background

hello
a little bit of background first :-)

so... i thought i'd kick off by sharing my CFS story (and no doubt other bits of myself)

its hard to know where to begin really...

I'm 40, the mother of 3 girls who are 20, 16, and 12. I was born in and live in the UK. I first became ill on Jan 1st 2000 (I always joke that I got the Millenium Bug!). I got flu, really badly. I was delirious, couldn't walk, bad chest infections. I felt horrendous. My youngest was 3, and still breastfeeding, needless to say, she had to be weaned. At the time I was studying as a herbalist, and I was trying to treat myself herbally, with no effect. I was getting weaker and weaker. So after 2 weeks I ended up going to the Doctors, and was prescribed antibiotics for the chest infections (pneumonia). I had never taken antibiotics in my adult life. But... I felt like I was dying. So I took them. And yes, there was some improvement. But...

My recovery was very slow. And I seemed to have picked up all sorts of symptoms that I hadn't had before. These included:
Tiredness
Rhinitis (inflamed runny nose and lung inflammation)
Overproduction of saliva (a fun one this... imagine how antisocial having to spit into a cup all day is!)
Worsening of my IBS symptoms til sometimes I was doubled up with pain
Sudden increase in allergies, especially food intolerances, pollen, etc
Mental trauma which hadn't been present before.
Sleep disturbance
Intolerance to anything electrical (I had to sleep outside for a year)
Worsening of migraine symptoms
Total intolerance to alcohol

I spent 6 months in a daze, trying to live with the above, no idea what had happened, no diagnosis or anything sensible from the doctors (clear blood tests etc). Being a single parent was very hard, and I really struggled. I had to give up my course as I just couldn't carry on. In any case, my belief in herbal medicine had been firmly shattered. I was trying to take tinctures (which had alcohol in!), and realised they were making me worse!

That summer, I was desperate. I was looking up anything I could about healing, then I met someone randomly, who was into raw food. Wow! He was superfit, and hard to talk with, but I got the idea that going raw could help me. So I started researching, and came across the Hippocrates Institute, Ann Wigmore, and here in the UK, Elaine Bruce, who runs living food courses based on Ann Wigmore's stuff. I also got allergy/food intolerance tested. I pretty much reacted to everything except 3 fruits. My first experiement was three weeks raw, when i really didn't know much at all. BUT!!! these three weeks had an amazing effect on my symptoms. I also lost a stone in weight, my mental/brainfog/eye disturbance and general feeling really unwell subsided... and my energy was higher. I was converted.

BUT!!!! I just found it sooooooo hard!!!! Despite such a change in my symptoms, I just couldn't maintain 100%, which is what only really brought such a change. Or not for more than a few weeks anyway. and that was when i realised that i had had food issues all my life. I also spent a week at Elaine Bruce's retreat centre on living foods and learning about sprouts, recipes, etc. My intro into the raw food world was definitely a gourmet high fat one. Which I didn't really understand then. Elaine emphasised that too much fruit was a bad thing.

It took me a year before I could maintain 100% for more than 6 weeks. During that time, I moved out of the community (a rural farm) that I was living, as it was too physical for my new self, and also too stressful, and I needed peace and quiet. I struggled with several of my ongoing food issues, sometimes using fasting. I slowly dropped weight from 11 to 9 stone. Wheat was a big issue and very hard to give up. I went vegetarian at 16, vegan at 19 and then at 23, and had been vegan for 8 years when I got ill. So meat, dairy weren't issues. But I was cooking for my children, which meant all sorts of tempting baddies around. Managing to cook while not tasting was nigh on impossible. But my health slowly improved, I could work again, I could exercise, and things were looking up. I managed to maintain 100% for two years, from mid 2001 to mid 2003. This was a good time :-).

I was working, busy, kids growing, I bought a house, and had a garden:-), and had a boyfriend who was sympathetic to me being raw. But in hindsight there were still issues. I had managed to heal most of my gut symptoms, brain fog, and fatigue, I was running and had lots of energy. But I was on a gourmet high fat, lots of dried fruit, bad combos, diet that was as much linked into my poor eating habits as when I was eating cooked. When I craved sweets I ate dates, and soooo many! I ate lots of nuts and made lots of gourmet dishes with all sorts of bad combos. and I'm sure I overate to stuff myself... overeating and not being able to stop is a definite pattern. And my relationship with food is closely intertwined with emotions. Too closely. Its like giving up cigarettes... any form of stress and I crave baddies.

So... what happened? My goal of health had been achieved (apparently). And I think this is where things unravelled a bit. The overwhelming reason for being raw, for maintaining that state in the face of unresolved emotional issues, i.e. my debilitating symptoms, were gone. And so was my reason for maintaining 100%. And there were other forces. I was beginning to explore the more simple side of raw food, higher fruit. I read and heard some of Doug Graham and Rozalind Gruben.

The logic (to my scientific mind) was indisputable. We are designed for a diet of fruit and leaves. But here in the UK, there was an alternative growing among my politically active and vegan friends. Local food, organic, home grown where possible. All great, until I realised that I am in the wrong country for my digestive system. I had a big ethical dilemma... high fruit and imported exotic fruit, and no food security, cooked vegan local food (which I knew didn't work for me, so also poor health), or move! I was also questioning my lifestyle, the job, car, school, consumerism, etc. So my cravings coupled with a political urge to eat local and a practical necessity for eating with my fellow activists meant in the summer of 2003 I slipped off the 100%. It took a year before I felt the health effects.

