March 24, 2022 by Elizabeth Milo

Many symptoms. Many tests.

I’m going to start with the last things first:

In the next month, I am having a colonoscopy under anesthesia, a fluoroscopic barium defecography, an anorectal manometry, an ACTH (Cortrosyn) stimulation test, a transvaginal ultrasound, a thoracic MRI, skin prick allergy testing, a teeth cleaning and exam, an eye exam, and two blood draws. As well as trying to do IVIG every week and regular online doctors’ appointments.

What I really want to do is cancel everything, drive to the desert and live in peace.

The one thing I know for sure is that the more I rock this body’s boat, the worse things get, so I usually freeze and do nothing. But, lately, there seems to be a new mini-crisis most days, even though I took a long break from everything during the Omicron spike. It was lovely and peaceful for a while, but my body has been scaring me this month.

One day last week, my legs started to shake and then just buckled with no warning and I couldn’t walk. I had been moving a side table, so I guess I injured something, but I didn’t feel an injury, I just suddenly couldn’t walk and it is always in the back of my mind that I have a tethered spinal cord and leg/gait issues may get worse (many symptoms — like nerve pain — that could be attributed to tethered cord have gotten better, so I’m not convinced that “detethering” surgery is the answer for me).

Over the following days, unusual deep pain traveled from my buttocks to the back of my thighs to my left calf and then disappeared. During that time, I became desperate for a house with no stairs. I bought a bedside commode. I gave up a foster dog with whom I’d already fallen in love. Losing the limited mobility I have is terrifying. My husband would have to manage so much more and my quality of life would quickly plummet considering the energy it takes to keep my intestines working and food moving through. Not to mention losing dog joy, which is almost all joy in my world.

This week has been awful whack-a-crisis every day. Over the weekend, I was hit with terrible vertigo. This is one of the most sickening feelings — like your eyes are tumbling around in their orbits and you have to keep very, very still to stop from groaning outloud. It got mostly better the next day, but I still feel like I’m walking on a ship.

Monday, I had a pelvic spasm or bowel cramp so painful, I thought it was going to trigger a vasovagal collapse because I started to tremble and got weak and breathless.

Tuesday, I spent the day on the dog bed in front of the fireplace in a 76 degree room, shaking, chilled to the bone, with blood pressure all over the place, trying not to black out. I thought I’d left these episodes behind.

Yesterday, I developed an extremely bad right-sided migraine, which woke me out of sleep, panting from the pain and dreaming of IV narcotics — which I’m allergic to, but the pain was bad enough that I thought it wouldn’t matter if I stopped breathing, I’d let them inject anything to take the pain away.

So — it’s like that. In 14 days, I’ve gone on 3 scooter walks with Penny and I’m going out of my mind, desperate to get my slow, predictable days back.

In the midst of all this, I tried to continue weekly IVIG, which is undoubtedly the cause of some of this. I don’t know why it has turned on me and I don’t have words to describe the despair if I lose the one treatment that has helped me so profoundly.

I also saw another pelvic floor surgeon who was so rough while fitting me with a pessary, that I cried out involuntarily in her office. Her exam wasn’t even that bad in the grand scheme of things, but I was mute on the drive home, feeling traumatized by the brusque anal/vaginal invasiveness of it all. I only managed to keep that torture device inside me for 3 days because it made urinating very difficult. $100 down the drain and the only reason I was able to remove it was because I joined a FB pessary support group to get tips. Thank dog for other patients!

My biggest fear at the moment is the looming colonoscopy. I’ve been rescheduling it for 7 years. Before covid, I was cancelling out of fear — feeling the information gleaned from this test was outweighed by the risks. Just in the last 2 years, I’ve cancelled 8 times. They were legitimate reasons — covid spikes and my body being too unstable — but my GI doctor is frustrated and I still don’t feel confident that this is the right decision, even though it’s now 4 days away. My blood pressure is chronically low. I can’t get it to budge above around 85/55 — often lower. I wanted to try Fludrocortisone (a corticosteroid that can boost blood volume by increasing sodium in the body) before doing this procedure, but it takes me an excruciatingly long time to first get the nerve to try new medications, then to find a good day when I feel stable enough and then it takes weeks of eating little slivers to work up to a meaningful dose. It didn’t happen, along with dozens of other meds in my cupboard, waiting to be opened.

I was going to give myself IV fluids at home during the colonoscopy clean-out (I do my own peripheral IVs), but, in the last year, I’ve been having scary episodes and just this week realised they might be from IV saline. My vision starts to darken, like I’m going to black out, I get very cold and shake badly, my blood pressure spikes — this can go on for hours. It’s always the day after IVIG, so I stopped my infusions for 3 months, but then it happened when I did IV fluids without IVIG. I thought it must be the saline coupled with Midodrine, the low blood pressure medication I was on, so I stopped taking Midodrine and for 6 weeks, I was sure that was the answer. Until this week when it happened again.

