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| April has temps in AD already in the 90s, so I chopped off my hair. |
Hello Bloggerverse!
So I'm reviving the blog, sort of. Everyone I meet tells me I'm hilarious and I should be writing. There are a few half written posts in my drafts, and I know everyone loves my travelogues, but I'm not going to focus on that anymore. Not entirely. Instead, I've just decided to turn it into a blog about life as a Spoonie (or Chargie, your preference) and the different challenges that come from that in different spheres.
What the heck is a Spoonie/Chargie?
Whelp, put simply, it's a person with a chronic illness. There are different schools of thought on how to describe this life to people who don't have these issues, hence the competing terms. I personally prefer Spoonie but I volunteer admin part time for The Unchargeables, the birthplace of the Chargie moniker. We're a pretty rad group of people, and working with this community has furthered my own personal growth leaps and bounds over the past couple of years, and the support I garner from them is immeasurable to me. I've now got best friends all over the world (granted, this also comes from living in Abu Dhabi) who even though we may not share the exact same illnesses, GET IT.
Trust me, it's really hard to GET IT until you GET IT. Something that, unfortunately, recently struck very close to home for my dear husband. My Dish that ran away with the Spoon has developed his own chronic illness, so now he's one of us, though he is bound and determined to be called a Spork.
Love that quirky guy. 💓
Jon broke his foot last October, and thanks to complications during healing, developed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. The adjustment for us has been huge. He's a trooper for sure, but we're both learning we have limits to what we can and can't do now (since my process is pretty much ongoing). CRPS keeps him in pretty much constant agony - on the McGill pain scale, it's rated above labor without epidurals. I have no reference point for this but that seems pretty awful.
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| We relate pretty hardcore to this these days. |
One of the things I recently started doing for myself is cooking (HA!!!). This goes hand in hand with my new, honest attempt to live a healthier lifestyle. Thanks to meds and general mismanagement (read: I love it too much) of food intake, I've gained a lot of weight over the past year and it's pretty much become a necessity that I lose it.
I started a strict ketogenic diet (combined with 16/8 intermittent fasting) three days ago and am already down ~ 4kg/8lbs. What's more, the ketogenic diet is keeping some of my more nefarious daily symptoms like neuropathic pain, headaches, and fatigue at a more manageable level. Diet is super important, y'all. Everyone always tells you that but it's one of those things I guess you just have to get for yourself? The best motivation always comes from within. Hands down.
So I said to myself, you drag yourself out of bed even on the worst days, live with chronic migraines, fatigue, limb numbness, etc etc, and you're STILL HERE - You can manage to live through a diet. So, damnit, I am.
Three days into this keto journey and I can tell you one thing - no one tells you that living healthier and cooking for yourself requires recipes that seem to be written for people who know what the heck they're doing in the kitchen. News Flash: I don't. I'm hopeless.
Also, being a Spoonie adds its own unique complications to this process. This past thanksgiving while assisting with turkeys, I burned my hand, and now have a pretty scar to tell the story. Over the past few days, I've popped myself with oil, grated my knuckle while zesting an orange, and dumped a little extra fish sauce into my stew because my hand spasmed while measuring. Food's turned out pretty decent though. I'm okay with any diet that gives me an excuse to keep tons of cheese and bacon around.
So that's the update - because my train of thought left the station about 20 minutes ago and I haven't seen it since. Hopefully I can keep this up on a semi-regular basis by remembering to post when I actually intend to, but I'm not promising a schedule, because I pretty much embody this little cutie here on a daily basis:
