Really sick at the start of the year.

I had a lot of plans for 2014 when I did my review at the end of last year.  Unfortunately within a few days of that post my gut revolted in a big way and I started on a downward spiral that led to the toughest year I’ve dealt with.  Just after Christmas when we finished with a 30-day cleanse diet I started having a lot of pain and churning in my gut every day after I’d eat.  I was dropping weight fast and was going to the doctor every few days as we tried to figure out what was going on.   Finally after an ultrasound, CT-scan, colonoscopy and at least a quart of blood work I found that I had Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth or SIBO in February.

At the time I figured this was great, after meeting with Dr. Allison Siebecker at the SIBO Center in Portland I figured a few weeks of some hard core antibiotic treatment and I’ll be done with this.  Well, that did not work out as planned.  I had severe reactions to the Rifaxamin/Neomycin drug combo and only lasted 4 days on it.  My gut was a total mess and I was experiencing tinnitus in my ears and soon a growing numbness in my feet.  The next few months were pretty bad and I really didn’t think I was going to make it through the year.  I’d gone from about 180 in October when this began down to 147 and it seemed like I might just keep wasting away.   After the standard medical doctors gave up on me in March and sent me to Dr. Christine Bowen, ND I finally stopped the downward slide.   The next few months were tough, I’d get a little better and then have a total relapse and end up barely able to eat or sleep.  I also found out I was dealing with an Epstein-Barr Virus reactivation thus basically dealing with chronic fatigue syndrome on top of the SIBO.  I moved to medical marijuana to help reduce the gut inflammation and help me get some much needed sleep, it helped a lot during those months.

House w/roof but no solar yet

In the middle of all this we decided to move.  Kind of crazy I know but the timing was right and we had an offer on our house without even putting it on the market.   So, in April we left our house in Redmond and moved to Fall City along the Raging River.  The move was hard on both of us, I lost more weight and we were both very worn out by the end of it.   In the long run though it proved to be the best thing we could have done, we love our new place and it is so much easier to take care of than the old complex was.  During the summer we did a lot of work on the house too.  We did new flooring, bath fixtures, a new roof, added two solar arrays to generate the bulk of our electricity,  put on a larger and improved deck, upgraded the gas line and put in a stand-by generator which we’ve now used 4x already.

In May I was finally able to start getting out some, I’d go up to Lake Alice and float around in my tube for an hour or so and catch trout.  It was nice to finally get some fresh air.  I was trying to deal withe the SIBO by diet alone and was eating pretty much nothing but ground meat, pureed carrots and green beans, some eggs and a banana every day.  As soon as I’d add anything else or more solid food I’d get really sick again.  In late May I relapsed in a big way and ended up in bed or on the couch for a week.

It was then we decided to try moving to an herbal treatment plan.  I slowly ramped up on Berberine and AlliMed in June but it made no difference in my bacterial levels.   At the advice of the doctors at the SIBO Center I switched to AlliMed and Neem Plus in July.  The Neem was hard to handle so I couldn’t do the full dose.  My test after a month was not good so I bit it and did the full dose in August.

Starting in July though things got much better.  I was at least getting well enough that I was eating solid food again and increasing the types of food I could eat every few weeks.  I was getting out for walks and fishing Tenkara in my back yard and on the rivers close to home.  I couldn’t go out for long, an hour or so at a time, but just being back in nature really helped with my mood.   We had a few nice family gatherings, played a lot of croquet and just enjoyed hanging out on the deck or along the bank of the river in the afternoons reading or just watching the birds.

Catherine and I also bought some bikes and began riding some since running was out for me with my numb and hurting feet.  Again, nothing big but just being able to cycle for a few miles here and there was very nice.   I finally visited a neurologist about the feet in the summer, nothing definitive but no signs of any serious neurological issues, just EBV and peripheral neuropathy probably caused by the antibiotics I took in February.

In the fall things finally started to turn around for me.  My SIBO test in September was looking good, close to cleared and I was eating much more.  I had been transitioning to the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol diet since I was still having some weird autoimmune symptoms in my arms at times.  This diet seemed to be the trick.  I started gaining weight again slowly.  My November test wasn’t too good, I blame it on going back to some marijuana to sleep after my low-dose Naltrexone was keeping me up all night once I got to the full dosage of it.   So, nearing the end of the year I started in on another round of herbal antibiotics, mixing it up a bit this time around.  I also found I’m dealing with the blastocystis hominis parasite and am trying to deal with it at the same time.  I won’t be done with this round until February and I’ll be back at the SIBO Center getting tested almost a year to the day after my first visit.

