"That's why you're so small, Ms. Andersen."

Eating has become substantially more enjoyable. I had honey yesterday. Something actually, truly sweet. Milk didn't seem to cause any problems, and neither did tea, so this afternoon I made myself a tea-ish sort of latte. Earl grey tea, hot milk and honey. It was glorious. I tested ground pork at dinner tonight, and soy (edamame) for lunch. One of my students came in to say hi today while I was eating my edamame at my desk. When he noticed the soybeans, he was perplexed. "Whoa, Ms. Andersen! What is that!?" I explained it was soy beans. "What's that go with?" he wanted to know. "Like, what meat?" I said I wasn't really sure, but that you get it at sushi restaurants sometimes. He looked skeptical. "That's why you're so small, Ms. Andersen. You eat beans for lunch." Fair enough.

My kids often make fun of my lunches, usually by insisting that it's white people food. It's funny - I can't tell you how many times I've been asked either what I'm having for dinner, or whether I like a certain food (one kid was legitimately surprised that I, a white person, like fried chicken). This morning, one girl explained: "White people be eatin' like, salads and fruit and stuff. Black people eat macaroni and cheese." Maybe black people don't eat edamame?

Tomorrow is a teacher workday, which means I can sleep in until seven, make scrambled eggs for breakfast (!!) and drive to school in the daylight.

Also! Liver enzymes, alk phos, everything is nice and normal again. ALT = 15, AST = 19, AlkPhos = 84. As there is now nothing diagnostically interesting about my blood, I guess it'll be a while before I see Dr. Nami again. Which is fine by me, because last appointment I waited an hour before seeing him for about five minutes, after which they quickly drew four tubes of my blood and sent me home. Sixty dollar co-pay to top it off. I'm just praying that this silly diet reveals something useful and that my joints remain as generally healthy-feeling as they have been. I even went for a run yesterday! (I'm tentatively thinking of running a 5k in March. This would be quite a feat, given that I am still pretty well out of shape and have never run in any kind of race ever...but it doesn't seem un-doable.)

And as quickly as it came...

As quickly as it came, the lump of hideous swollen-ness disappeared. When I woke up this morning I was greeted by the little monster, and it had reached almost its previous record size (small peanut? large lima bean?) but then, suddenly, by noon it was basically gone, with just a little soft mushy spot in its place. If it hadn't gone away, I would have probably been very tempted to throw in the towel on the whole diet experiment, to be honest. Given that the whole idea is to see what effect eating different foods has on my symptoms, if I have a symptom that refuses to go away, it'd be hard to know if what I'm eating is making it stay around, making it get worse, or if it was just doing that on its own. So I'm glad my wrist is fine again today. But, as I'm essentially symptom-free again today, I tried milk when I got home from work. Milk!! I hadn't had any dairy product in almost eleven days!!

And...my CRP is down! C-reactive Protein is something your liver releases when you have inflammation in your body, and it responds pretty quickly to anything that's going on. The internet says CRP looks like this. Deceptively pretty, huh?

People who have consistently high CRP numbers are at more of a risk for heart disease and other bad stuff, and it because it's a indication of inflammation, it can clue you in to arthritis-type stuff going on too (as in yours truly). Normal range is like 0 - 4.9, and right before Christmas mine was 7.3. In fact, the day after I had that particular batch of blood drawn my hands and wrists went haywire and were worse than they'd been in a while. Makes sense to me...higher number, inflammation, pain! However, my blood from Friday (at which point I'd been eating sweet potatoes and fish for the entire past week) showed a CRP level of 0.4. So that's encouraging, at least inasmuch as it means something changed for the better. Whether that change is meaningful or lasting, I don't know. But I'll take what I can get.

Tomorrow I can have tea again!!! For the first time in almost two weeks! Going into this I thought tea would be the hardest thing to give up, because it is such a comforting habit for me, and such a part of how I relax when I get home from teaching all day. But surprisingly, once I kicked the chemical dependence on caffeine, a mug of hot water has been a curiously passable substitute. It's hot, steamy, warm to hold, and gives me something to sip on while I read. I mean, okay, it's a pretty lame substitute, but I haven't been as desperate as I had expected. Nonetheless, it will be really, really good to have a cup of tea tomorrow. Or several. Of different kinds. Mmm.

Return of the bump.

So my freaky, fluid-filled swollen wrist bump has returned. Gross!! Thankfully, it has kind of done a half-ass job of showing up...nothing like the lumpy, squishy alien-incubating freak show that was the back of my hand a month ago. I don't have to wrap it up in an ace bandage and it's not really that entertaining to look at. But still, it's just enough to be uncomfortable.

