Finding Myself Again

So, part of the reason I wanted to put my story out there is because John and I have been getting a lot of questions about what I'm doing and why. But I didn't really feel I could give that a good answer without sharing where I started, how bad it got, and just how much it means to me to be able to say things like, "I feel good", or "I am sleeping better". I was told I would never get better. I was just too stubborn to give up.

The last year however was a battle, every single moment of every single day (and night). By the time I was done with finals, I was completely exhausted. It took everything I had just to get through the year and I spent a good chunk of May just being lazy and recuperating. But I also started looking for a better way to get better. I had made a lot of progress and learned a lot over the past year, but I did not want to repeat it. I wanted to heal and I knew I had to change my focus. I no longer wanted to fight RLS, I wanted to create a healthy body.

My hope that was that if helped my body get healthy, it would do what it is made to do, and heal the problem  and the RLS would go away. Now, I'm not a medical doctor, I'm a veterinary student, and I don't make any claim that anyone else would benefit from this plan, but it is working for me. And I always have and still do believe that for the most part, given the right tools, our bodies know how to be healthy and fix themselves when there was a problem. For me, RLS involves several components. Mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. I meditate, I pray, I write in my journal, I do yoga, lift weights, and I just started walking our dogs again. But I believe that the biggest catalyst in this whole process has been a complete change in the food I give my body. It turns out you really are what you eat.

Of course, I didn't really want food to be a component at all. I wanted to be able to eat whatever I wanted. But I already knew that loosing weight over the past year had helped. And since I wasn't completely better yet, I decided to do some sort of food trial to see if changing my diet would help. I ended up combining two ideas into a plan that is working for me. I have more energy, I feel better, my muscles don't cramp up anymore, i sleep better (I could repeat that one a thousand times), I'm happy (I randomly break out in song now), my asthma/allergies have improved greatly, I'm more relaxed and focused, and I no longer have PMS.

I found two programs that really spoke to what I wanted to achieve and John and I combined them into the program that works for us. The first was from a book titled Clean, which advocates a hypoallergenic, predominantly liquid, detox diet for 21 days. We also watched the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, which is about a guy (two guys actually) who resolve a chronic health problem by doing a juice fast.

 John and I in San Antonio, just before starting our new get Steph healthy plan.

To start with we did an elimination diet from Clean for 4 days before starting the detox diet. We didn't get a Clean kit (available on the website), we just used the book and website, and reviews on amazon and got our own supplements, protein powder, etc. We did buy a good juicer so we could make our own juice because store bought just really doesn't compare in regard to health and nutrients, or taste for that matter. So here is a typical day for us:

8:00 am - big class of juice (there are lot's of recipes on the reboot site and we stick to ingredients allowed in clean)
10:30 am - protein shake (try as we might, we have not been able to make vegetarian protein powder taste good, so you're on your own there, we just down it and look forward to going to whey protein later, we often include juice in this)
12:00 pm lunch (includes a lean meat, like chicken, lamb, buffalo, or fish, vegetables, and we may have brown rice)
4:00 pm - another protein shake (my least favorite part)
7:45 pm - juice
And if we get hungry in the mean time we snack on unsalted raw nuts, or raw fruits and veggies

The biggest expense was the juicer, we bought a good one that would last a long time. But it was definitely worth the investment. Clean gave us the tools to detox safely. The documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, inspired me, kept me going when I wasn't getting the changes I wanted and it inspired us to get a juicer and start juicing - we do however get more in our diets than just juice.

Now, I will say that I didn't want to do this, but I did want to get better. I just believed that my body was capable of feeling better. I've struggled with food most of my adult life, and I honestly really don't like vegetables. I am the pickiest eater, and I always have been (just ask my parents). Over the past few years I got better, but really if I could live on cheese, pasta, and dessert I would.

Now, I am developing a new found respect for nutrition. I really do understand that you are what you eat. My blood pressure has gone done (it had been border line high), I've lost weight. I'm really do feel like I'm developing a whole new relationship with my body. I'm not sleeping with a tens machine attached to my legs. I don't have RLS when I'm falling asleep, although I do still wake up with it just once during the night. Now I don't even have to get out of bed to get it to stop. I take deep breaths, and do a meditation that helps me fall asleep. Last night when I did that, the very mild RLS I was having stopped pretty much instantly and I went back to sleep. I used to be terrified to go to sleep at night, I would start feeling anxiety when I noticed it was a few hours away from when I would need to sleep. I am beginning to feel confident when I get into bed that I will sleep.

