As anyone who has followed this blog since inception will know, it was motivated partly out of a desire to do better, spurred by the recent and tragic loss of my cousin, Terry. The thing about extreme circumstances (apart from relationships formed in them never lasting, according to Sandra Bullock) is that it is all too easy to make all sorts of spur of the moment decisions under them which then prove difficult to stick to when life inevitably continues. This is the truth that underpins a million abandoned diets, exercise regimes and attempts to quit smoking, drinking or any other vice.
Myself, I have suffered from IBS now for so long that I literally don't remember what it felt like to wake up in the morning and NOT have to plan my day around my stomach and whether it will be bad. The unimaginable freedom of being able to eat before a long journey, to walk into a restaurant and order what I would LIKE to eat rather than what i think I might get away with, the heady giddiness of being offered some new food at a party and just taking a taste for the hell of it - all memories so distant that they may as well be myth.
So far so sad - it would be easy to sit here and accept the sympathy of the crowd and nod my head in agreement with various pronouncements of how tragic it was. But let's get real here. I eat rubbish. I rarely eat anything that isn't heavily processed/microwaved/takeaway or some hideous combination of all three. I eat very little if any fruit and veg, I rarely do anything so fancy as 'cook' and when I do, the extent is usually the removal of wrapping and placing something in the oven.
Partly there is a genuine reason for this - IBS is a condition that swiftly makes its sufferer a creature of habit - even more so if that sufferer happens to have OCD tendencies (that's right - I have ALL the acronyms). What this means is that on the rare occasions that one eats something new and doesn't suffer badly at all, then one tends to eat that thing a lot. When one conversely eats something that DOES disagree, then that thing tends to vanish forevernore from the menu - witness my decade long and counting abstinence from Pork chops for example.
But all of that is just a small part of the problem. The rest is sheer laziness. It isn't that I CAN'T cook - in actual fact I have always had a bit of a natural talent for following a recipe and producing the goods. It's just that I have become increasingly lazy. I was even before the IBS if I am honest, but the condition furnished me with the above handy excuse as well. And thus have I proceeded.
Yesterday, at the recommendation of my current and lovely GP who is actually taking some kind of interest in making me better, I attended an appointment with a nutritionist. This was an interesting experience. It wasn't dramatic and nor shall I make it sound so - she was very friendly and polite, though she couldn't quite hide the edge of frustration. It wasn't that I didn't KNOW that my diet was harmful, it wasn't even as if I had no idea of how to fix it, it was quite clear that I had simply never bothered. I had given up, resigned to a lifetime of odd eating habits and suffering. She wasn't harsh, but she was honest. If I wanted to have any chance at all of effecting change, I needed to be prepared to actually DO the stuff that would be recommended to me. I had to actually be willing to take responsibility for myself and start making food and drinking water and eating fruit and all the other stuff that I clearly knew but had never bothered with so far.
Maybe it was because of the way she handled it, or the fact that I don't want to let my GP down, or the fact that I am just so sick of this half life enforced by my stomach, but something resonated. So last night I went and bought a bag of potatoes and some fresh chicken breasts, and I cooked a simple dinner of home made mashed potato, oven roasted chicken and some tinned veg. It won't win any awards or Michelin stars, but it was a start. A small one, but relatively huge. I can't remember the last time that I actually spent time PREPARING food. By the time it was ready I was starving, the anticipation of preparation having worked up my appetite. I tucked in and demolished the lot, and this morning I woke feeling better than I had in a while.
It isn't a miracle cure. I don't expect to be suddenly completely better, but it's a start. It's the sort of start that I think Terry would have respected. The night before last, I dreamed of Terry - something I don't recall ever having done. It was an odd dream - I was at a family gathering, which I knew somehow was about remembering him. Then he walked in to the room, and I gave him the tightest hug. I was so glad to see him, and to be able to tell him that I missed him. Then the dream panned back, like a camera going out of my body and pulling back to view the scene, and I saw myself hugging thin air and muttering to myself. I'd known even as I grabbed him for that bear hug that he wasn't there, but pulling back and seeing it like that somehow still hurt. Not a raw, agonising pain, but a dull ache. It made me realise two things:
1. Though rationally I understand and appreciate that Terry is gone, emotionally I still haven't accepted it. And I'm not sure I ever will. There have been several times since his passing when that realisation has hit me - at a party when I expected him to be standing there in a group, watching a race on TV and going to text him about an incident. His number is still on my phone with his name there, and I can't bring myself to get rid of it. Doing so would be accepting something on a level that I am just not ready for.
2. Though he's gone, he's still very much there with that kick up the arse ready for his cousin as and when its required. I am not a believer in the symbolism or meaning of dreams in and of themselves, but clearly Terry was on my mind that night, and the following morning too. I think that was what motivated the change. That was what made me sit there and say all the things I said to the nutritionist, and make the promises I did, and more importantly start to keep them. Terry was right there, in the back of my mind, telling me to just man up and get on with it.
Who am I to argue?
