I recently was diagnosed with the very glamorous gastrointestinal disorder 'Irritable Bowel Syndrome' or IBS, this has come after over 2 years of stomach issues, only easing while I was pregnant with my second baby Deedee.
So lets go back to the day of my 30th birthday, My husband had not long started working FIFO so wasn't home for my birthday, I met up with my best girlfriend for lunch with my seven month old little lady Lala and her 3 month old little man. We had a lovely lunch but on the short drive home I started feeling ill, sick in the stomach and having a hot flush, this was the first 'attack' like this of many over the next couple of months. I had various tests done at the doctors, from blood counts to pregnancy tests, two months down the track we finally found out that I had Giardia, a nasty little bug that you catch through contaminated water. This was a very emotional time, not only had I been sick for a couple of months but the medication I needed to take meant I had to stop breastfeeding my baby for 3 days, which basically meant that I had to stop feeding all together, as my supply was crappy and I was having trouble pumping to keep it up while I couldn't feed her. Things got much better within days of having my medication, but within a couple of weeks it became apparent that I had become lactose intolerant, a by product of having a nasty gut bug. Lactose intolerance is pretty easy to control, these days there are so many options to make life easier, lactose free milk, cheese and yoghurt, plus there are some amazing dairy free recipes out there, and if coconut milk and cream isn't the bomb.
Jump forward to my second pregnancy- Pregnancy does amazing thing to your body, for me to gives me a free pass to all the things I am allergic and intolerant to. So for a good nine months I got to eat all the fruit I'm allergic to (thats a whole other story) and have all the milkshakes and ice-cream that a pregnant women needs, that of course was until I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes again (like the fruit thats a whole other story). After I had Deedee it was going well until day 10, day 10 was when that lactose demon showed its ugly head once again, never mind I thought, I know exactly what to do, I even started making my own lactose free ice-cream, which is amazing by the way and I will definitely be sharing some great recipes with you all. Over time even with my lactose free life, ok not completely lactose free, a girl does need a little chocolate from time to time, it became apparent that something still wasn't right. I was still having attacks of ahem diarrhoea every week if not more and having tummy pain and bloating almost daily. Sometimes the attacks are so bad they last hours and can leave my tummy feeling sore for up to a week. The sad thing is that I think I just got so use to it and I accepted that it was part of my life. The bad attacks would unfortunately bring on panic attacks especially at night which would intern make my symptoms worse. I started to not know if the tummy was causing panic attacks or if the panic attacks where causing my tummy issues, both go hand in hand.
So now I'll bring you to were I am now- A month ago I finally got my arse to the doctors, I actually went to go and get my over due pap smear done, oh the joys of being a woman, but started chatting to my G.P and the issues that I was having, She straight away suggested it could be IBS, but could be a lot of other things too, including the Giardia not being completely gone. So off i went to to be a pin cushion once again, getting tested for gluten intolerants amongst other things. I was praying that something would show up and it would be easy to fix and wouldn't mean that I would have to cut more things out of my diet, alas nothing showed up, I am technically in perfect health, which is great news, but wasn't a real help with the tummy problem. My G.P then started talking to me about having IBS and how I could start to try and manage it, she started rattling of something about FODMAPs and all these technical scientific words, I must of had a blank look on my face because she had a giggle and printed off a fact sheet for me. The printout basically told me what FODMAP stood for, Fermentable Oligo-saccharides,Disaccharides, Mono-saccharides andPolyols, and how to help control the symptoms you need to have a low FODMAP diet. She told me to have a look into it and see what I think, and that she can send me off to a dietician if I wanted to have any help with it. I spent the next week researching, becoming really scared about and disheartened about all the things I would have to temporarily cut out, espacaily onion and garlic, seeing that I put it in absolutely everything that I cook. The fruit side of thing, didn't bother me as I had come to term with not being able to enjoy fruit many years ago, the dairy thing, I already had covered, and I just needed to cut down the amount of gluten in my diet, a trip to the health food section in the supermarket and a few chats with GF friends had me covered in that area. So last week I dived head first into a lactose, gluten and FODMAP free diet.
So far the results have me astonished, I started this thinking, yeah I'll give it a go for the 4 weeks but I doubt it will do anything, but I have had days and days of no pain, nothing, nada! Days and days of 'normal' bowel movements! In over a week, I have only had one episode of an uncomfortable belly, and that was after I was silly and ate some maccas fries while at the shops. I don't want to get too excited too soon, but I am hopeful that I have found something that will help control what is going on in my tummy.
Stay tuned for much more on this, and some of the Low FODMAP recipes I am trying out.
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