illness – Live Well with Lisa Proctor

When I started this blog, I was really enthusiastic about writing about health and nutrition and finishing my Level 4 Nutrition qualification. Unfortunately, various parts of my body have been conspiring against me and my own health and nutrition has taken a bit of a nosedive. I finally got Covid 3 years after the first lockdown and it wiped me out for months. I already suffered from chronic pain and fatigue due to hyperactive Ehlers Danlos syndrome (hEDS) so, as you can imagine, they were both ramped up several notches and haven’t quite gone back to pre-pandemic level.

My hand/wrist a couple of days ago. Pretty standard.

On top of that, perimenopause has hit me like a freight train. The pain in my hands and feet was off the scale and, as a result, my activity level dropped off a cliff. Add to that the effect on my IBS and GORD (GERD for the Americans!), leading me to only be able stomach certain foods that aren’t necessarily the healthiest, and my weight has ballooned. I am now significantly fatter than when I thought I was really fat and needed to join WeightWatchers! I know I need to lose weight but it’s so hard when your body doesn’t do what you want or expect it to do.

My HRT and some of my supplements. My iron is chronically low and, apparently, my ldl cholesterol is low too.

All has this has made me not want to write about nutrition. I feel like a fraud. I mean, who wants to take nutrition advice from someone who’s so overweight that when they fall out of bed they rock themselves back to sleep? However, I’ve realised that I’m trying. There are lots of people out there who are struggling because the “Calories in, calories out”, “we all have the same 24 hours in a day” gym bros don’t understand middle aged, menopausal, chronically ill women and their advice and judgement is not going to help them. I’m going to talk about my experiences and share any tips I can, and if I never lose a pound, so be it!

Ill again … 😔

I had such high hopes for this year. As I said a couple of posts ago, 2023 was a bit of a write off but I thought I was going into 2024 mostly recovered and ready to claw my health back. Well, “the best laid plans” and all that.

Last Tuesday I finished my lunch and promptly vomited it all back up 🤢 I didn’t really feel much worse than usual, and it was just one episode, so I called my husband and asked him to pick MiniMe up from school just in case, but assumed I’d eaten something that hadn’t agreed with me. I didn’t eat much for the rest of the day. I couldn’t face the delicious curry I’d made for dinner the night before as I still felt queasy, but I managed a bit of tea and toast and didn’t think much more of it. Until I started trying to remember if this had happened before and realised it had, in my early 20s, when I was going through a particularly bad spell of recurrent kidney infections . I only have one kidney, and it a duplex, which makes me more prone to infection. The difficulty is that I also don’t usually get any symptoms other than back pain, and these days I have back pain all the time! Luckily, because of my history, I always have a week’s worth of antibiotics at home and I’d just bought some new urine test strips so I did a quick check. My leukocytes and nitrites, both signs of infection, were positive, so I started the antibiotics that night.

Luckily, within a day or two I felt much better and I’ve been resting lots and drinking lots of water. I look the last capsule a few days ago and have been trying to get a few chores done each day without over doing it. I donated a prize to an event that happened last Friday (I make gift frames and greetings cards),

so I have made a start on making that and am sorting out some of the clutter in the house in the hope of being able to clear enough space to put a mat down in the living room and actually start doing some exercise! Wish me luck!