A lot has happened since my last post: a bit more research, a whole lot of good food, and a new diagnosis!
Now, I could cover these topics in order, but then I know you’d scroll all the way to the bottom and skip over all the food, so I’ll hurry up and tell you about the new diagnosis. I had a much-anticipated appointment a couple of weeks ago with my neurologist, who during our last appointment asked me to get a blood test checking for a list of things two pages long. <insert cringe-face here> The result showed that I actually have something that’s not MS. That’s right: I don’t have MS, y’all… What?!
The thing I do have is called neuromyelitis optica, or NMO. Now, friends, pinky-swear with me right this second that you will not google “NMO”. My neurologist warned me that, on publicly-edited sites like Wikipedia and WebMD, people post truckloads of misinformation, some of it malintended. Seriously, don’t google it.
Here are some good ones for ya: http://myelitis.org/symptoms-conditions/rare-neuro-immunologic-disorders/
The short version: NMO looks a whole lot like MS and is often misdiagnosed as such, and that’s easy to do because MS is much more common, whereas NMO is super, super-duper rare. When untreated, this disorder gets bad and scary, fast. But, Doc says, when you’re being treated with the right meds and doing all the physical therapy and resting you’re supposed to (which I have been since October!), folks get better as much as they will (which is different for everybody), and then, a relapse may happen in some number of years -- maybe 15 or 20 -- or not at all! If a relapse does happen it is super treatable, and I sure as heck will go to the doctor a lot more quickly than I did the first time around. Regardless, I vote for no relapses ever again. Keep your fingers crossed and your prayers lifted, y’all. The moral of the story is that it’s gonna be okay.
As I walked (walked! yay!) out of the appointment, I was struck by an imperative question:
Now what’s for dinner?
Does this change what I should eat? Looks like I have more reading to do.
During the whirlwind following this new diagnosis, I finished reading Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis. In the last ⅓ of the book Professor Jelinek covers in a positive way many “now what?” topics, including exercise, meditation and faith as well as food. I was relieved to get to the part where he says what to eat after two hundred pages of scientific detail about what not to eat. Imagine the guilty hindsight of this lady, who five years ago opened a Southern homestyle catering company called Bacon & Bakin’, and who now is considering near-veganism. Even in those days I did, however, cook some pretty great vegetable side dishes, which I am now serving at home as entrees. Ta-da!
It’s been too long since my last post; I’ve cooked a lot of good food since then. Here are a few pictures of things I’ve made lately:
Salad. Lots and lots and lots of salad!
Roasted beets
Excitement over the (gradual) return of my knife skills!
First attempt at half-cheese-half-vegan pizza
and a new whole-wheat crust recipe
My favorite new super-hearty breakfast.
Under all that goodness is homemade yogurt
made out of soymilk!
I tied on an apron this week, a thing I haven't done in six months.
I'm excited about this because my fingers work well enough
to tie this bow, and because I'm cooking for people,
which gives me a reason to wear an apron.
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Please comment here to tell me which of the above you’d like the recipe for next!
Bon appetit, y’all.
