1/24/11 Monday: Nick: "Your skin feels like a water balloon" & AYURVEDIC DOCTOR APPOINTMENT

Totally freaked out.  Last night after I got done stretching I gave myself a massage.  I do this every day, rub my legs and arms during abhyanga, but the focus of abhyanga is not to penetrate or rub the muscles, and last night's massage was for that reason alone.  What I found terrified me.  As I rubbed my biceps and calves I felt nothing...no knots, no tension, nothing.  Not even an inkling muscle mass.  It was just "watery" skin.  I turned to Nick and asked him to feel my arms and tell me he felt, and he said, "I've been noticing a change in the way your body feels for the past 3 weeks...your skin feels like a water balloon...it's really loose and soft."  Loose and soft like a 90 year old gramma who hasn't moved from her chair in 10 years.  He said he noticed it first when he put lotion on my back and my skin just rippled like water.  No wonder he said I was losing my ass a few weeks ago...I'm losing all of my muscle tissue!!!  This is not normal for me.  My friends will joke about the "6 pack abs" that I do 'nothing' to maintain.  Even during the few stints where I put down all forms of working out for a few months, the muscles in my body stay firm.  I have noticed that my yoga practices have gotten more and more difficult, but I continue to do them.  I work out at the very least 4 times a week.  I have been feeling weak for so long, but didn't realize the muscles were melting away until I felt the massage from my "hand's standpoint" instead of my body's standpoint...if that makes sense. 

I'm not going to lie, the first thing I did this morning was to call and cancel my appointment with the Ayurvedic doctor for today and try to make an appointment with my M.D.  He had nothing available so I kept the Ayurvedic doctor's appointment and scheduled with my M.D. for tomorrow. 

In the waiting room of Dr. Teitelbaum's office I met a man who had come in because he had been sick for 7 years and had not gotten help from western medicine.  He was with his father.  They had never seen this doctor before and when his father asked me what my experience had been with her, I said I was new, but I
felt the same regarding my western medical treatments.  The father said she had come highly recommended by two friends that had avoided serious operations (one to remove a thyroid and one that supposedly needed spinal surgery) by seeing Dr. Teitelbaum.  He said both of his friends were symptom free after 3 months.  I couldn't help but feel somewhat reassured by the information he shared.


When  Dr. Teitelbaum's called me back into the office I immediately told her I was freaked.  She had me lie down on the chiropractor chair so she could read my pulse. I asked her what my pulse "said" and she replied that it was very hot.  She was having another doctor "shadow" her so she spoke to both of us when she said, "Joy is a new patient, all of my patients come to me with this heated pulse."  She had the other doctor feel my pulse and she agreed.  She also said that many of her new patients come in feeling worse than when they first came to her, but this is temporary and normal while detoxing. Then she checked my yeast using the kinesiology technique she used before and said I have gotten rid of 2/3's of my yeast "which is great."  She then said not to worry about my muscle loss...that she's seen countless patients with problems like mine and this is a symptom they ALL complain about.  She told me I was not absorbing my vitamins because my gut is hostile territory, and that is why I have no muscle mass.  Like the first time I met with her, she said with conviction, "Your symptoms will all be gone in 6 months." 

She gave me a recipe to make yogurt and said that I should eat it at lunch.  She also said that I really need protein but because the gut systems are not functioning correctly the liver is not doing it's job and the protein I need isn't being absorbed.  She said the protein needs to bypass the liver to be absorbed so she gave me a recipe for the "protein green concept."  Basically you cook a protein in a pot, add greens at the end and when it is finished you blend it together in the blender and eat like baby food.  Yum. :-/  This is supposed to "1) make the dish easily digestible, 2) have the anti-oxidant properties of the leafy greens surround the protein to protect it from oxidizing prior to digestion and 3) create hem-iron, a precursor to hemoglobin." We'll see.

I left her office feeling slightly relieved, but I still can't wait to see my MD tomorrow.

Notes from the day:
Aside from the scare earlier, I had a really great day.  Nick's childhood friend came to dinner tonight with her fiance and we had a really great time!  If you are reading...so great seeing you guys and can't WAIT to do it again!!

Food:
9:30 am eggs with parsley and 2 pieces of gluten free toast.
12:45 lunch:  2 pieces chicken satay, zucchini and sweet potatoes from whole foods
6:00 snack: baby coconut water
8:00 dinner, late.  Butternut squash dal and zucchini with cumin and tomato (nightshades:-/)
9:00 dessert:  really good apple crumb with organic vanilla ice-cream.

Recipe for apple crumb:  Saute 5 apples in 6-8" heavy cast iron pan with 2 TBS butter, turbinado sugar, cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg to taste.  In a bowl mix about 3/4 cup oats, 3/4 cup namaste gluten free flour, 1/2 cup toasted walnuts (crushed) with more cinnamon, sugar, cardamom and nutmeg.  Add 2 TBS butter to the flour and mix together with hands, mixing butter into the flour.  Pour on top of apples, add some melted butter to the top if you like then bake in preheated oven at 300 until top becomes crispy.  SOOO good. 



Head completely foggy, weak, tired, out of it, but mood is good.