The best thing is that I am loving my body and who I am for what feels like the first time. And John loves his happy wife. He said last night that he feels like he's getting to know me all over again and he loves it. He hasn't seen me this happy since we first started dating, which is when this nightmare was just beginning. John is sleeping better and has more energy as well, and I definitely couldn't do this without him doing it with me. 

I look forward at all the things that John and I want to create with our lives: career, kids, traveling, spending time with our families, and friends. And I actually have the energy to do them. Before, I wanted to do these things but actually doing them was exhausting. Now the world feels full of joy and possibilities. If I didn't get any better than I feel right now, I could live with that. But I believe that my body will continue to heal. I will always be susceptible to RLS, but I believe I can live my life in a way that creates health, and that the RLS will go away as my health continues to increase. It's been a long road, and I wish I hadn't gotten sick, but I am very thankful to have found myself through the process of healing.

Time to Heal Part 3

So, I wish I could say that I declared war on RLS and that was the end of it. I magically got better and all was perfect. Unfortunately, deciding to do something and doing it are two different things. I definitely got worse before I got better.

Here is what I most remember. I decided to see an RLS specialist but there was over a month until I could get in so my general practitioner put me on Lyrica to see if it would help. I had good luck with gabapentin until it stopped working and Lyrica is similar but stronger. Hands down that was the most painful experience of my life. I should have never put those pills in my mouth. I had side effects from the first day on Lyrica. But that was nothing compared to what I went through when I stopped it.

I've never done drugs, I've never smoked a cigarette, and now I avoid prescription medications unless I absolutely have to take them - like antibiotics. I have a new found respect for people going through drug/alcohol detox - I have never been through pain like that before and I never want to again.  We weren't expecting it but for several weeks I couldn't sleep, I could barely eat. And every single part of my body hurt. I hardly got out of bed. I watched tv and I did cross stitches because that helped to take my mind of the pain. And of course, I was also having RLS every night at this time.

The trip to the so called specialist didn't help either. I tried two medications from him and they made me so sick I couldn't eat. And he basically told me I was screwed, RLS patients get worse not better. When he gave me a methadone script though I drew I line in the sand. I kept the script for a long time - I would never use it. It was everything I didn't want. The rest of my life on meds that make me sick, no career, no kids (we were exploring surrogacy because I couldn't be pregnant on those medications), I life of pain and misery.

You gotta love vet school!!

 Medication wasn't healing me, it wasn't going to make me better. Apparently I'm really sensitive to side affects and I refused to live my life this way. I took tramadol through most of the summer - which gives me the worst headache and turns me into a zombie by the way. But I took it while John and I researched every possible cure for RLS. I have a great respect for western medicine, but in this case it failed me. There is was not a magic pill to make me better. At this point I tried everything, scientific or not to get me better so I could start school. Frankly, I would have danced naked under the full moon swinging a rubber chicken around my head if someone had told me it would cure me of RLS.

I started losing weight because John and I found a study linking being overweight with RLS and I was about 20lbs overweight at the time. I took every supplement I could find that anyone said helped there RLS. I started eating better. I meditated, took hot epsom salt baths, and started doing yoga, and I wrote in my journal. I also found that when I had moderate symptoms I could sleep with a TENS machine attached to my legs and it would help with the pain so that I could sleep better. I got off all medications. I would take ambien 1-2 times a week if I had a rough night. And, the weekend before I started classes. I had my first RLS free night of sleep.

It didn't stay gone, but I did get through the year. I made it through the first half of the first semester and then I started gabapentin so that I could finish. I spent Christmas break stopping gabapentin. Everytime I stop a medication the RLS gets worse before it goes back to baseline, so stopping a med is an ordeal in and of itself. Second semester I made it through the entire semester without meds, until finals week.

Each time the RLS has come back we've learned more about getting it gone once and for all. Tomorrow, I'll tell you about where I am at now and how I've finally gotten to a place of healing.

