause such irritations. And it's really NOT a good look to be seen stomping through a public space muttering under my breath...but I was SO cranky...

This morning, I went to my local Westfield in order to drop into the Optus shop to pay my mobile phone bill. I had a couple of reasons for going to the actual shop and doing this face to face: 1. My preference, today, was to make a payment that was part cash and part EFTPOS - something I can't do online or over the phone, and 2. I was running precariously close to incurring a late fee for the payment, and paying at the store would be the quickest way to have the payment register in their system, thereby avoiding said extra fee.

So, I toddle on in there, having pushed myself to get to the centre early, as its carpark can be a feral nightmare, and walked into the shop only to be told that as of 1 May, payment of bills is no longer a service offered at Optus shops. I could, the girl told me brightly, pay online, over the phone, or at the post office (oh, and BTW, this centre closed its post office about a year ago - a MAJOR shopping hub with NO post office...but that's another rant for another time...). 

I didn't WANT to use any of those options, I told her. I wanted to pay in the store in person, because that's what suited me, the customer... A customer of a telco, which provides a service for which I pay, ie., a SERVICE company... When I asked her why this had come about, she informed me, equally brightly, that the decision had been made to improve digital efficiency, and therefore, customer service. I was trying VERY hard not to unleash my temper on her, as she's just the poor bunny in the front line having to communicate company policy created by those much further up the food chain than her, but it was a big ask. I could see by the look on her face that she was becoming very quickly aware of just how cranky I was getting. As I pointed out to her, this decision was NOT creating a better customer experience for me, and if I were to use the post office option, it meant getting back into my car, driving to a different suburb, and then trying to park, because the area is notorious for poor parking availability. Her smile was getting a bit brittle at that point, as she attempted to sympathise, and again trotted out the current payment options. 

They maybe need to rethink their current logo...because I didn't get a 'yes' this morning. Nor did I get an answer to my queries that I regard in any way as satisfactory.

I gave it up, stalked off to my regular cafe in the centre (muttering as I went...) and while there, paid online by bank transfer - and I just hope that I don't get charged the late fee - heads will roll if I do! 

When I got home, I looked up the post office option, out of curiousity. The reason they're not offering in store payments, remember, is to increase digital efficiency - and supposedly, reduce the carbon footprint. Payment in store was easy - I did it last month. Give the employee your phone number, they pull up the bill in their system, customer pays - takes five minutes, if that. The post office requires a printed bill - so that bill I now have emailed, to reduce paper usage, and postage costs, now needs to be printed. And then, once at the post office, there is a charge of $1.75 for the privilege of paying in person - well, in person one organisation removed. I'd REALLY like someone at Optus to attempt to explain to me how much more efficient that process is, on any number of levels. 

I also, when I got home, had a look at their customer service page on the website.

The subtext of this statement, as I read it, is summed up in the last sentence, 'However, because of the range of products and services we offer, you will also need to be comfortable with "systems"'. And herein lies the problem. For what its worth, this is not just limited to Optus. Optus, like many of the things we pay for in this modern day and age, is a service company. They provide customers with a platform for communication. For us, the customer, to continue utilising their service over that of a competitor, they need to be able to provide us with a service that offers over and above their competitors. However, in their customer service policy, the emphasis is more on the organisation servicing itself. At the entry level, where employees have contact with actual customers, all those employees can do is pass on the results of decisions which they played no part in creating. They're just the people who have to pass them on, which can't always be much fun - to whit, the girl who got me this morning... Those in customer service personnel that exist higher up are 'predominantly about leading teams, rather than dealing directly with customers' - therefore, are removed from customers, customer needs, and customer feedback. HOW is that providing the best possible service?

Someone famously once said about a new hospital, in the stage of it having been staffed with the administration staff but yet to open for business and admit patients, that the hospital worked so efficiently WITHOUT patients. It's an oxymoron of a concept, of course, but so many organisations appear to ascribe to this way of thinking. The 'service' they offer is getting to be much less about the customers, and much more about the organisation itself. We, the customers, just get in the way of their efficiency.

