Things change a little past this point from what is written before.  I did not write in this blog for almost a year.  I was attempting to remember details and timelines from a very mentally foggy period in my life.  The timeline is a little different in the following entries then in the previous.  Please forgive the discontinuity; this is a challenging period to remember.  Although the events may come in a slightly different order the important occurrences and pertinent details are accurate.

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About the same time I started seeing the counselor I saw a brief blurb on the TV about a book called “The Yeast Connection” by … This excited me.  The symptoms described in this short TV spot mirrored what I was experiencing on a daily basis….

 

(Ok, what you just read is as far as I have been able to make it on this post for about a year now.  Perhaps I should just get something out then maybe I can move on.)

 

Long story short, I became a wheat free vegan for about a year and a half.  During this time I devoured every book and magazine article I could find on eating healthy.  I fasted for a three day period each month and went on two seven day fasts during the first year.  Over 90% of the food I ate was organic.  I meditated, exercised, took the recommended vitamins and consumed sufficient protein.  I became a poster child for the natural health community.

 

***before doing any fasting read Paul Bragg’s ‘The Miracle of Fasting’ and check with a natural health professional***

 

This period brought me great physical health, but to my overwhelming dismay, this life change did not cure me of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome (MCS).  The entire goal of this prolonged experiment was to clean out my system and rebuild it with clean and healthy foods.  Although to this day I look a good five to ten years younger than my driver’s license says my age is, I did not get the results I had hoped for.  MCS was still my ruthless master.

 

This year and a half was hard.  Keeping such a stick diet required a huge amount of effort and planning.  I stuck to my plan without deviating despite the hunger, despite the effort, despite the expense.  I lost weight during this time, I went from a bloated 205 to a healthy, glowing 155.  I lost more than six inches off my waist.  I bought a bicycle for exercise and rode each day.  But despite the Herculean effort put forth, the essential healing I so desperately craved never arrived.  I felt lied to by every book and magazine article that said I was on the true path to healing.  I was promised that everything from allergies to cancer could be cured by doing what I was doing, if only I could follow the plan.  Well I followed the plan but I did not find the results.  I felt betrayed.  A deep part of me felt as if I had wasted a year and a half of my life on a fool’s errand.  

 

I don’t think I’ve ever really admitted before today the sadness and sense of betrayal I have felt over this.  Perhaps this is why I lost all momentum for this blog over the last year.  I felt that the entire natural health community had given me its solemn word that if only I could put in the effort MCS would be no more than an unpleasant memory.  I put in the effort but the results never came.

 

Changing my diet was not to be the path to cure MCS.

 

****An After Thought…

 

Perhaps the effort put forth during this period of my life was not a complete waste.  It is very possible that cleaning out my system this way set the stage for the rapid improvements that were to follow.