I put on a little bit of weight, but only gradually. And at some point, which I now find hard to pinpoint, the CFS/ME symptoms started to return. But differently this time. I had low B12. My energy was less and my brain gradually got fuzzier. I got a stomach bug called Helicobacter, which really knocked me for 6, and for which I took a course of three different heavy duty antibiotics. Why!!! I moved, had to stop working, and then after a particularly active summer, had a major crash. I couldn't walk. My children had to be cared for by others. I spent the best part of a winter like that. In bed, major symptoms. Though I knew about raw food, of course, I had no energy to help me implement it... no brain power, no support. It was a bad time.

I managed to get back on my feet a little and decided to move to a city, so that my kids could self care more effectively, and to where I had lots of friends who were up for being supportive. Which is what happened. I love the countryside, and living in it... but when you can't walk, or afford a car, it gets pretty isolating, and hard for children to help at all.

In the city, I slowly improved things. But it was very slowly. I even went back to some vegetarian eating. After raw, veggie and vegan looked pretty similar. I was in the pattern that alot of long term CFSers are in... a cycle of months where some are a bit better, some are worse, its hard to pinpoint exactly why... and anyway your brain just doesn't work well enough to really question. I don't think I was a very good mum, and my eldest two voted with their feet at 16 and 14. I watched alot of TV.

I knew how I wanted to live life, my politics, etc, but my actual life was very far from that. I was only the CFS downward spiral. I may still be there... slothfully drifting from bed to settee to local cornershop on a good day, back to bed... but

I met my gorgeous lovely lover partner best friend :-))))))
now I know that we should be our own salvation, and shouldn't look for it in others.... but he really was the turning point in my life.

we'd known each other vaguely for a couple of years. we used to meet on the street, he'd ask how i was and i'd say something like 'f**king tired, of course!'. Which I was. But... unlike alot of people when confronted with a depressed CFS person just run a mile in the opposite direction, he started saying... 'apart from f**king tired!!!'

wow. someone who sees past the illness and depression and wants to know me. that hadn't happened in a long while. i wasn't exactly miss world, had put all the weight back on again, but he wanted to get to know the me that i'd almost given up on. wow.

so... after a whirlwind romance (about a day lol), he moved in with me... and set about encouraging all that latent stuff inside me... despite the CFS. and i think with his help and support, i've been able to find my path back to raw food, and back to the countryside. knowing that he's there to support me means that i can relax, and have a bad day, without worrying about my youngest. and while having a relationship and CFS is very challenging (maybe more on this eh!), it has given me the space to rediscover and listen to my body.

So... long story here!

last year 2008, I got a tummy bug from someone's son who had some back from India. A week solid of diarrhoea, vomiting (fluorescent green bile, yum), hallucination, bleeding from my bowel... incontinence, bed ridden. wow. but. i made a decision to fast until the bleeding from my anus stopped. this took eight days, but was definitely the best thing to do. I then went onto a very light diet, all raw. for 2 weeks. At that point... I knew I was back on the raw path.

Since then, I have had periods of not being raw, but when I have, it is definitely working. However I had a bad winter, wheelchair bound, little energy for anything, especially raw. Lots of emotional stress. And cold!!!! come february time I was hospitalised with overwhelming suicidal feelings. When I came out, I knew enough was enough. I started ordering fruit and veg from my local organic box scheme (I live in a small village, so no access to shops). I was sick of my wheelchair. So since 23 feb I have been very high raw. I have done lots of reading, and I came across 811. The penny dropped.

So in the last couple of months, the sun has come out here, and I am trying to lie in it when I can, natural hygeine style. I'm out of my wheelchair. My energy is better, though a long way to go. I'm learning to eat enough fruit. I'm still struggling with emotional eating, and that's my downfall. I'm experimenting with a manual juicer and eating LOTS of home grown greens. I still have the ethical dilemmas of imported fruit. But I want to be well. And I want more than that. I want my life to be amazing! I want to be the mum that my 12 year old has never experienced! I'm just 40, I want the next 40 years to be an expression of the real me inside, not some cooked, emotional deranged, constipated, junk food, processed shadow. I want so much more than just my health. And that is why I am going to succeed on 811. I know the issues, i've done the reading, i've lived alot of the raw food mistakes. And now i'm going to be me!

thanks for reading
emma xxx

ps: i wrote this on may 26th 2009, since then i've been blogging on the website www.30bananasaday.com, which has inspired me to set up this blog. i'm on day 25 of this particular journey. all raw apart from day 4 (little slip of emotional eating with some oatcakes/soya cheese), and today of course :-((, and low fat since day 6. the benefits have been:
amazing skin, so soft
improved energy (though i did have an ME/CFS crash, that took a week to recover from, pretty good going for me, that recovery time).
improved digestion
flatter tummy
some weight loss
mostly controllable cooked cravings (i have a real problem with emotional eating, so this is a biggie!)

my detox has not been too bad, mostly just a bit of a runny nose, some spots (funny on my otherwise beautiful skin!), but yesterday and today (see next post), well i think the emotional detox has kicked in. i've experienced this in the past and its really not pretty. i know i have alot of unreleased emotion from my childhood, and being raw just brings that out. its working out how to let it out with the least damage to myself and those around me that is my challenge :-)

so that's pretty much up to the present.

feel free to ask questions, i'm new to this blog thing, and am quite excited by it.

hugs
cat xxx