(Shortest one yet! Don’t get your hopes up, I’ll probably want to write about books and stuff again next month 😉 )
MS:
No updates.
Other health related things:
(Most importantly, any health issues I’m experiencing that could be autoimmune or at least affected by inflammation in my body, are important as markers, because if these things are getting better it could be a sign that the MS is getting better.)
I was hoping I could say that March was a migraine-free month, but towards the end of the month I did have a migraine. But I think I figured out what caused it, so maybe April will be a migraine-free month. 🙂
What I am eating/cooking:
Most importantly, I want to say that I had an attitude adjustment this month. It’s easy to feel frustrated and sorry for myself on this diet, especially during this elimination phase. However, I am *choosing* to do this. I *want* to do this. It helps that I feel in control now. No one would kick me out of the study, or even really give me a very hard time if I said I was going to eat something that I’m supposed to be avoiding. I could say to the dietician, “I’m sorry, but this is just too hard” and she would understand and there would be NO consequences to me as far as the clinical trial is concerned. So this is MY choice that I am making for MY health. That may seem obvious, but it’s really helped me. 🙂 (And having the conversation with them about the eggs especially helped, because excluding eggs felt so arbitrary and not like it was necessarily the best choice for me. So the fact that I’m choosing to eliminate these other foods is because I believe it’s the best choice for me. 🙂 )
I was able to put eggs back into my diet! Honestly not sure how I’d be doing this otherwise with all the other things that I recently removed from my diet. So I’m eating tuna salad with real mayonnaise, scrambled eggs with turkey bacon, egg salad a couple times . . . just lots of eggs really. 😉
It’s been less than a month since we started this elimination diet (March 14th) so I realized I needed to figure some things out. I was able to find the website for the chicken sausages I was eating before, and online the spices are listed, and paprika is NOT one of them! So I can have those again (Thanks, Applegate!) 🙂 Mom also found a brand of chicken sausages at Costco that we can have, but I think we both like the Applegate ones better.
We made homemade granola, and it was good! With full fat coconut milk it actually makes a pretty filling meal/snack. 🙂 (I like granola a lot, but for this 3 months we can only have soaked nuts/seeds, so that made it extra work.) (Actually, I plan to continue soaking nuts for the rest of my life, but I won’t have to be so strict about it. Also, it’s not that hard. Mom bought walnuts a few days ago in a big bag from Costco, and last night we soaked and dried those, so they will be ready the next time we want to make granola. It was just a bit much when I was soaking multiple types of nuts AND making granola in the same day. 😉 )
I’m up to 94 types of edible plants eaten since 12/12/20 (up from 78 last month, although some of those are ones I forgot to include earlier). My favorite (and the most interesting) was definitely cherimoya. Very yummy 🙂 [Random story about that: I use this grocery list app called Intellilist (it’s great) and it has some random choices. When I would search for apples, it had apples AND “custard apples” (another name for cherimoya). So I was showing that to Mom, and then the next time I was at PCC and looking for new produce items to try, they happened to have those!]
Random:
Ukulele practicing hasn’t been happening, but I hope to pick it back up.
There’s an online support group as part of the clinical trial, and for various reasons we weren’t allowed to identify ourselves at all. For instance, on Zoom we couldn’t have our camera on (that part I didn’t mind 😉 ) AND we had to use a number to identify ourselves, not our names (not even first names were allowed). But now we can have our cameras on if we want, AND we can use first names and have more interaction with each other. I don’t know if it’s partially that or just because each month that goes by we’re getting more comfortable with each other, but we’ve been having better conversations. 🙂 It’s also nice to be in such a niche group, because often our conversations are less about MS and more about things like how to deal with social situations involving food. 😉
I’ve been filling in for another position at work for a while, and we finally have a new person in that role. She’s lovely. So I’m actually working more hours now because we were able to expand our hours at our Bellevue location, but there’s a LOT less responsibility for me when I’m there, so it’s been nice.
For those of you who haven’t been getting the updates, Dad is back home with home PT again.
Mom & I have been playing tennis almost every week, and my instructor complimented me and said he noticed I was getting better. 🙂
Quick Summary of the Month (March):
| December | January | February | March | |
| Walking | 17 mins | 18 mins | 20 mins! 🙂 | 23 mins |
| Dark Leafy Greens | 1.2 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.7! |
| Sulfur-Rich | 1.7 | 1.9 | 2.3 | 2.5 |
| Colourful | 3.6 | 5.1 | 3.5 | 2.3 |
(My walking always goes up when it’s nice and sunny out, so I can’t really take credit for that 😉 )
Amanda's Journey with MS 