Wow! The last post I wrote was late April of 2015. I assure you I am still around. But I’ve been through a lot since last April.
Since the journey is very personal, I’ve been talking about it on a different blog under my name: Barbara McNeely. The new journey officially started on May 22nd, 2015 and it’s described for you on this blog post.
Needless to say, the surgery and recovery have consumed much of my time. And have me re-evaluating my purpose and my path going forward. If you want to read more about it, you can follow my newest blog.
Food sensitivities sometimes show up in strange ways.I’m going to start this story in the middle. I’ll work on catching you up as I go along. It’s just that today is the day I decided for sure that this story had to be told.
Last night I had the strange leg swelling again. It was most noticeable in the left knee because the extra fluid on that knee made it painful to put any pressure on it. So, that means not sleeping on the left side OR the right side. Which leaves just one choice left: sleeping on my back. It always takes me longer to fall asleep on my back and that gives me time to think.
I had this problem a few weeks back. And I asked everyone I knew about it to see if they could figure out why. Why? Still my favorite question. The question started out to NOT be about the swelling so much as understanding why, once I was relaxed and in bed, did my knee start hurting when even the slightest pressure was put on it. And furthermore, why did the problem go away after sleeping for a few hours.
I asked my chiropractor and he shed some light on it for me, and left me with more detective work. He said that it hurt because of a fluid build up. The fluid coming from lower parts of the leg and it spread to the knee while lying down. He suggested that I look at food as a cause.
And that’s when I realized that perhaps it was caused by cucumber, since I had added cucumber smoothies (cucumber + cold water) to my diet in an effort to reduce swelling and lower blood pressure. I stopped the cucumber and the problem went away. Do you see the irony in that? I bring in a food to reduce swelling and it causes even more?
When it happened again last night, I had to look at what I had changed recently. I assure you that I’ve not had cucumber since I figured out that connection. As I drifted off to sleep, I remembered that I had almond butter on my toast for the first time in several weeks. Perhaps it is an almond issue then, or an issue to a contaminant such as mold.
This morning, I chose to put butter on my toast and not almond butter. The first bite I took was of the fresh cantaloupe, the same cantaloupe I ate yesterday morning. Almost immediately, I noticed that the tip of my tongue felt strange, almost as if it was a bit swelling and burned all at the same time.
Now I have to suspect both foods – almond butter and cantaloupe. I’ll cut out the cantaloupe for sure but I may give the almond butter another try, maybe. In a few weeks.
As I said, this is the middle of the story. I’ll be writing more in the coming days and weeks. I have a lot to say and a lot of questions. Here are just a few:
Do we slow down because we age? Or do we age because we slow down?