My blood pressure has been dropping very low during IVIG, so, on top of the liter of IV saline, I’ve been drinking around 3 liters of salt/electrolyte water on infusion days (and eating a ton of salty snacks). It didn’t help boost my BP during the infusion, but I had another one of those episodes the day after. It almost feels like volume overload because my eyes get swollen, my BP spikes and I feel breathless, but my “high” blood pressure is still low by other people’s standards. During this episode the other day it was spiking to 107/74. How do you explain to a doctor that you’re in a “hypertensive” crisis when your BP is still lower than normal?

So, I’m about to start a dehydrating colon cleanout when I’m already weak from chronic hypotension, hemodynamically unstable, battling presyncope, having pelvic floor spasms and bowel pain, prone to hypoglycemia, my heart is tripping all over the place, and my brain feels like it’s going to explode out of my right eye. If I get through the prep without having to call the paramedics, I’m then meant to volunteer to let a stranger inject powerful sedatives and painkillers into my vein and hope that I don’t go into anaphylaxis or have my vitals bottom out. Or catch covid, for that matter, since vaccination is too risky, yet I have a primary immune deficiency, which feels like the worst combination during a pandemic.

Being released from the hospital and coming home almost feels the most reckless because all hell breaks loose in my body AFTER the fact. It’s in the middle of the night or the day after that the adrenaline wears off and the real problems start. I wish they’d admit me afterwards for observation, honestly, but it would be ludicrous to even ask. These are routine procedures that everyone gets done, after all.

But it doesn’t feel worth it. It feels dangerous. Which is part of why I’m writing this, I guess. I got out my advanced directive and durable POA. FFS.

We also found out this week that my healthy rock of a husband has a brain aneurysm and will need surgery. Surprise! That’s a story for a different time. But, really, forget all of my stuff. If anyone out there is going to send good thoughts/juju/prayers this way, please send them directly at my husband’s brain.

February 10, 2019 by Elizabeth Milo

First 911 call since being sick.

We had to call an ambulance this morning for — are you ready for this unbelievable fact? — THE FIRST TIME SINCE I’VE BEEN SICK (absolutely sick and disabled by M.E.; I was fully functional with MCAS for a decade beforehand). And I need the help of all you big brains to figure out the mechanism behind what happened. This is a long post because I want to track exactly what happened. I appreciate your reading this and your thoughts.

My main question is: What can cause sudden bradycardia and loss of consciousness, but not significant hypotension (nor hypertension)? Here’s the back story:

I have a history of anaphylaxis and it almost always happened during my period, usually on the first day, usually after drinking alcohol. I also have a history of collapsing at the start of menstruation, this happened many more times than the full-blown anaphylaxis and often seemed to be triggered by a bowel movement in the morning. The collapsing we’ve called vasovagal syncope, the theory being: vagus nerve triggered by bowel pressure + very reactive day = collapse. I sometimes lost consciousness, but I always was immobile, grey pallor, yellow lips, glazed-over, unfocused eyes, covered in sweat, heavy breathing, hypotensive, bradycardic. What was NOT typical of vasovagal syncope, according to doctors, was that my body didn’t bounce back: my HR did not rise to compensate for the low BP and my BP didn’t come up once I was supine. It usually resulted in ambulance trips to the ER for fluids and at least once I got IV morphine for severe dysmenorhhea (I can’t have any morphine-derived meds anymore).

These were my main health issues before M.E., I felt normal otherwise and pretty much blew them off. Incredibly, they haven’t happened since becoming sick in 2011. My dysmenorhhea actually got much better. Since being sick, I’ve often had bad mast cell reactions and worsening of ME symptoms on the first day of my period, but no collapsing with my husband terrified, calling 911. I thought it was because I’m more conscientious about hydrating and salt-loading.

I was spotting yesterday. My period came on in earnest in the middle of the night, but what disturbed my sleep repeatedly was a viral feeling of sick chills every time I changed positions. Chills and shakes enough to wake me. Then the period cramps started, much, much worse than normal, incredibly painful on the left side. The only thing I could think was maybe it was a ruptured ovarian cyst. I was moaning and crying out with the cyclical cramps, trying to find a position that eased it, my dog Riley clawing at me and burrowing under my body to help. My husband got me a hot water bottle, 2 acetaminophen and a benadryl. Then I took a turn for the worse: I was shaking badly, became nauseous, very weak, drenched in sweat (all the symptoms listed above). We took my vitals: BP was 86/49 (low, but normal for me), temperature was 97 (low, but normal for me), oxygen 96, but my HR was 48 — very abnormal for me. I’m usually 68ish at rest.