The good news though is that over the past few months I put back on 11-12 pounds of much needed weight.  I’m still down about 12 from my old typical weight of 170 but I don’t expect to ever get back there with my new low-carb AIP diet.  When I was in great shape a few years ago I was at 165 so I’m expecting my weight to level out around 160-165.  I was hoping to hit 160 by the end of the year and am close but it will have to wait until January given the trend of the slope.

I also started doing more walking and finally running.  I started very slowly, mostly walking with a minute or two or running interspersed. I built up until it was more running than walking.  I left the Preston-Snoqualmie trail and started running at Grand Ridge and Tiger Mountain again.  I’m up to about 4.5 miles at a stretch now and I’ve even been able to run several events in the Winter Trail Run Series.  I also started working again and have mostly completed an app for SIBO sufferers, adapting Dr. Siebecker’s SIBO Food Guide into an interactive app for the iPhone.   The app is in beta right now and should ship in January of 2015.

Somehow in the midst of being sick I also managed to get out and fish a LOT, one of my biggest years ever.  Granted, no trip lasted longer than 2 hours and everything was in the Snoqualmie Valley within 10-15 minutes of home but I got out 110 days so far.  I mostly fished tenkara for trout, getting out a lot on the Tolt, the Snoqualmie Forks and the Raging.  I also did some steelheading in December and finally got a winter fish from the Snoqualmie a week ago.

So, while dealing with illness has totally sucked I am still here and in much better shape today than I was at the start of the year.  It literally turned our lives upside down, I went from being super active and a vegan to being house bound and a total meat eater since I’m now totally intolerant of the mainstay foods I used to eat.  I’ve just decide to embrace the Paleo lifestyle and it definitely helps.   Support from Catherine and the family has been fantastic.  My medical team is great.  I’ve met a lot of new friends who are also dealing with SIBO or other autoimmune illnesses and the support there has been very helpful, it helps having others who really get what it means to be dealing long-term with this type of illness.  My daily practice also has really saved me, if I wasn’t on the cushion every morning I’m not sure where I’d be right now.

So, what is in store for 2015?  I’m keeping my goals pretty limited this year since I’m not sure exactly where I’ll be.

#1 – GET HEALTHY!   This is really the only thing I care about.  Dr. Bowen warned me that SIBO was going to be a two-year process and that each time I relapsed the clock sort of started over again so I’m looking at 2015 as being a full year of still trying to regain health.  I don’t expect this to be “over” until mid 2016 at this point.    Hoping that this next 45 days of herbals does the trick finally on the SIBO and that I can find something that will take care of the parasite.  Then I can get down to the business of healing my intestines using a restorative protocol that I have.   With that I should get back some more weight and be able to eat even more foods than I am now.

Work 

• Get v1 of the SIBO app out the door early in the year.  I have other features in mind for subsequent versions if this gets enough users to warrant more work.
• I have a few other app ideas that I’m going to get started on, I’d like to try and do at least one of them in Swift which I am just now starting to learn.
• Hopefully do some tenkara workshops and some actual guiding this year for Northwest Tenkara.
• Start a Nutrititonal Consulting program and starting to do some work in that area.  I’ve done some free consulting with a few people that were referred to me by my doctor.  I want to take the program at Bauman College which I can do remotely.

 Travel – need to keep plans light here since this year was full of cancellations.

• We are going to SoCal in February for a week!  My first trip in over a year.
• Mazama in Septemebr, we had to reschedule this from this year.

Fishing – Next year will probably look a lot like this year for fishing, a lot close to home but hopefully a few trips elsewhere to fish.  I’ll hit the lakes earlier for trout, do a lot of local Tenkara and hopefully get up to the North Cascades again to fish there.   I’ll do some saltwater fishing while in SoCal and it would be nice to get back to Florida, I’ve gone 2 years w/o a bonefish and that isn’t right.

Fitness – I’m finding that weight training is what I need and need to keep cardio to a reasonable level since I want to put on weight, not drop it.   Given that my plan is to keep running moderate, I’ll do the short distances this year.  Maybe I’ll try a half marathon or 25k by the end of the year but don’t think I’ll go beyond that until my weight stabilizes and I’m fully healed.  Running long distances is not that great for the gut lining.    I’m planning on trying CrossFit after the first of the year instead of just going to a gym and using machines.  I’m liking my work at home with dumbells, balance pads and the Bosu ball which is more in fitting with CrossFit.