Saturday, November 8, 2014

Almost 21 months and no big move...yet

Next week I will be 21 months into TSW.  WOW, has the time flown!  I am both amazed and saddened by this.  Happy that the worst is behind me and the time went by rather quickly, but saddened because I feel like I missed a whole 2 years with my kids.  Granted this past year has been so much better than the first 8 months without doubt.  But the 2 big hand flares kept me from taking them places that I normally would because I had such limited use of my hands for about 6 months out of the year.  The other 6 months I was working full time to make up for lost wages and catch up on the bills.  But now I feel like I can get back on that Mom wagon....taking the kids places, taking lots of pictures, and making awesome memories!

As for the move - not happening for so many reasons.  But the biggest reason is we could not find a decent place to rent that would accept German Shepherds.  The places that did had some weird landlords.  So we are back to square one....our original plan which is to save enough money to buy a manufactured home and to save for putting it on our land.  We have a lot of things that need to be done in order to get a house on the land....like cutting down trees and making a semi-decent road/driveway.  All of this costs lots of money.  So back to working!  So far I have been back to work for a month part-time....about 24 hours a week.  I will pick that up to 36 hours a week after the holidays.

And the reason for only working here and there is not because I don't want to work the holidays...but for the big cleansing program I am doing that I talked about before.  I am on day 3/5 of an herbal colon cleanse with a liquid fast.  This will be followed by a 24 day internal cleansing with a strict diet.  The 24 day cleanse uses multiple different herbs that target specific organs of the body in a specific order.  This is the one I cannot wait to do!  I did it once years ago and while I had mixed results, the good results were truly remarkable.  The one thing I clearly remember is coughing up loads of thick green plaque from my lungs....this stuff looked like it was caked to the insides of my bronchial tubes for years and years.  Never smoked and never lived in a smoker's home.  Had asthma as a teenager.  So I can't wait to see what happens this time.  Especially since the last time I did not do the colon cleanse first nor did I change my diet.

Currently my skin is a mess!  The last 3 days of the liquids only fast cleanse has seen me flare like nothing I've seen this past year.  I am not as bad as those first 8 months of hell, but I'm somewhere in between.  I am still sleeping and functioning here and there.  My skin keeps flaring at different times with no rhyme or reason.  My face and neck keep flaring about 3 times a day with intense itching episodes.  It even woke me up at 4:30 this morning....raking the skin off my neck!  The insides of my arms from my elbow to my wrist have flared about once a day,  and I get a bunch of tiny itchy bumps on various areas of my legs every evening.  All very weird but nothing I'm concerned about.  Is it uncomfortable??  Oh yeah!  My skin is just sensitive and excoriated.  I haven't oozed which is great and have not had any pain except some here and there on my neck (always was my worst area).  Just tons of itching and open skin.  I did finally find my camera last week so I will try to take some pics in the next few days.  I have just been more exhausted today than the other 2 days.  I had about 2 hours this morning where I was out of it and felt very toxic.  That passed and I feel much better.  However if I do get up to do anything I do get tired very easily.  Trying to take it easy as I need to give my body the rest it needs to heal during this cleanse.

I am really hoping these cleanses put me into a positive spiral towards excellent health.  I really like the way I felt on the ketogenic diet, but I feel it is only good for short term purposes.  We will be doing the Maker's Diet starting next week and then I will stick to the Weston A Price dietary guidelines.  I have the Nourishing Traditions cookbook which I LOVE!  I have been teaching my children to cook and bake over the last year and have really sped up their training in the kitchen recently.  If I plan to work full time again in January I really need their help in getting food prepared and cooked on a regular basis.

That's it for now...I will return in a few days with pictures and an update on how this cleanse went.