My husband got me apple juice in case I was hypoglycemic (it was too much of an emergency situation to check my blood sugar), salt water for my blood pressure, and started to call 911, but I said no. What could they do? Besides charge us thousands of dollars that we don’t have. I’d taken the 2 medications I could take, I could give myself fluids at home with my safe saline, and I didn’t want the two of us sitting around in a building full of flu and measles for hours on end, waiting for blood work and a vaginal ultrasound that would show nothing. But I kept getting worse and knew I was about to lose consciousness (even though I was still in bed and hadn’t even tried to stand up). I was starting to be unresponsive, so my husband called the paramedics.

By the time they got there (3 emergency response vehicles, 6 EMTs!), I’d come back from the edge a bit and was able to talk. They were concerned with my low BP, but I assured them it was normal for me. They did a cursory check of my heart and were concerned about the bradycardia, but said they didn’t see any rhythm issues. They tried to persuade me to go to the hospital, but I said no and signed a waiver. They didn’t want to speculate beyond dehydration (they pointed out that people aren’t realising how dehydrated they are in the current very dry Seattle Snowpocalypse) and possibly needing tests of my reproductive organs. She said, “It’s alarming to lose consciousness while lying down, it’s alarming how low your blood pressure is and it’s alarming that your heart rate isn’t responding to your low blood pressure.” <– That’s what I want to brainstorm.

It was definitely caused by the first day of my period, as usual, but what is the physiological mechanism? What might typically cause sudden bradycardia? What can cause a low HR + low BP (if you take the paramedic’s position)? Or what can cause a low HR + normal BP (if you consider my BP is normally low)? How does a reaction to my period explain this? Could it be 100% pain-induced? If it’s a mast cell reaction, I would expect a high HR and an abnormal BP. Why would I pass out when I’d been lying down the last 9 hours? Why would I pass out with my BP around my normal? Can a low HR cause loss of consciousness without BP dropping significantly? Is this cardiac syncope? Could I have cardiac syncope without knowing I have heart issues? Or autoimmune autonomic dysfunction? Or, once again, adrenal insufficiency? Does losing consciousness usually make breathing labored?

By the time the paramedics left, I was very shaky, but I knew I wouldn’t pass out and my husband helped me get up and hook up my own fluids. I went to bed freezing, with 2 hot water bottles, all my clothes on, under covers in a warm room and it took hours to stop being chilled to the bone (why was I freezing?). When I woke up, finally warm, my HR was 76 — almost 30 bpm higher! I’m still shaky, have a very bad headache, and my heart is jumpy with some palpitations, but completely different from the half-dead, exsanguinated feeling of the bradycardia.

Any ideas are appreciated. I have a routine follow-up appointment with my GP on Tuesday and I’d like to ask her for any tests that might be important. Cardiac work up?

Lastly, I want to mention that it’s REALLY hard not to believe in retaliatory chronic illness gods — yesterday I started writing my first blog update in almost 5 months, it is incredibly positive (“my baseline is higher! I’m able to do more!” etc.) and I stopped myself from writing my usual “gods, cover your ears” and “knock on wood, toba toba” because I’m stable, I’m not as fearful of being knocked down, it’s superstitious nonsense… and then this happens… the first time in 8 years… It just seems a little coincidental. And makes me sad.

January 5, 2015 by Elizabeth Milo

Mast Cell Madness.

I’m officially terrified by my mast cells because Christmas heralded another sick, sick few days. Almost as sick as Thanksgiving, so I’d have to say the 2nd sickest night of my life. However, this time, it all started with my tongue swelling up, which gave me more insight into the mechanism behind it.

I sometimes wonder if all my health issues stem from mast cell activation syndrome. I can tell the difference between ME symptoms and mast cell reactions, but, still, there’s this little seed in my brain that says, what if they’re at the root of EVERYTHING and I should be spending my time finding a doctor with MCAD expertise on this side of the country (it doesn’t seem to exist in Seattle)? I don’t do this because I am generally stable. On a day-to-day basis, I’m not having reactions — unless, of course, many of my chronic symptoms have mast cell degranulation at their core and I just don’t realise it.

My health issues started with full-blown anaphylaxis, out of the blue, 9 days after my 28th birthday. Doctors were hopeless and gave no advice back then, not even daily preventative antihistamines. The common denominator was alcohol (but not every time I drank, so it was confusing), so, after the last trip to the emergency room in Dublin, where I almost died, I finally quit drinking and haven’t touched a drop in 13 years.

Before that, I had swelling in my eyes and hands and a severe edema episode once or twice that I didn’t really think much about. I linked it to Asian food, so stopped eating that and MSG and didn’t look any further into it. This was eventually diagnosed as autoimmune urticaria and angioedema and I was told to take Zyrtec, but didn’t want to medicate daily for an intermittent condition.