Talking with friends who, like me, run the gamut of the medical system on a regular basis, I hear similar stories. People who go to their doctors to update prescriptions, only to have the doctors refuse them, because they need tests to verify, or that the doctor doesn't think that it's appropriate... IF the patients in question were newly diagnosed or had a new complaint, that would be a completely valid position to take. If, as is more often the case, they are patients with long standing chronic conditions, for which they've evolved a standard of treatment, and all they need is a simple prescription to continue that, then that is the service the doctor is required to perform for said patient... Apart from anything else, the patient is still charge for the visit, whether or not they receive the treatment they need. Or the doctor who never calls back when contacted - whether that's the doctor themself not getting back to the patient, or the reception staff not relaying the message to the doctor... Either way, again, there is a service to be performed, for which we, the patients, pay and if it's not performed, why the hell are we paying?

On the weekend, Dragon Dad and I pottered around the city before and after a lavish lunch, window shopping. Again, a job in a retail store is a service position. A retail sales assistance is hired to sell the products in the store - ergo, as a customer I expect to be greeted, asked if I want any assistance, and then served when I do. The number of stores we wandered in and out of where that was completely absent boggled my brain - particularly given that a number of them were at the prestigious end of the spectrum, where you'd really expect to be taken good care of, because SHOULD the customer be planning to spend money, it will be a LOT of money.

Service appears to be a dying art. I can't see that as a good thing.

I sent a message to Optus via their Facebook page when I got home. Their page says that they 'typically' reply within a day. I'll be interested to hear whether that actually happens...not that I'm expecting them to come back with anything particularly constructive.

Edited to add:

Optus replied... Most frustrations. On the one hand, they tell me that they want to offer me the most convenient option to pay my bill. In the same breath, they just reiterate the now existing options - which don't suit as well... Not really surprised though - because ultimately, it's NOT about me, the customer, is it?

Google, are you paying attention?

I'm playing a little game with Google, at the moment. It's been going on for a while now. I have a Gmail account. On the whole, it works well for me. I can access it anywhere, it's free, it has excellent spam barriers.

Some time back, they changed the inbox format. Now, instead of a single inbox, there's a three part beast, the three sections headed 'Primary', 'Social', and 'Promotions'. I find it a bit clunky, and it's a bit arbitrary. Responses to my blogs can end up in any of the three, and that happens very randomly. How Google makes the distinction between the three categories and which incoming email belongs where is something I can't fathom. 

However, the thing that REALLY bugs me is the advent of advertising at the top of the Promotions page. Most, not all, times I open it, and there are one or two unsolicited ad emails tucked in at the top of that inbox. They correlate with interest areas that are clear in the rest of the emails, so it's obviously an algorithm thing... They annoy me. One of the reasons I went with Gmail was to avoid being spammed with mail I didn't want. Then, one day I discovered a feedback option... When I click the dismiss option on the ads, this query pops up, inviting me to tell Google why I got rid of the ad.

It gives me a menu of options:

I've been clicking on 'Intrusive' now, for the last four weeks. Very occasionally, I can open that inbox and there's no ad, but on the whole, it hasn't changed anything...the ads are still happening... 

So, Google, why the hell do you have a feedback option on one of your platforms if you're not going to pay any attention? I don't want those ads, and I've made that clear in the available space. Yet, they still appear. 

First world problem? Yes, of course. But as one individual among the millions of Gmail users, I felt like I had to try and make my point...not that anyone at Google, clearly, is paying any attention. What I'd really like to know is where all the responses are being recorded - I can't be the only person sending feedback - and why they're even bothering!

Where has courtesy gone?

Dragon Dad and I headed over to our nearest beach suburb for coffee, food and the papers today - something we do often on weekends. While Saturdays have officially been Sydney's worst day on the roads for some time now (especially in term time, due to school sports...) he and I were fairly rattled by the time we'd gone there and back - not by the volume of cars on the road, but due to the lack of courtesy evident in so many drivers.

There was the empty bus with the driver who clearly wasn't wasting any time getting wherever he was going - he wasn't on an actual bus route, and he was pushing the envelope as far as the speed limit was concerned. Not only that, he wasn't being particularly careful of his bulk as he ducked and weaved around the cars he was sharing the road with - if ANY of them had done anything unexpected, I suspect they'd have been collected by the bus. 