There are several possible explanations for this unwelcome come back show. Listed in order of my preference:

a) I have rheumatoid arthritis (or some variation thereof) and diet has nothing to do with my symptoms at all leaving me doomed for a future of immunosuppresants and joint erosion.

b) I have rheumatoid arthritis (or some variation thereof) and diet DOES have an effect on my symptoms but I have somehow messed up the diet or not done it properly and will never know why it didn't work but am doomed to a future...etc.

c) I have some completely different malady, like a freaky recurring virus, or chronic infection, or some mysterious metabolic disorder which neither I nor my doctor has thought of or tested for yet and which will continue to go undiagnosed until I suffer from irreversible liver damage, or something.

d) I have rheumatoid arthritis (or some variation thereof) and diet is the ultimate cause of my symptoms and my unfortunately uncomfortable wrist is a result of one of the foods I tested in the 24 hours before my wrist got swollen and so if I eliminate those foods going forward I'll feel fine again.

e) I have some completely different and easily curable malady that will show up on the lab results I expect to get back tomorrow.

So, given those options, I looked at what I ate yesterday and the day before, and I am re-eliminating tomatoes (plants in the nightshade family cause problems for some arthritis patients) and rice (because it's not all that healthy anyway and I ate it yesterday) and beef (bummer). I rarely eat avocados anyway, so I'm not worrying about that one.

To be honest, I'm annoyed. This could be a complete waste of my time and a total exercise in futility. I get that. But if I quit now, I'll never know. And regardless of whatever theories I read about RA's etiology, eating less processed foods and more fruits and vegetables is hardly going to make me any worse, and might make the non-joint parts of me healthier anyway.

Soy was supposed to be today's big test, as it is a more common allergen than, say, the Boston lettuce I had for lunch. But I'm putting it off until tomorrow and hoping my wrist will be better then. If I have some reaction to soy I don't want it to be masked by my sore wrist. I guess if I feel fine tomorrow, and then have my edamame for dinner and my wrist swells up again, I'll count out soy. This is kind of an incredible hassle, and I really and truly would love for my doctor to call tomorrow and say, "Hey! Looks like you have parvovirus!" Problem solved. Unlikely maybe, but would be nice.

Dreams of carbs....

I was going through my folder of photos and came across some pictures of food I took over Christmas. Food made out of lots of sugar and flour and things I can't eat yet. I'm going to post these photos so that in a month, or a few weeks or whenever I establish I can eat things like this again (hopefully that's what happens, anyway), I can look back at this post and feel especially grateful and inspired.

My dad always makes Norwegian Christmas cookies. These are Smultringer (basically, lard rings). They're little fried donuts.
Although not the best photo, I made this trifle for Christmas dinner. I soaked the ladyfingers in cointreau, and used mandarin oranges, made the custard from scratch and dumped whipped cream on top. And then doused the whole thing in cointreau again. It was amazing, and better the next day after chilling/settling in the fridge.
I've made these cheddar biscuits a bunch of times, and they're always easy and turn out great. The colder you can keep all the ingredients (especially the butter) before mixing and kneading, the better. They're flaky and wonderful and I'd give my firstborn child for one about now.
The recipe is from Ina Garten, here. I never have buttermilk, so I put a little vinegar in milk to substitute and it works just fine.
The last few years, since all the Andersen kids are now adults who don't need to open presents at the crack of dawn, we've enjoyed having a long breakfast on Christmas morning. This year I made sour-cream blueberry muffins (recipe here) and a leek and cheese frittata. We had smoked salmon too, which I love, but the only salmon I can have right now is fresh, which I'm absolutely sick to death of.
Sigh. I do get to eat rice today, although without butter or cheese or black pepper or spices it will be a pretty unexciting affair. Still, it'll be good to eat something truly starchy. I had two bananas for breakfast today, and they've never tasted so good. I've been surprised at how much I've started craving fruit, because it's the only source of sugar I have right now. I dropped eight bucks on a damn sack of grapes and I'll probably eat them all within 48 hours.

Mugshots

One of the vague New Years quasi-resolutions I made this year was to force myself to spend more time making art. I spent three days before Christmas making a couple paintings for my family as gifts, but other than that I haven't really painted anything since I left Chicago. This is in large part simply because at my old Chicago job, I got off at 5 every day, was home by 5:15, and didn't have to think about/do work until the next morning at 8:30. And my weekends were entirely mine, not cluttered up with grading, and planning. But, no excuses. I want to spend some more time painting. And I want to get good at painting people.

So, I was skimming through the Charlotte Observer's online mugshot collection yesterday, looking for my student (who showed me his picture in the hardcopy version), and I found myself scrolling through hundreds and hundreds of faces. Arrests from the whole week, I guess, or whatever they have up the their website. But they were the most fascinating, scary, sad, beautiful, interesting faces. I suppose when you photograph someone right after they've been arrested, there's going to be a whole range of emotions expressed on their faces, and they're not going to look all done up and pretty. But it occurred to me that I could draw them, and maybe paint some of them. It'd be good practice drawing a whole bunch of very different looking people with very different facial expressions.
This is Maddie Ruth Grigley, charged with 'communicating threats.'