I’ve always had trouble with my periods — crippling dysmenorrhea — but they got progressively worse until I collapsed with syncope and shock 13 days after my 32nd birthday and was taken off in the ambulance. For 6 years, no doctor gave me any advice until, finally, an OBGYN told me to dump salt on my tongue. This doesn’t stop the collapses, but it certainly helps. These episodes continue to happen randomly to this day, always on the first day of my period and are, without a doubt, mast cell mediated, presumably low-grade anaphylaxis (very low blood pressure and pulse, bowel problems, syncope, shortness of breath).

I have a spot in my throat that has itched for years. It was actually the thing that lead to diagnosis of my toxic thyroid goiters and Grave’s Disease because I mentioned the itch to some random doctor who palpated my throat. I’ve now realised it signals reactivity in my body at a very low level. It’s almost always there, but, when it’s not or when it’s very bad, I pay attention.

I was flushing badly for years, thinking I had developed bizarre self-consciousness, but the self-consciousness was actually a result from flushing and having people point it out! When I was diagnosed with Grave’s, I thought it was a symptom of that, but it never went away after ablation.

Of course, in retrospect, there have always been issues I have dealt with, which may or may not originate with mast cells: thyroid problems and Raynaud’s can be a result of mast cell disorders. Also, constipation, headaches, low blood pressure, and temperature sensitivity (all of which got much worse in recent years). Finally, many of my ME symptoms could also be from MCAS: fatigue, joint and tissue pain, eye pain, vision problems, vertigo, episodes of low body temperature, scent/odour/chemical sensitivity, sinus problems, cognitive impairment, hair loss, decreased bone density (I have osteopenia, on the cusp of osteoporosis), shortness of breath, medication reactions, malabsorption, and tinnitus. See a list of signs and symptoms here.

It would be wonderful to be able to manage and control any of these issues, but none of them scares me like the nights I’ve had recently, not even full-blown anaphylaxis. I’ve tried so hard to figure out my triggers, but they are moving targets. Tongue swelling and angioedema are obvious, as is the very specific breathing difficulty you get with anaphylaxis (it is nothing like asthma or wheezing from an infection). I don’t get daily hives and itching like many people. My reactions now are all about the histamine bucket and completely dependent on where I am in my cycle and what is happening in my life. I may be able to eat anything one week and then suspect that those same foods are giving me sinus trouble, insomnia and a jaw ache a different week. My chronic daily headaches, tinnitus, brain fog and exhaustion could be from food choices, but I’ve never been able to pin down any causation. My diet is very low-histamine compared to normal people and how it used to be, but I still allow myself chocolate, coconut, store-bought chips, beef, almost all fruit, including dried and many things that others avoid. Could these things be contributing to my problems? Yes, but, without a definite correlation, I don’t want to eliminate foods. Once you’ve experienced anaphylaxis, “reactions” like a runny nose, constipation or aching hands are quite ignorable. The only thing that consistently caused a reaction was alcohol and my periods. And, now I can say with certainty, holidays and events, no matter how careful I am.

—————————–

I prepared for Christmas over the course of a month and a half, slowly bought presents and wrapped them, slowly wrote some Christmas cards, slowly got the spare room ready for my sister, slowly did laundry — over the course of weeks! Didn’t overexert myself at all. There was no excitement, no activities. My sister and her small dog came over, we watched tv and opened presents. I had rested multiple times throughout the day and the only not normal thing I ate was half a tiny piece of fresh King salmon, which had been brought in off the docks that same morning and, I was told, caught the day before.

My tongue started to swell up after dinner. By the late evening, I had gotten upset for really no good reason (which has historically happened with my mast cell reactions) and was flushing. I had a bad reaction to about 15mg of Benadryl a week or two prior, so I was scared to take a decent dose on this night. I bit a dye-free capsule and put a drop on my swollen tongue and went to bed. At 2am, I awoke with the same evil that I experienced on Thanksgiving and the night after starting Cromolyn (before going to the AirBnb rentals back in September — it was a few days before my period that time, too). I was shaking so badly, I couldn’t lift the water glass, I was drenched in sweat and had weird runaway chills coursing through my body. I crawled on my hands and knees to the bathroom, which scared the shit out of me because, through all the worst of ME, that’s only happened once before. I fell into harrowing nightmares and woke up gasping for breath over and over, feeling poisoned and infected. I dreamt that I was sick and dying and my husband wasn’t paying attention or taking it seriously. I dreamt that I was sick and dying and my mother laughed at me (this isn’t remotely based in truth, this is my terrified mind not knowing how or where to get help). I dreamt that my dog’s neck was broken and I was carrying him to get help, but I was sick and dying and couldn’t do it. And, finally, I dreamt that I was lying on the floor begging my husband over and over: “Please kill me. Please kill me. Please kill me.” I woke up sobbing and so wrung out.

That morning, my period came 5 days early. You better believe, if I had known my period was going to arrive Christmas Day, I might have cancelled Christmas. Or at least postponed present opening for a day. And definitely not eaten even the freshest salmon.