We were heading towards a large intersection at one point on the way home when the lights went amber, so Dragon Dad slowed and pulled up at the lights - as is correct. That amber light DOESN'T mean hit the accelerator and speed up so you can beat the lights. It means slow down and STOP unless you absolutely can't do that safely. That doesn't appear to be how most Sydney drivers understand that particular road rule though - as I said to Dragon Dad today, my feeling lately is that it's only a matter of time before I have someone rear end me. The number of times I've been slowing down for an amber light and have suddenly become aware of the vehicle behind me screaming to a halt just before hitting me is starting to mount up. I can only hope I'm in Dragon Dad's Subaru when it happens, rather than my Barina...and that my already twice injured neck survives another whiplash... 

Then, two houses away from turning back into our own driveway, we narrowly avoided being clipped by the woman impatient to turn across us in her four wheel drive, who then, once we were out of her way, turned in FRONT of the oncoming bus that we'd passed (correctly...). 

While inherently dangerous, all of these driving behaviours are linked by a common lack of basic courtesy. The woman in the four wheel drive was being impatient - it was required, by law, that she wait for the buss to turn. Clearly, she wasn't prepared to do that. Maybe she doesn't like driving behind a bus. Maybe she had somewhere to be and was in a hurry. Whatever the reason, her lack of courtesy meant that she put others at risk. As did the buss driver, as are the drivers in all the cars that are burning rubber to stop behind me when they realise at the last minute that I have no intention of running the lights, so that means they can't either.

When my mother learned to drive - very late in life after we moved from Sydney to a small country town and no driver's license meant no mobility because there wasn't public transport - her instructor was rabid about 'not embarrassing other drivers'. i.e. NOT putting other drivers at risk by your own behaviour in a car. 

While I've used vehicular examples because of the string of events we experienced today, it's part of a larger symptom that I see is ailing wider society today. Courtesy is more than just basic good manners. Courtesy is about being considerate of other people, thinking about them and your effect on them. It's not something that is widely taught any more, and it's not something that comes naturally. Those drivers today were evidence of the effects a lack of courtesy and an inflated sense of self absorption can have on road safety, and it doesn't take much to transfer those concepts to other areas of daily life.

Call me old fashioned - well, I am in many respects, but unlike many, I don't see that as a negative - but I think that people underestimate the damage a lack of courtesy can do in the daily interactions we have with others. Lack of driver courtesy coulds certainly do ME a stack of damage if one of those discouteous drivers DOES rear-end me...

Why I hate all the fad diets...

This piece was originally posted on Creaky Joints last year, and explains a lot of why I loathe all the faddy diets that are out there, and provides a bit more context for my post earlier this week about starting the 5:2 regime to try and lose the weight I haven't been able to shift, despite a basically healthy diet. 

Dragon Dad’s chiropractor, when DD asked if there was anything he felt he could do that might be useful for me with my rheumatoid arthritis: “Well, it all starts with diet. She shouldn’t be eating any nightshades, wheat, dairy or drinking any red wine. They all cause inflammation.”

A well meaning, but ill-informed friend: “I have a friend who’s vegan, and he says if you eat vegan, your RA will be cured.”

From another friend: “I hear that the paleo diet is doing great things for people – maybe if you ate paleo, you’d get better.”

And then there’s the friend who’s both vegan and anti Western medicine, who keeps sending me stuff about diets and alternative medicines, via email, Facebook, and whenever we actually see each other – which means he says all sorts of negative things about my skim milk latte…among other things!

And so on…and on….and ON…

I’ve had RA for twenty-three years now. I didn’t ask to be sick. I don’t like being sick. I’ve been a compliant patient. I’ve also tried all sorts of ‘diets’, because why the hell wouldn’t I, if there was a chance they might help?

