Since my last post, I spent the rest of 2022 getting out in the garden, re-gaining my sense of energy, as I worked with a Naturopath from MTHFR Support Australia, and began taking heaps of new supplements, in a program to help my body begin to function properly.
MTHFR - Methyl Tetra Hydra Folate Reductase, is something I inherited two genes from my parents, one from each of them. Having these two MTHFR Genes, meant my body could not and does not function properly. It can't detox, even when I was trying to detox. My DNA tests revealed that.
I have had several expensive tests done, and my Naturopath Melanie, looks at them all, evaluates them, and prescribes various things, to try and re-educate my body and metabolism.
It's slow, it's expensive, (I've just spent my savings for a vehicle, on my health), but it is working. I was able to work out in the garden, in the spring heat, in the full sun, for hours, and do it all again the next day. I got tired, but not fatigued, like my M.E/CFS self. I got hot, but my red face could cool down in 10 minutes in front of a fan inside.
Just in time, too.
My mother has needed me and my help since November 2022, when after having her last remaining teeth extracted, she was told she had to wait 3 months before her completely new denture could be modelled and made. Three months with no teeth or dentures!
This started a whole lot of raft of problems. Liffy was unable to eat her normal diet, of healthy, nutritious foods. We started looking for soft foods she could eat, and sometimes bought things she hasn't eaten for decades, like tomato products, in the nightshades family,
She began experiencing unexplainable pains, resulting in two trips to Emergency, where the doctors could not find anything wrong, despite ordering various scans. After a routine Colonoscopy and Gastroscopy, they did find a small tumor on her ascending colon, but only because she kept complaining of the pains, which kept moving around.
So, she was booked into see a Colon Surgeon and surgery.
This brought on trauma. The fear of surgery or being in hospital - what would she eat after surgery - hospital food being what it is.
It also brought up a 90 year old memory/trauma, from being sent to have her tonsils out at 2 years old, merely because her older sister Judy, was having hers out. She remembers, the pain of swallowing afterwards, and later had trouble swallowing tablets as a child, like her own mother. (In recent years, she has had no trouble, and swallows large capsule easily.) All of a sudden 92 year old Liffy, could not swallow tablets, or even water and food.
Getting her fit and strong before surgery became a really hard exercise.
Then making and taking food into her up at Tweed Heads Hospital, trying to tempt her to eat and drink, was an exercise in itself. She hardly ate or drank anything. So much so that 5 days after she came home she had to spend a night on a drip for rehydration at Murwillumbah Hospital !
A few weeks later, after many attempts to make tempting meals she might, or might-not eat, she began to return to her normal self and began to have enough energy to make simple breakfasts or lunches, and I just made the dinners.
I'd been eating some of the foods I made for her, just because they were there and I was hungry and tired. The wrong foods for me, made me more tired, exacerbating my MTHFR symptoms and ME/CFS.
When she was getting back on track a bit, I was able to rest up a bit and as I did, I realised how fatigued I really was. The fatigue relapse hit me like a ton of bricks. Took me about three weeks to ride it out, just resting and trying to get back into my rhythm with supplements and right foods. (I'm on a Low Hystamine/Low Oxylate diet - meaning hardly any choice in vegetables let alone other foods.)
It's hard to get used to the cross-checking when you start such a restricted diet. But it seems to be working, my energy levels are well up, my stamina, my endurance, my mood and the weight is dropping off, muscles are getting toned up with the gardening I am now able to do.
I've just come in now, from cutting the grass on the ride-on mower and whipper-snipping just before it got dark, did about an hours work plus a 20 minute whippersnip this morning after I got up. Love the 20 minute rechargeable battery's 20 minute time-out. This time last year, I could not have contemplated such activity!