In the past, my anaphylaxis episodes went like this:
My friend A’s birthday party.
My friend C’s birthday party.
Oktoberfest.
Easter party.
C used to joke that I was allergic to fun. I can’t believe he was right. I collapsed and had the paramedics called twice while my mother was staying with us and, also, when my best friend was here from Ireland — both were “events”. I started to get paranoid that, psychologically, I was somehow causing my system to crash when there were visitors. But, every single one of these times, I had my period. There were only a few anaphylactic episodes that I can remember when it wasn’t the first day of my menstrual cycle. EVENT + MENSTRUATION = MAST CELL MELTDOWN. But I think I only really and truly started to believe this 100% on Christmas.

So, Christmas day is a total haze. I crawled downstairs a few times to eat and try to put on a good face, but I don’t remember much and dozed most of the day. Like Thanksgiving and September, however, I bounced back quicker than I could have ever anticipated. That night I kept marveling, “How am I speaking? How am I sitting up? How am I alive?” When it’s bad, you honestly want to die. When it ebbs, the human spirit kicks back in shockingly quickly and you just get on with it, until the next time when you are surprised anew at just how bad the bad is. I didn’t even really modify my diet. I continued to eat my almond butter, coconut ice cream and drink bone broth and tea (all high-ish histamine). If anything, I felt more, Oh fuck it, how much worse could it be? At this stage, I’m much more scared of menstruation and engaging in any sort of event — even one in my house, in my pajamas, with only a single guest.

I am currently putting together an informational kit (in a bag that was donated to me by a member of one of my groups), so my husband has something to grab in the event of an emergency. My dilemma is that I’ve managed to avoid drugs all this time (never had to use my EpiPen), so I have no way to premedicate for things like plane flights, dental work or necessary procedures like a CT scan or colonoscopy (which my doctor has wanted me to get for years, but I refuse because I’m worried about reactions). I have no safe protocol. 13 years ago, I got IV diphenhydromine for anaphylaxis, now I react to 15mg of Benadryl! 5 years ago, I had IV morphine for dysmennorhea, now my breathing shuts down with a crumb of hydrocodone or codeine. What would happen in a real emergency? If I need surgery? Knock on wood, toba toba, ptooey, ptooey. Once I have everything compiled, I will post it here.

Having said all that, I’m really in quite a good place, feeling happy and hopeful about the new year. Maybe because I realise that these reactions are mast cell degranulations and not ME relapses and that takes some of the fear away. Somehow dying from anaphylaxis is less scary than becoming permanently bedbound with ME. Perhaps only people with both illnesses will understand that. So, here’s what I did New Year’s Eve:

As well as resilience, forgiveness, positivity and optimism, I’d also like to request that 2015 doles out truckloads of health, wealth and happiness to all of us. That’s all. That’s not too much to ask, right? 🙂

December 4, 2014 by Elizabeth Milo

Thanksgiving Tsunami

The last 10 days have been a bit harrowing. Different symptoms crashing down like waves each day. First let me tell you about our early Thanksgiving dinner with just the two of us.

Everything was made from scratch with the freshest ingredients. The only thing we didn’t do is grind the almond flour ourselves. Here’s what we had:

The turkey was pastured, free-range, organic, fresh (not frozen) from Rain Shadow Meats, our specialty butcher here in Seattle. They had 400 turkeys in a truck parked outside their shop and my husband tells me it was a chaotic scene picking it up. The smallest bird they had was 12 pounds and we didn’t want to store it, waiting for Thursday because of histamines, so we put it in the oven as soon as my husband got home. He roasted it upside down, so it’s a funny looking photo (and these aren’t the greatest photos becasue it was dark in our house):

I eat roasted root veg and mashed sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts and other green veg all the time, so I decided, for a treat, to have a “stuffing” and cranberry sauce to go with my turkey, while my husband made himself potatoes and corn. The stuffing was based on Mickey Trescott’s recipe, but I left out the mushrooms and cranberries. I added fresh rosemary, parsley and a few cut up dried cherries for a zing every few mouthfuls. I also made a paleo “cornbred” (no corn in it, but it has that grainy quality from the almond flour) and added cubes to the stuffing becasue — stuffing without bread in it? Really?

The bread itself was delicious and I had a piece slathered in butter, while my husband got to eat those soft, squishy pull-apart rolls that I love so much.

I also made cranberry sauce from fresh, organic cranberries, fresh ginger, apple juice, orange juice and a touch of honey. I have never made cranberry sauce before and had no idea how easy it was. Why would anyone buy it in a tin?

The gravy was made from chicken bone broth, herbs and onions. You blend it with a hand blender and the onions thicken it.

All in all, it was a lovely meal and would have been even lovlier if we had been surrounded by friends and family and laughter and chatting.

