Drawing line in the sand

I used to have an iron stomach.

I used to be able to eat gooey, fatty, indulgence coffee-shop foods for breakfast, along with a nice Chai Latte with a shot of espresso, pepper-riddled, salsa-covered, hot-sauce-injected burritos for lunch, and a huge juicy, greasy, fatty hamburger for dinner - with a milkshake, of course - if I so chose. I could drink soda till I thought my pee would be bubbly. I could eat chocolate without guilt - a whole damn box of it, just because. Garlic and Paprika were my special friends, and found their way into damn near everything that wasn't supposed to be sweet instead. Fried foods were ecstacy, fast food was heaven, caffiene was a neccesity of life. Grease aded the most mouth-watering flavor. Calories? Carbs? Sugar? Trans-Uberly-Bad-Fat? No problem, man. I could eat anything.

And then I woke up one morning about two and a half years ago and thought that I'd been poisoned. An old-fashioned poison, I figured, like the ones that made their notorious ways into classic tales of murder wherein death was not enough - the dying had to be as horrible and as painfull as humanly, anatomically possible. I was wildly nauseous, and by this point in my life when nausea strikes I generally know whether I'm going to actually throw up or not. I knew it was going to happen and ran to the bathroom, threw myself to the floor in front of The Porcelain God, moaned pitieously, and waited.

And waited, sweating, writhing, afraid to sit back on my heels for mere comfort in the fear of sudden-expulsion and bad aim. I shook. I gripped the sides of the bowl with slippery fingers. I laid my cheek on the seat, closed my eyes.

And waited.

And then it was gone. And then- the most agonizing pain I have ever felt - truly- ripped into my stomach. The real stomach, upper abdomen, right under the bottom of the sternum, not down low in the gut where most people feel their "stomach aches." It was not fire- it was razor blades, broken-glass-studded fists, fish hooks (hell - whaling harpoons!), slamming and ripping through me, sending a vertical line of agony down to my lower abdomen. It grew, festering, into a thundering cresendo of pain and I thought that this was It. The End. Death.

It lasted all of approximately three seconds, spiking to the worst point at about two and a half seconds only to whirl down into nothingness after that. The pain was gone, completely. The nausea was gone, completely.

I sat, still shaking, though less so, sweat drying to chill me, heartbeat slowing to a more sedate pace, and I was scared. The day before, I'd been fine. Really- not a thing in the world wrong with me. No nausea, no pain, not even the tiniest little bit. Throughout the night -and I can honestly say this, as I wake up disgustingly frequently every night - nothing. This did not gradually build up from a littel upset stomach- it came out of nowhere and hit me full force. After meekly crawling back to bed, it hit me again a few minutes later.

Again, into the bathroom, quick quick quick! Again, waiting and shaking and sweating. Again, doubled over in an intensity of agony that nothing else in my life compares to- not even the damn-near five hours straight under the needle working my backpiece at one point. Again, the toilet was left unvoilated, and again I wondered what was wrong.

I had alerted Mama Wren by this time, and called in sick to work, and as this mysterious horror hit me over and over again every few minutes only to leave me shaken but fine in the times between, she called the doctor and managed to get me in that day. I dared not eat, or drink, and the hours spent waiting for that appointment were some of the most terrifying ones I've ever experienced. Neither of us had any clue what could be wrong, as neither of us had ever heard even so much as rumor-horror stories about this kind and level of pain and nausea, with the strange spiking of the pain shooting straight down, and as would later develop, at time straight out to either side of my stomach. I came to realize as I waited that the nausea I felt was different somehow than any other I'd felt- it wasn't the usual flu or cold nausea, or food poison nausea. To this day I cannot explain the difference in feeling; I just knew that this was not some run-of-the-mill stomach bug; something was very, very wrong with me. Poison or stomach cancer, or maybe my stomach was slowly turning itself inside-out, or melting, or some other horror even I coudl not dream up. Hell, maybe all those stories of aliens are true, and I was taken and implanted with some strange thing that was now slowly ripping it's way out of my body, the nutrients my human stomach could provied no longer needed.

I thought that I was dying, and more than anything else, I just wanted it to hurry up and be over with.

Later that day, my doctor poked and prodded and pushed and squeezed -all to my dismay - and asked questions about my diet and any medications I had been taking for an extended period of time. When I answered that yes, I did eat a lot of fast food, convenience food, snacks, fried foods, unhealthy foods, chocolate, that I drank soda and coffee on a daily basis and that I have been taking painkillers (with NSAIDs in them, it turns out) ever since I was eleven for arthritis, she shook her head, smiled sadly and pronouced that I had acute Gastritis.

For those who, like myself at the time, don't know what Gastritis is, let me break it down for you. Your stomach has a nice comfy lining in it which helps with all sorts of wonderful things, and while it is very much acid-resistant, it is not entirely so. Gastritis is a condition where the lining of your stomach becomes inflamed or irritated, or partially eaten away from more acid than it can reasonably handle. This can be caused by several things, but the most common cause is the bacteria Helicobacter pylori infecting the lining of the stomach. From medicnet.com:

"Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a bacterium that causes chronic inflammation of the inner lining of the stomach (gastritis) in humans. This bacterium also is the most common cause of ulcers worldwide. H. pylori infection is most likely acquired by ingesting contaminated food and water and through person to person contact. In the United States, 30% of the adult population is infected. (50% of infected persons are infected by the age of 60.) The infection is more common in crowded living conditions with poor sanitation. In countries with poor sanitation, 90% of the adult population can be infected. Infected individuals usually carry the infection indefinitely unless they are treated with medications to eradicate the bacterium. One out of every six patients with H. pylori infection will develop ulcers of the duodenum or stomach. H. pylori also is associated with stomach cancer and a rare type of lymphocytic tumor of the stomach called MALT lymphoma."

The condition is greatly aggravated and prolonged by many things, the most common being a bad diet and long-term use of medication(s) known to be hard on the stomach.

Bingo.

Until that morning, I had an iron stomach, and ate accordingly: if it tasted good, it was fair game. Being a Cancer, I love food a bit more than usual, and more importantly, I view food not as a necessity but a grand, wonderful indulgence. It's heaven to bite into some wonderful flavor, and anything that didn't taste good, or at least not great, did not often make it's way to my plate. Salad? Yes - taco, please, or nothing. Low-fat? NO-fat? Gag me. I've always been pretty much ok with veggies, but still never ate the share I should have, I'm sure. I ate all the things you shouldn't, drank all the things you shouldn't, and thought that I would be alright because I was not overweight and all those horror stories you hear of people dying of heart-related problems ate a whole hell of a lot more fast food than I did (I was never huge on fast food, but it was a somewhat frequent quilty pleasure.)

I've had arthritis pain since I was ten or eleven- whenever it was around then that my 'growing pains' continued after I stopped growing and became centered in my knees and ankles rather than each whole leg, hip to toe. I've been taking painkillers for it since then, and although I'm sure I started with the more safe Tylenol, around my mid-teens I switched over to Aleve, then later to Ibuprofin, two very big NSAID-using medications. NSAIDs, as I'm sure everyone is sick to death of hearing, are horrible for your stomach, and if used over an extended period of time or frequently, can eat away the lining of your stomach. I, like Mama Wren, was taking painkillers several times a day, nearly everyday, year after year. Ouch.

After determining the cause of my sudden "ohmygodsIwanttoDIEkillmeNOW" pain and nausea, my doctor said something which will forever haunt my dreams: "Well, you'll just have to go on a bland diet."

Bland. Diet.

BLAND diet!?! Oh gods, what could I have possibly done in a past life to deserve such torture? No more fried food, no more greasy food, spicy food, oily food, I'd have to severely cut down my dairy intake (to like, the equivalent of one slice of cheese a freakin' day), cut out acidic foods and drinks, and quit caffiene, cold turkey. And that's just the short list. There are scores of foods I could no longer indulge in, including everyday spices and staples of any sane diet. Toast would be dry, or with a minimum of jam (no butter). Soups would be restricted to mainly brothy stuff, with as little actual food in it as possible, and never creamy. Meat- oh gods, where do I begin? I'll make a long story short and say that chicken, turkey, and white-fleshed fish is safe, in tiny amounts, on a very non-regular basis, and that all else is taboo. But salads are great - with ridiculously little to no dressing.

I might as well become a vegetarian, I thought. Or hell, why not vegan?

