I keep having weeks so busy that I have no time to write.

I keep forgetting to fill out my mood app every day too.

Then I have to go back and try to remember what was going on on which day and all of that shit.

I’m exhausted.

With my thyroid levels being off like I spoke about in my last entry, I’m so tired.

And the nutritionist is making me cook all the time, which is taking time and energy out of my days too.

I’m kinda glad this week is full of shakes for lunch and dinner.

Between those two things and all of my doctor appointments I’ve had, the past few weeks have been a total blur.

I just looked at my calendar and in the past two weeks, I’ve had 9 different doctor appointments.

That’s not counting the general practitioner appointment I had today.

Like, holy shitballs, that’s a lot.

And some of them have been procedures too, and injections.

I got cortisone injections in both knees and my left shoulder in the past couple of weeks.

My left big toe is this upcoming Friday.

I’ve gotten sclerotherapy now on both legs.

My left leg is finally starting to feel better and less bruised after the procedure.

But my right leg is still pretty tender from it being done last week.

It takes about a week or a week and a half or so to settle down after it.

They mainly feel bruised, like I got hit by a high speed baseball or something in several spots on my leg.

The good thing is that the doctor and the ultrasound technician said as long as my ultrasound looks good on Thursday of this week, I won’t need any more procedures.

So I’m hopeful, but I’m not holding my breath yet.

Because I might need one more in my right leg, so we’ll see.

They already said the left leg is done, so that’s awesome!

I saw the nutritionist this week.

It went really, really well.

She says that she thinks my ghrelin and leptin levels are off – which tell you when you’re hungry and full, respectively.

She did a whole slew of bloodwork.

When I went to the lab today to do the blood work that the nutritionist wants done, the tech there took 12 vials of blood.

I swear, like halfway through the blood draw I could feel my body scramble to start to make more.

She’s going to take an in depth look at my thyroid, which I’m excited about.

There was something like 10 or 11 different hormones or angles of the thyroid she’s scoping out.

Like I said, I had my general practitioner appointment this afternoon and she called in the name brand Synthroid for me.

I have a feeling the levothyroxine, the generic, is part of the problem.

The generic is unstable.

It’s constantly changing manufactures and companies and everything.

I’d rather have a medication that’s standard, and that’s the same thing every single month.

I want consistency.

I’m sick of being bounced around.

I’m so glad I can pick it up tomorrow afternoon.

The nutritionist went over a bunch of things with me though, getting back to that.

She thinks my magnesium levels are off.

And my potassium, and quite a few other things.

She put me on an ox bile supplement.

She said she doesn’t think my food is being fully digested properly.

One reason is because I don’t have a gallbladder, and I have hypothyroidism, and she said that the ox bile will help with all of that. 

The big change was a meal plan though.

I had to cut out coffee (caffeine), sugar, gluten, dairy, soy and corn.

Like holy shit that feels like everything right?!?

But surprisingly, it’s not.

She made quite a delicious meal plan with veggies and eggs and nuts and seeds.

Sugar was the toughest.

I felt like shit for a solid 4-5 days with the detoxing from it.

I found all of these articles on sugar withdrawal.

It basically does the same thing in your brain that drugs do – it smacks your dopamine receptors and you need more and more of it to get that “sugar rush”.

How fucked is that?!

I wondered why it felt like I was coming off of something.

I felt like I had a mild flu for those 4-5 days.

I ached, had a mild headache, was cranky, my legs felt heavy, and I straight up just felt like shit, for seemingly no reason other than cutting sugar out of my fucking diet.

I had no idea that sugar was that powerful.

I don’t think I’m going to reintroduce it back into my diet.

I’m going to try my hardest to avoid it, and just use honey and maple syrup instead.

Sure, they’re sugar, but they’re at least natural sugars.

I had no idea it would affect me like that, but it did and I’m grateful for the eye opening experience.

And onto another big part of the diet – meat.

Luckily she was cool with me following a vegetarian diet.

Because I don’t eat meat unless I eat out, or eat somewhere besides my house and they’ve cooked meat for the meal.

Even then it’s spotty.

I don’t buy meat unless it’s for my doggo.

I’m just not a huge fan of it.

And the whole animal rights thing.

But honestly meat tastes like straight up manure to me, 9 times out of 10.

I wish I was joking or embellishing, but it’s true.

Especially red meat and really most everything but chicken.

Manure.

Shit.

And even then, chicken can too sometimes.

Sometimes I power through it and eat it anyway.

Sometimes I just can’t.

It is what it is.

I deal with it.

For the last few years, since my diagnosis, I have wondered if it has something to do with my schizoaffective disorder.

Because there are smell and taste hallucinations – olfactory hallucinations and gustatory hallucinations.

There honestly isn’t much on gustatory hallucinations on google, there’s a lot more on olfactory.

But it says they’re a symptom of psychosis – along with many other options, but my issue would be from psychosis.

Because now that I think about it, I’ve gotten the manure taste much less often since I’ve been on antipsychotics.

It’s still there, but I had a burger a few weeks ago and ate almost the whole thing and it didn’t turn on me a quarter of the way through, like they usually do.

So that is a step in the right direction at least.

When I was little, the smell of eggs used to make me sick.

Not literally, but it was just disgusting to me.

I hated the smell of eggs cooking.

I wouldn’t eat them because I couldn’t stand the smell of them.

They just smelled rotten to me basically.

Rancid or something.

And it wasn’t until I hit adulthood or maybe a teenager that I even gave them a chance and tasted them.

The smell of cooking eggs every once in a while will waft in that rancid, off smell to me still.

But it’s fleeting.

I eat them all the time now.

And I cook them all the time too, without any major issue.

It’s all very curious.

Food is weird.

It’s just wild to me how everyone has their own journey with food.

Everyone has their own “thing” with it.

It’s curious too because my Mom has been preaching the horrors of sugar for years now and I’ve just been like “blah blah blah, yeah yeah yeah” to her.

When really, she was onto something.

I can’t believe how much the sugar withdrawal and “sugar flu” affected me.

It’s was absolutley fucking horrible.

If you feel like challenging yourself win something, cut refined sugar out of your diet.

– Keren