Then the tsunami hit.

12 hours after I wrote my last happy, chatty post, I awoke from sleep at 3am, the sickest I have ever been in my life. I know there’s a lot of “sickest I have ever been”s in my world, but this truly was. Not once, in 3 years of ME, when all my worst symptoms happen at night, have I woken my husband to help me. Well, Sunday night, I had no choice. I crawled on my hands and knees to the toilet, shaking violently and drenched in cold sweat. Cold sweats are diffferent than the night sweats I experience. They are what happens right before I collapse with vasovagal syncope. So, it scared me. I thought I was going to lose consciousness at any moment and I was so parched I needed water asap. I crawled back to the bedroom and got my phone and woke my husband sleeping downstairs. He got me water, salt, my blood sugar tester, my blood pressure monitor, thermometer, charcoal and Benadryl. I didn’t know what was happening, honestly. How could this be a reaction to the healthist and freshest Thanksgiving dinner I’d ever had? What has happened to my body that I now react to anything random?

All my vitals were low, but not low enough to be causing the sickness. Once again, I felt poisoned, only this time I hadn’t taken Cromolyn or any other new drug or supplement. My gut told me it was the onion gravy. It was a lot of onions and I know I have digestive issues with raw onions. It could have been a reaction to the onions themselves or it could have been a form of sulfur poisoning. The meal was very sulfur-heavy and I know my CBS mutation* causes problems because it’s shown up in my ammonia, taurine and homocysteine blood tests.

Yes, when it comes to histamine, it could have been the small amount of orange juice in the cranberry sauce or the few dried cherries or, if you belive my nutritionist, the caulifower in the stuffing, but I don’t think so. I eat dried fruit every day and I’ve eaten an orange without problems. Besides, it didn’t feel like one of my histamine reactions. It was much, much worse. If it wasn’t onion/sulphur poisoning, I would say it was the almond flour. I have reintroduced almond butter, but not almonds themselves or almond flour.

I never got back to sleep that night and rested carefully the whole of Monday. After saying in my last post that no matter how I’m feeling I make it to see my physical therapist, I had my husband call and cancel our appointment that day. I ate like a shaky, poisonened sick person, trying to choose foods that would have the least impact on my body in every way, but this started the next symptom wave: blood sugar issues. I had rice, carrots, cucumber and sweet potato for breakfast. My blood sugar was 70 before I ate and 170 an hour after I ate. I had a chicken salad, parsnips, butternut squash drenched in butter, but stayed away from the chips and chocloate and broth I eat every day.

Tuesday, I was 2 pounds lighter — after one day of not eating the high-caloric crap I snack on to maintain my weight. And my blood sugar continued to crash. After years of hypoglycemia, I can usually feel the shakes when my sugar drops into the 70s, but it dropped into the low 60s a few times before I caught it. I increased my protein and starchy veg, I added olive oil, plantain crackers, fresh herbs and lots of pomegranate. I even had to go downstairs to the kitchen at 1am, after I had brushed, flossed and had my mouth guard in to cook up a beef burger and sweet potato. Exhausting.

Wednesday, I felt more stable, but very ME-ish: a bad headache and my spine and muscles felt infected and swollen.

Thursday (Thanksgiving) brought on the next new symptom wave: my blood pressure kept tanking alarmingly. No matter how much salt I ate or electrolytes I drank, with legs up and compression stockings on, it would not come up and stabilise. The best I achieved was 83/55.

My Riley always knows when his Mama isn’t feeling well. ❤

This continued on into Friday and, then, towards the end of that night, my whole body was in pain – joints and muscles – which I haven’t experienced in quite a while. My back and my hands felt arthritic.

Saturday, my blood pressure was better, but then came the sore throat and hoarse voice, making it difficult to talk. That night, I awoke 3 hours after going to bed with night sweats and never went back to sleep.

Sunday came a wave of neurological symptoms: poor cognitive abilities, worsening tinnitus, slurring my words, weak muscles, droopy eyes, my numb “buzzy head” symptoms (which signal I need to basically ctrl+alt+delete my brain immeadiately) and a cracking headache.

Monday, my throat and head pain had ebbed, but now it was my heart’s turn. It was hammering all day and fit to burst whenever I moved.

These last few days have been menstrual hell, which is generally an increase in my typical ME symptoms. I would honestly take all the other (probably more dangerous) reactions over the ME-inflamed, painful, exhausted days that feel like someone has pumped every muscle full of poisonous led… These are symptoms I can’t fight through. There is no remedy, no relief. They make me feel like I cannot go on living if they are prolonged and they affect my mood horribly. I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I get scared and weepy.