I was dejected, depressed and angry. For the rest of my life, just to prevent the Gastritis from coming back and becoming chronic, I'd have to change my eating habits to such a degree that I'd almost not be the same person, because with the diet change would come excercise (get that heart pumping and you get all those good blood cells nice and ready to fight infections such as H. pylori and to heal any wounds, like inflamed, irritated, or eaten-away stomach lining) and daily vitamin and supplement changes as well to make up for those necessary things I'd no longer be getting from certain foods, not to mention changes to eliminate or at least lower stress.

Now, don't get me wrong- I'm all for getting healthy, but this was so very much not the way I'd have chosen to get started. Regardless, with such incredible pain and continuous nausea (even with medication it remained an every-few-minutes atrocity for the first three or four days) to convince me to be good, I actually made some big changes. I quit caffiene, totally, cold turkey, for the first time in my life. Yes, I say the first time- I've gone back to it and tried to quit several times since. I eventually came to like salad, even enjoy it, and the very thought of somethinggreasy or oily or processed made me feel gross. Within six weeks, the Gastritis was gone and I was a much healthier person.

And then I fooled myself into beliveing that I'd be ok to start eating some of those foridden foods again, so long as I indulged in moderation. But what started as nice treats every once in awhile very quickly returned to almost full-blown iron stomach eating. Almost. I did draw a line in the sand between me and the super bad stuff, but the line was as far out as I hall the balls to push it.

It was only a few short months until I noticed I was starting to feel that peculiar nausea again, only on a much smaller scale. It was like having an upset stomach when you know you've eaten something that you probably should have thrown away but it was close enough to the expriation date to not develop inot food poisoning. Just a gross, yucky low nausea, nowhere near enough to fear vomiting, but as soon as I felt it I knew it was the Gastritis returned. Along with it came that same pain, only on a much more tolerable level- instead of affecting me as no other pain has and having me stopped dead in my tracks no matter where I was or what I was doing and doubled over, crouched to the ground until it passed, it merley made me wince and writhe a bit. And so acute became chronic, and I went back on my *shudder* bland diet, and took the purple pill again for another two weeks, and told myself firmly that this time when it went away I'd stick to the diet.

Allow me to say, in retrospect, "Ha!" Although I drew the line a little closer this time, I once again succumbed to the temptation of "real food," and - once again - began to feel that odd nausea and slight pain. This would a process repeated a good half a dozen times between that first terrifying morning and now. I have tried to accept a life of serisouly-less-than-satifying eating habits, and have so far been unable. At the moment, I'm going through it again, and I hate it.

I hate this!

It depresses me, it angers me, it makes me want to cry, kick, scream, throw a tantrum, pound my fists against the wall, break something... or all of the above. I want to scream, "It isn't fair!" It isn't fair. I want to taste my food, damnit! I want to enjoy eating, not just do it to keep living. Damnit!

For breakfast this morning I had an apple (the thought of yet another bowl of not-so-thrilling cereal with rice milk rather than dairy made me want to throw said bowl at the wall) and as you can probably guess, it did not fill me up for long. Around mid-morning I ate three chocolate chip cookies. Just three of 'em. Mere minutes after the last bite, I started to hurt again. This has been the fastest reaction yet, and over the last week or so I've been pretty damn good about eating better, again. Not great, but damnit! Getting used to tasteless... excrement... takes time.
And patience. Both are in great demand with this; I need to get rid of it again before the lining of my stomach gets so bad I start to get ulcers, and when I can't enjoy something I have loved so much I have very little patience with the process of adjusting to what I don't like.

With this morning's fast reaction to three friggin' cookies, I know it's time to - finally - admit defeat. I'll draw the damn line so close I could blink across it, and finally make permanent the changes that have been in and out of my life for two and a half years. I'll eat bland stuff. I won't eat good-tasting stuff. I won't idulge in caffiene, no matter how sleepy I am or how my head pounds for the next week. Desert - except for fruit - will be a thing of the past, fondly remembered but never again experienced. Ever. Alcohol won't be a big probelm; I don't drink much anyway, although it would be nice to have two margaritas on the rare occasion that I do drink now instead of just one. The weather's warming up so I can once again start to get back into shape with daily walks or jogs.

In the end, really, this will be a good thing. A very, very good thing. It will get me healthy again, and fit, and feeling better about myself. I'll have more energy and I won't get sick as much. It's a good thing.

And I am going to hate every goddamn minute of it, and probably cry when I get home and throw away the last bag of fucking cookies.