First day of veterinary school - Yes, it's cheesy to take a picture, but it was for my parents :)

Time to Heal Part 2

So, my last post ended when I started having RLS on a daily basis. I'll get to where I went from there, but first I want to do my best to describe what RLS feels like. You're getting into bed after a long day. You're sleepy. You curl up under you warm blanket and rest your head gently on the pillow in your favorite sleeping position. You start to drift off to sleep. But before you get to sleep, you feel this tickle in your knee (or where ever RLS occurs for you). It won't go away, you have to move your legs. Now your awake again. Moving helped a bit so you settle back in, but there it goes again, that sensation in your legs, and the only thing that helps is to move them. So you move them. And the rest of the night goes like that. At first I would sleep some, but it was a very light and fitful sleep and I was always exhausted the next day. So after a couple of weeks of this, I went to see my doctor. He prescribed medicine that I was to take about an hour for bed. It worked, I had no more RLS. For the next few years that's all I needed. Until the meds stopped working and that 's when the real nightmare began.

Medicine is great when it works, but in my case the medicine masked the underlying problem that was causing the RLS rather than correcting it. I couldn't tell you what that problem is, although I have my suspicions. The causes of RLS are variable and not well understood. Just before John and I started dating (so over 3 years ago), I found I needed to take my medicine early and early in order to get any affect, and when I told this to my doctor he increased my dosage. I remember one night, John, my parents and I, went to dinner at Z Tejas (I love that place), I had taken my pill before dinner in the hopes that I would be able to get to sleep without RLS, but half way through dinner I started feeling really sick and nearly passed out on the table. I believe John and I ended up leaving, but I don't really remember. My doctor eventually switched my medication but that didn't help.

Over the next 2 years I tried 8 different medications to help the RLS. At best they would have minimal side effects and would work, but the effect would where off after 3 months and I would be back to square one. At worst they would make me horribly sick with side effects. I felt like a zombie, a shell of my former self. I don't really know what the people around me thought about all of this. I'm actually a very happy and enthusiastic person. I really do love life - but I really couldn't be that person. I was in to much pain. Most days, not showing my emotions was a good thing. It mostly took every ounce of energy that I had to get through the day without completely falling a part. That's not who I am, I was just scared and in pain.

I felt trapped in an extremely painful body and I had no escape and no real hope. There were days I could barely function. It got to the point that I never knew if I was going to sleep or not. John would sometimes have to sleep on the couch because even when I would sleep, my legs with twitch so badly it would wake him up. I felt like I hadn't even reached 30 years old but my life was over. I could see a lifetime of intense pain stretching out before me and I was really not ok with that. I dreaded going to bed each night.

This is me on my 30th birthday roughly a month be for launching a full out war on RLS. 

During this time I was accepted to veterinary school at Texas A&M. I was thrilled and terrified at the same time. Any normal person would be, but I was honestly not sure if I could physically do it. In spring of 2011, I was at my worst. I was looking ahead at where this illness was taking me and I was terrified. At this rate, I would not be able to work much less be a veterinarian. It was at this point that I decided to wage a war on RLS. I had no idea where I would end up, but I knew I couldn't keep going the way I was going. I left my job in April, instead of July so that I could spend that summer finding a way to start school in the fall. I'll continue with that story tomorrow. Obviously I was successful since I have finished my first year of veterinary school.

Time to Heal

I know I haven't written a blog post in ages. But since I've been getting a lot of questions about what I'm doing and why, so I decided to write a post about it. Even if no one ever reads it, I figured it would be therapeutic for me to write it. And who knows, maybe it will help someone. This will probably be made up of multiple posts over the next few days because I want to make sure I cover everything. This is also difficult for me to write so I want to take my time. My parents, my husband, my sister, and a couple of close friends are who I talk to, telling others beyond that is hard for me. I usually only do it when I have to, which usually means that my illness is interfering with my life and I have to tell that person why. Or I'm explaining why I've spent this summer and last summer resting instead of gaining work experience. I'm really trying not to sugar coat anything here because I want you to understand what it means for me to be able to say that I feel good and right at this moment, I feel amazing and I am sleeping better. You will hopefully understand the magnitude of that statement as I tell you about me.