But, the good news is, today I’m stiff and crampy, but better, although the insomnia and nightmares have continued all week and I’m in desperate need of a decent sleep. I’ve been eating a very low-sulfur and low-histamine diet since the sickness that kicked this all off and am completely fed up with squash, lettuce, sweet potato and parsnip. My kindom for some kale! Never thought I’d say that. I tested the turkey, turkey bone broth and orange with no reactions. I tried the almond flour bread, but it was inconclusive (this time of the month caused confounding variables), so I might try again next week. I ate a lot of almond butter with no problem and, today, I had cauliflower (my first sulfurous veg in 10 days) with no problem. I still have to try the stuffing and cranberry sauce, but continue to suspect the onion gravy. Such detective work!

The even better news is, we managed to get out to the cemetery for half an hour to watch our pups run in the thin dusting of snow (yes, SNOW!) and, for that, I am truly grateful.

Onwards and upwards. I hope things will ease up until after Christmas.

*”Increased CBS enzyme activity would act to convert homocysteine more efficiently to cysteine, thereby lowering homocysteine levels. Ultimately individuals with the CBS C699T upregulation of the CBS enzyme can generate more sulfur breakdown products with potential sulfur toxicity issues, enhanced ammonia production, and a lack of glutathione.” ~ Dr. Amy Yasko’s book, “Genetic Bypass”

November 16, 2013 by Elizabeth Milo

DIETS Part I: gluten-free, allergy, autoimmune/anti-inflammatory, classic elimination, and low-histamine.

My mother told me recently that she only gave me soy milk for a long time as a child after my allergy testing showed I was allergic to half of the things on this planet. This is when I was 3. I’ve always known the story of the skin-prick tests done on my tiny 3-year old back. My mother was torn in pieces listening to her baby wail, so I’ve heard about it often. I knew the testing showed I was allergic to lettuce and rabbits and newspaper and so many other things it seemed like a joke. I thought we had always just ignored it to no consequence and that the first thing I ever stopped consuming was MSG sometime in the 90s. I kept swelling. One day, I awoke with my face blown up like a balloon: my eyes were slits, my lips made it difficult to speak, I could barely bend my fingers. This happened after eating frozen egg rolls in the wee hours, after a night at the pub, so I became really vigilant about avoiding MSG. Then, a few years later, I ate at a Thai restaurant with my sister. I never tempted fate with Asian food, but, god, I missed it! and the restaurant swore there was no MSG in their food. The next day, my face was swelled up, so I never tried that again. I still don’t know if the culprit is definitely MSG, but avoiding it, as well as all Asian food, stopped those acute episodes.

My next elimination was alcohol in 2002. It should have been difficult, but I thought it might be causing me to repeatedly go into anaphylactic shock, so I had no choice. When you’re worried about dying, you’ll give up anything.

I ate and drank anything I wanted for ten more years. And I ate a lot. Since I shed my college weight, I’ve always been around 7 stone (I haven’t switched to thinking of myself in pounds because I like the nice neatness of “7 stone”) and my husband would joke that I ate way more than he did (he’s 14 inches taller than I am). After thyroid ablation in 2009, I couldn’t eat as much as I used to – I didn’t diet, my body simply got full quicker and wasn’t hungry all the time anymore.

In 2012, while trying to cure what ails me, I stopped eating gluten. It never occurred to me that it would be permanent, but it seems it might be. It didn’t change how I felt one bit, but, after talking to numerous doctors and reading this book, it seems like it would behoove me to continue to avoid it – if not for ME, then for my (other) autoimmune conditions.

Soon after that, I had blood tests done that showed allergies to cod, tomato and egg. Giving up cod was no problem, tomatoes and eggs almost killed me. But, I thought, what if? So, I stuck with it and it’s now been a year and a half and, you guessed it, I felt no change.

When I started seeing the Good Doctor last year, she put me on a diet for autoimmune conditions which, she said, resembled most anti-inflammatory regimens. I stopped eating all grains but oats, all legumes, dairy and starchy veg. I cut down on sugar, I stopped eating processed foods, I stopped drinking sodas – even “healthy” stevia ones, even flavored fizzy water. I stopped chewing chewing gum, stopped eating lozenges with colourings. Although I missed all of these things, it was similar to anaphylaxis – I felt like I was (am) dying and would do anything to improve my situation, so the choice was easy. I stuck with this protocol for almost a year and… Felt no different.

This past August, my doctor switched me to a more “traditional” elimination diet. I was allowed to add back grains (except corn) and legumes (except peanuts) but stopped eating red meat, pork, processed meats, shellfish, soy, citrus, and most forms of sweetness: honey, maple syrup, agave nectar, and, obviously, sugar. This was only meant to last for three weeks before tackling challenges, but I took a turn for the worse with my symptoms and doing food challenges showed nothing definitive, so I’ve kept everything eliminated. Compounding this restriction was my low energy and my husband’s overwhelmedness with the changing shopping rules, so neither of us got out of the habits formed over the last year. I joyfully started eating rice again, but didn’t really explore other grains or legumes. Once you’ve been doing something for a long time, it seems a monumental effort to change.

