Severe Weight Loss from a Chronic UTI (due to restricted diet)
price -- severe weight loss. What caused this?
First of all, I was wheelchair-bound since June from severe bladder pain, so I haven't been able
to exercise or move. So my muscles were de-conditioning from June through September. (I started walking slowly again in September and by October, I can almost move around like a normal girl.
Some of my doctors' jaws dropped when I walked into their clinics and was like "Hey what's up". I had to at least let the drop-in doctors know what happened... even if I never go back to them again, it's imperative that they know so that if they get patients like me in the future, at least they know there are ways to heal! I have a main doctor in my city near my home, and my 2nd doctor in another city. I haven't seen them yet, but I will soon to update them. I did it through my natural healing methods, and did not use any of those pharmacuetical pain meds.)
Second of all, I had to go on very restricted diets to soothe and heal my bladder. I did not bother doing Prelief (so many ICers I met are eating normally with Prelief -- but then it makes me wonder
if that slows the healing process). I wanted to heal my bladder as aggressively as I could by eating ONLY natural unprocessed foods like alkaline vegetables, grass-fed organic meat, and NO take-out, NO processed foods, NO restaurant foods. I basically ate directly from the earth -- steamed or raw foods. This is way more strict than the IC diet. It's like a mix of alkaline diet + Candida diet + keto diet + sometimes vegan diet kind of thing.... I don't even know what to call it...
So yes, this super strict diet is healing my bladder in the past 8 months. If you read my old posts,
I was originally urinating at 25 times of burning drips/day and specialists were throwing
Gabapentin, Elmiron, Pyridium, Topiaz, Myrobetriq at me like candy and saying words like instillations, catheter use, or freaking me out more by saying they don't know if I will go back to normal, and was told to see a psychiatrist to work this trauma out. Um ok, whaaaat?! Today, I am peeing at 6 times/day, almost regular streams on the toilet.... almost like a normal girl. Not totally normal yet as there are still feelings of frequency and the random slight bladder pain now-and-then. Hallelujah!!! But sadly, I dropped nearly 30 lbs and still losing....
Maybe I should just paint myself black and white and say I'm dressing up as a skeleton for Halloween. Then I don't need to spend money on a costume.
So like I mentioned above, loads of pharma stuff was tossed at me. I decided not to take ANY
pain medications and I felt the full extent of my pain. It was something I personally chose to do,
so that I would have nothing masking my pain. This is so I could tell if I was truly healing or going backwards. (Disclaimer: I'm not going to advise anyone on whether you should do this, or not do this. This will be at your own discretion. I am not a medical practitioner and will not be held responsible for what you choose to do).
I chose instead to use TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) as my natural herbal pain killer and pathogen killer, and my recovery routine is outlined here. Since I went almost fully natural healing (I did some antibiotics here and there but they failed), it was a long painstakingly process and enough to drive anyone crazy. It drove me insane twice, that I attempted something stupid and unthinkable. So if you decide to go the natural route, you need to have a strong mind, motivated soul and think positive. Don't let yourself despair. If you read my last post It Was Never Interstitial Cystitis, It was a Damn UTI!, you'll see I'm on the right track and how I healed myself from 1.57 million e-coli (July 2018) to 72,000 e-coli (October 2018).
Here are my photos of how I currently look like. I was very slim to begin with already, so I didn't have any extra fat to lose! I read about how some IC and chronic UTI patients mentioned their weight loss was a bonus from this stupid disease, but it just made me skeletal thin. One nurse asked if I was in for anorexia. WTF? I did read about other patients where they got really thin too, and their partners left them. That is so terrible and makes me so upset for them. So I'll show you a Before and After.
When I was healthy, before the chronic UTI:
Here I am now from August to Oct 2018, after the chronic UTI started in Feb 2018:
Ugh, my womanly chest is totally gone!
Bones bones bones
My hand looks too big on my thin wrist
Bones starting to show through legs
Ribs starting to show
So it's frustrating, to be healing really well in the bladder, but on the other end, my body is wasting away. Sometimes I joke, "Who do I starve out first? The semi-antibiotic-resistant e-coli in my bladder, or me? Let's see who doesn't die first." :P
Once I heal from this nasty horrible UTI disease, I am so going to hit up every All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet in Canada and stuff myself.