Now that my RA is no longer mild, I’ve had a whole bunch of people come out of the woodwork and have another go at converting me to this or that ‘miracle’ diet. Then I got diagnosed with IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) as well, and had the gastroenterologist telling me that he’d like me to try the FODMAP diet. I sat reading the list of ‘forbidden’ foods on his printout, and my stomach sank…

You see Dragon Dad is a bit of a fitness nut. He was an elite athlete and has never really lost the drive to be as fit and strong as possible. These days, that is mostly focused on cycling, and he’s taken up endurance riding, after a career as a track cyclist. Part of his motivation to get back on the bike was that he’d decided he’d got a bit heavier than he wanted to be, and coming up to his 40^th birthday, he decided that he HAD to lose weight. He tends to pick up on the latest diet fads pretty quickly and it can all get a bit extreme. So he began a series of different diet plans, all designed to work miracles, so by default, I ended up eating them alongside him.

That meant I got to try paleo, and another one that was very similar but more restrictive (I can’t remember what that was called), and then there was the whole delete ALL carbs thing. It didn’t help that I’d stacked on the weight, courtesy of prednisone, so I also wanted to lose weight, so I let myself be dragged willy-nilly along with him.

Here’s the thing: NONE of those diets have changed a darned thing about my RA. Not one of them. Not even a little bit. In fact, some of them seemed to exacerbate certain things – paleo, for instance, given that since my year as a vegetarian I don’t eat a lot of meat any more, left me with constant indigestion, and gut upsets. The fact that it was remarkably similar to what was allowed on the FODMAP diet my gastroenterologist had strongly suggested concerned me enormously.

Eventually, I got fed up. I got SO tired of being told what to eat by every second person I encountered. WHAT is it about being sick makes people think they have a right to tell you what to do, in a way I’m sure they don’t with well people?!

I went back to eating instinctively. I calculated a reasonable average calorie allowance per day that would help with weight loss, allowing for my fluctuating ability to exercise. I ate within that. I ate my toast for breakfast – a boutique bakery bread with soy beans and quinoa that’s low GI and gives me a massive protein hit, regardless of what I put on it. I kept eating pulses and other grains that also help me maintain a healthy protein intake, even though I don’t eat a lot of meat. I kept up my dairy, because I’m a milk drinker, I love cheese and yogurt, and I DON’T want to add osteoporosis to my list of diagnoses. And, I kept racking up enormous bills at the greengrocer – bigger sometimes than the supermarket bill. I don’t eat junk food – I don’t like it. I don’t have a sweet tooth, so my sugar intake is well balanced. I DO eat chocolate – not much, and when I do it’s good quality dark chocolate. I do indulge in a moderate amount of alcohol occasionally. Without intending to, my regular eating plan is probably closest to what’s being marketed as the Mediterranean Diet.

My RA got NO worse. OMG – I’m eating dairy, some red meat, wheat (GLUTEN…), and what do you know, my RA hasn’t lost the plot! My IBS got better – I still have flare ups with that, but they’re milder and of shorter duration.

There are a LOT of articles out there pushing this or that diet at chronically ill people. Most of those articles call for you to buy a book or DVD to learn more. Most of them tell us that if we adhere to the diet, religiously, we’ll be cured.

Don’t believe it.

Some people DO find that certain symptoms ease if they eat a particular way. It could be that without knowing it, they had sensitivities to some things and eliminating them has helped them feel better.

In conversations with some people, I found out that prior to really looking at their food, they’d been eating a lot of packaged, and pre-prepared foods, so cutting those out had made an enormous difference to how they were feeling – which made sense, since they were no longer eating all the preservatives and other additives, let alone the amount of salt and sugar. Convenience aside, I can’t honestly see how all that stuff could ever make you feel good!

My bottom line, after all my experiences with different diets, has been that there is no one way that works the same for everyone. For me, what works is to eat fresh, local, seasonal produce. Leave the packets on the supermarket shelves. Eat small meals – so many of us eat WAY more than is necessary. Drink lots of water. DON’T eliminate whole food groups unless you have a sound medical reason to do so – ie, eliminating gluten if you’re a diagnosed Celiac. And, most importantly of all, listen to your body. Pay attention to the times you feel bad after eating, and see if there’s something that regularly upsets you and drop that from your diet. That makes much more sense to me than listening to a bunch of people pushing extreme diets who are, more than anything else, out to make money.