Today I think I'll start by telling you about the disease that I have been suffering from. I have Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). It sounds like a rather harmless disease actually. Silly even. Definitely not a disease that should cause serious problems. Where the pain of RLS occurs and how it is described varies from person to person as does it's severity, so I will tell you what it means for me. I get a painful, creepy crawly feeling in my joints. Originally it only affected my knees. Currently it affects my knees and my hips and it has affected my elbows at times as well. I also have an intense desire to move my legs and also my arms if they are being affected as well. Along with RLS I have periodic leg movement disorder (PLMD) which means I twitch. My legs move on there own. The twitching actually started first and was probably why most of my adult life I felt like I could never get enough sleep. My legs twitching would wake me up and keep me from getting quality sleep no matter how long I stayed in bed - I just didn't know yet that was happening.

I really couldn't tell you when I first developed RLS. I remember when I was a child I would occasionally get this intense aching in my knees. My pediatrician said it was growing pains but I never grew out of it so it was probably RLS. Like I said though it was occasional so there was no need to do anything about it. And it didn't keep me from sleeping. I slept fine as a child and through high school. I remember those days of blissfully peaceful sleep very fondly. And I am determined to heal and get back to sleeping that well. Once I reached my 20's and possibly in high school as well, I would get RLS that is like what I have now. I would get this sensation in my knees when I was overly tired. Especially if I was trapped somewhere and unable to walk around. I once deliberately went to sleep during an Austin Symphony concert because I was tired that day and sitting there was becoming very painful. In those taking a nap would make the RLS symptoms go away. As I was falling asleep I would just stretch and move my legs a bit and I was fine when I woke up and at that time the RLS didn't interfere with my sleep. Well, it actually probably was because I really never felt like I got enough sleep and just always felt tired. But my doctor couldn't find anything wrong with me so I didn't push the issue. I thought that was just how I was supposed to feel - tired all the time. I thought that was adulthood. And until my mid twenties, that is how I continued.  Until the RLS came permanently and for 2 weeks I slept horribly and then decided I had to go see my doctor because there was no way I could continue with nightly RLS that wouldn't go away. And on that note, I'm going to stop cause this is getting long and has taken me quite a while to write. I will leave you with a picture of John and I from our recent trip to San Antonio. This is us at the San Antonio Zoo and there are pink flamingos in the background.

Happy Birthday Rusty!

So June 1st was my dog Rusty's 2nd birthday. In honor of the occasion we baked a cake.

And I do believe that this is one of the best cakes I've ever tasted. It's a Kentucky Butter Cake and you can find the recipe at Allrecipes. I really can't wait for an excuse to make this cake again. 

Here are Rusty and Torchy enjoying a slice of birthday cake. Of course we made them wait politely before they were allowed to eat it.

 Rusty took time to savor his piece.

But I think Torchy swallowed his piece whole.

And foster pup Parker got his piece too.

Happy Birthday John!!! (Oh yeah... and Happy Cinco de Mayo)

Today is John's Birthday and in honor of the occasion we made our favorite dinner...

It's a Rachel Ray recipe - Mini Meatloaves and Smashed Potatoes with Cream Cheese. Delicious!! I forgot to take a picture of our plates on the table so you'll have to settle for the ones that were left in the pan.

Next we made chocolate chip cookies. They are cooling right now and I can't wait to eat them. I was all for just eating the dough and saving the cook time, but John likes his cookies cooked so we put them in the oven. I did sample the dough though so I know they're good.

Mmmmm... Cookie Dough :)

Cookies are ready to go in the oven

Here we are waiting to eat some cookies :)

All in all it has been a great birthday dinner. John's been working very hard finishing up his semester and I think he appreciated the break from studying. We of course miss all our family and friends and we wish we could have shared this day with you but we are glad we can share the moments of our lives through this blog. Oh and the cookies turned out amazing. If anyone would like recipes let me know!

YIPPEE!!!

If anyone is wondering what exactly I am so excited about, I got into veterinary school!!!!!!

I will start my first year of school at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine in the fall and I am very excited. It has definitely been a long road getting here but I wouldn't change a thing.

Here is a congratulations gift from my wonderful parents.

So it looks like in a few years John and I will be Dr. and Dr. Beeson :)