I feel a little weird drawing someone's portrait without their knowledge, like it's an invasion of privacy in some way. Their photographs, names, height, weight and criminal charges are all online for anyone to see, and I'm not making money off of them, but it still feels odd in some way. Although you wouldn't know it was a mugshot from the drawing, necessarily. It's just a portrait of an old woman. Which I guess is the point - regardless of what she's done, she's a woman just like I am, a human being just like anybody else.

Chicken Skins

Chicken skin has never tasted so good. I don't even usually eat the skin off my chicken, but yesterday was my first day of introducing new foods back into my diet, and chicken was on the list. Man, did that crispy skin taste good. Gross, right? But when all you've eaten for a week is fish, sweet potatoes, carrots and pears, bone-in, skin-on, roasted-in-their-own-juice chicken thighs taste like heaven. So do grapes, which I was also able to eat yesterday, but somehow they don't quite compare to the roast chicken.

I ate both chicken and grapes with no apparent aggravation of symptoms or adverse reaction, so they're on the safe list. After today (assuming I don't start feeling terrible in the next few hours) so are green beans and broccoli. It's amazing how four simple ingredients make me feel so much more excited to have a meal.

I thought, since my diet has changed so drastically this last week (and will continue to look very different for a while) it would be interesting to see what, in the past, I've actually been EATING in a day. I went back through my food diary starting at the beginning of December, and nerded out on Excel after I got home from my doctor's appointment this afternoon.

This is based just on servings per day. So the 33% represents an average of 2.8 servings of grains in a day, and the 17% vegetables equals about an average of 1.4 servings of vegetables in a day. Far from the "five-a-day" we're always being told to get, huh? For comparison, here's a snazzy graphic showing you what you SHOULD be eating.
Cute, right? And I didn't even make a category for "foods containing fat and sugar." Point being, since last Friday, I've been eating about 75% fruits and vegetables, and 25% fish. Now I can have chicken, too. But I'm kind of amazed at how wild a shift that really is, compared to my usual eating habits. I mean, I LOVE carbs. And sugar, and fat. Because I've always been kind of scrawny, I've taken that as license to eat, entirely without guilt, giant meals at Bojangles, or huge servings of goopy desserts at restaurants, or like, 15 Christmas cookies in a sitting. Yeah, well, I'm just waiting for my karmic payback to be that all that flour and sugar has made my joints achey. We'll see. I had a dream last night that I ate pizza and pasta by accident and wrecked all my hard, self-denial-y work. Argh!! Rice is Sunday, milk is Tuesday, tea(!!) is Wednesday, butter is Thursday, and then next weekend I spend eating wheat three times a day for two days. I can't wait!!!!

Oh, and I still feel great, which is nice. Doc took some more blood today and is doing my liver enzymes again (they were a little elevated before) and my alkaline phosphatase (also related to liver/gallbladder), along with a few others, including an test they run to diagnose celiac disease, and a test for parvovirus - both of which I'm thinking are unlikely, but heck - I've got plenty of blood, so they can just go to town. My primary care guy warned me that rheumatologists are like vampires...they just want your blood.
ohn mansfield elimination diet rheumatoid arthritis alternative health joint pain arthralgia hypoallergenic diet

"I'm in the paper!!"

A few fun snippets from my classroom...

Before the bell rang this morning, one of my kids (who I don't have until third period) came bounding into my room waving a newspaper, with a big grin on his face.
"Ms. Andersen! Ms. Andersen! Look! Look! I got my picture in the paper!"
He had the paper open, plopped it down on top of my overhead, and jabbed his finger at his mugshot, lined up with a bunch of other mugshots under the heading "Arrests This Week."
"They put me in the motherfuckin' paper, man! Check this out! And look man, that's my uncle!"
This kid was so excited, he had to come tell me before class even started. I wasn't entirely sure what to say in such a situation. Like, what's the etiquette?
"Um, I'm not sure what to tell you, Reggie. I mean, do I say congratulations?"(Not his real name, of course.)
"I know, right?!" And then he bounced, laughing, out of the classroom to go show his friends.


The last time I saw this kid this excited was last week when he suddenly called out in the middle of class, "Oh! Hold up! Lookit this!" He started reaching around in his pockets (which were down around his knees somewhere) and pulled out a penny and jumped up to come show it to me.
"Ms. Andersen! Lookit this! I got this crazy penny!" (It was one of the new ones, with the little crest on the back.) "It says, right here, look! E pluribus unum! Out of many one! It don't say that on other pennies! That's one special penny, man!"
Despite the fact that it does actually say that on other pennies, I was proud of him for noticing, for saving the penny, and for being so excited he knew what e pluribus unum meant that he had to show the whole class.

I'm not sure what to think about the fact that he was equally excited to be featured in the Charlotte police report section, but I guess everybody wants to see their face in the paper?