When I saw the Good Doctor again at the beginning of this month, she wanted me to continue this elimination for three more weeks, while making a concerted effort to detoxify my liver because she is thinking of testing me for heavy metal toxicity and, if necessary, going through a chelation protocol. Specifically, what she told me to do was:

EAT FOODS TO IMPROVE LIVER DETOXIFICATION:
- Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, watercress)
- Kale
- Swiss Chard
- Collard greens
- Garlic, onions
- Grapes
- Berries
- Green and black teas
- Herbs and spices such as rosemary, basil, turmeric, cumin, poppy seeds, black pepper, and lots of cilantro!
Metagenics Ultraclear formula: drink one shake each day (she already has me taking their probiotics and I get a patient discount).
Supplements [I am very happy to be taking vitamins again. I stopped all supplements and vitamins 3 months ago and never intended to stay off of them for so long. I’m eager to add more (CoQ10, Acetyl-l-carnitine etc.), but she is making me take things slow.]:
- Vitamin D
- Vitamin B6 & B2
- Biotin
- Glutamine
- Zinc
Green detox soup[I said yuck to this soup because I thought it sounded like a warm green smoothie and I thought I didn’t like fennel, but it turns out it is SO DELICIOUS and I like to have some every day.]

This soup is a gift to your liver to help it with its critical role in cleansing and filtering the blood. Sulfur-containing foods, such as onions and garlic, will keep your glutathione levels and antioxidant power high. Cruciferous vegetables are great for all your detox pathways, especially estrogen. Enjoy this soup for breakfast, as a snack or any time of the day. You can make a big batch and freeze it in small containers.

Makes 4-6 servings

1 tbsp extra virgin coconut oil or olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1 tsp minced ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 celery stalk, chopped
3 cups chopped broccoli, florets and stems
1/2 head fennel, chopped
1 tsp salt
3 cups water
1/8 tsp freshly ground pepper

Heat the oil in a medium pot on medium high heat. Add the onion and ginger and cook until onion is translucent. Add the garlic, celery, broccoli, and fennel and a generous pinch of salt and continue to cook another 2 minutes. Add the water, remaining salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce the heat, and simmer for 20 minutes. Place the soup in a blender and blend until smooth and creamy. Adjust salt.

Now the fun part: I haven’t been eating the chard, onions, grapes and berries she instructed me to because I am experimenting with a low-histamine diet. I am always trying to link seemingly unrelated conditions from my past to what is happening to me now. Just like I thought (think) dysautonomia explained not only my symptoms now, but issues I had pre-ME like Raynaud’s and fainting, I started to seriously look into histamine intolerance (HI) and mast cell activation disorders (MCAD). The swelling, the idiopathic anaphylaxis (which happened more often than not during my period), the alcohol intolerance, the dysmenorrhea, the hypotension and syncope (which happened more often than not during my period)… All of this makes sense in the context of a histamine problem. I used to wrack my brain and research incessantly to try to figure out why I was going into anaphylaxis but they could find nothing to which I was allergic. Was it the alcohol? Was it my period? Was it garlic? Was it ibuprofen?

When the allergist explained autoimmune urticaria and angioedema to me, he said the rashes I got during anaphylaxis and the swelling I’ve always experienced were the same mechanism in the body, just in different dermal layers. He said they are caused by tissue permeability and leakage and any vasodilator, such as alcohol, will potentiate the problem.. To demonstrate the autoimmune process, he injected me with my own plasma and I had a reaction on my forearm similar to the histamine control. He said these episodes could be brought on by emotional turmoil or stress and there is nothing to be done but take antihistamines. I counted myself lucky because some people have horrible chronic urticaria (I really recommend the film, Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead).

The more I researched histamine issues, however, the more I realized that my allergist, like all doctors, is limited by what he doesn’t know and what science hasn’t discovered. I asked my GP, the Good Doctor and my new environmental doctor about testing for MCAD and every one of them said they don’t know how. It turns out there really aren’t good tests, but they didn’t know this ~ they didn’t know anything about it!

I am going to continue the info about my low-histamine diet experience in Part 2 of this diet post (as well as all the other crazy elimination diets I’ve been researching: ketogenic, alkaline, low-salicylate, migraine) because there is a lot of information. But I’m giving you homework, if you’re interested in this topic at all: Listen to Yasmina Ykelenstam’s (The Low Histamine Chef) interview with Dr. Janice Joneja. There are 2 parts, but the first part is the most important. Get comfy because it is 49 minutes long and have a paper and pen ready. I’m telling you, it’s worth it. Dr. Joneja is so clear and knowledgeable.

Until next time…

Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart

E.M. AND M.E. AND M.C.A.S.

Tag Archives: syncope