Living with hepatis c

Every few months my disease gives me a new challenge. In May I was able to eat many things that since then I've had to entirely give up. I kept getting so ill with Ascites. Before I could truly get hold of how Ascites worked I went almost all the way down. I was not able to feel my trunk when I hoop danced. I learned that because I could not feel my trunk, it could not give out strong enough responses to my arms and legs to make them perform as I was used to. It was difficult to jump and spin or to get any kind of a lift off. The limitation was shocking. I was holding 16 pounds of fluid. I was not able to drive my car. I could not sit up and I could not walk about for more than a few minutes. I spent an entire month in bed almost entirely. Now and then a friend would show up and I would manage to get myself off to the shore with him or her. I was at once filled with gratitude for the forces that combined to make it possible for someone to show up in my life and spend some time with me and to help me get to the shore and hoop dance as well as swim but along side of the gratitude sat the almost remorseful feeling of the situation I seemed to be trapped inside of. I hated looking 4 months pregnant. For the first time in my life since I was young, I look like I enjoy looking and therefore I also I also feel fantastic because it takes a lot discipline to get here and be here. I'm about to turn 61 and I feel so young. If only I did not have wrinkles on my high cheek bones then all would be jammin'...I'm ill but I am not lazy. I keep pushing myself because I am so curious as to what I can next draw out of myself.

I am up again after a couple of months down and one entire month nearly in dire straights. I've given up all drinks except for lemon and water, water and I drink a lot of carrot juice everyday. Now and then I have a cup of green tea but I drink it for hours and weaken it very much with water and ice. I can only eat sprouted wheat. I am able to eat no other wheat at all, no pasta and no bread that is not made from sprouts. Fortunately I can still eat Walnuts. I am fine eating a quart of yogurt a day. I can eat lentils and I love lentils. I am able to tolerate most vegetables and fruits except I must be careful with greens because they have so much iron content. The one treat I am able to have is Frozen Yogurt and Haagendaez makes one that has a very low sodium content. I try to keep the sodium down to under 700 grams a day, some days it is far far less but it is rarely more and for now the carrot juice that I buy freshly made at the health food store in Haleiwa is moving everything I eat through my body. It and the oatmeal that I eat do the job that bile used to perform as well as albumin. The oatmeal must be cooked an entire hour to make it possible for me to digest it easily. I've learned to eat it cold and make it into a mold like jello and think of it as Japanese Mochi. It works for me, I love it like that but it was an adjustment just as the entire diet has been and everyday I am grateful I found how to eat so I do incite the Ascites but also aware of feeling that there are obstacles around me, walls and barriers that I can get around. Its just a feeling, it passes. Its normal. I am sure.

The reality is that I live like a queen. I am in peace and quiet on the north shore of the Pacific Ocean. There is more water around me than any other place on the planet. I can swim and be in the sun. My liver responds to swimming and cycling as well as a heck of a lot of hoop dancing on the shore and all of it happens in the sun. I appear to be super healthy. I even look like a jock but my liver is no jock but it is one hell of a contender. I applaud it for that. I reeled myself in and recovered from the worst most edgy experience of Ascites yet. I was not sure I could do it and everyday I fight to keep from having to return to full blown Ascites. Now I only have a small pouch of fluid in my liver about the size of my fist, sometimes it is twice that size at night and sometimes there is a larger pouch near my spleen but not in my spleen but with morning they shrink and smooth out. At night sometimes I can see their shapes lying on each side of my abdomen. I am very intimate with my illness and my body. I can focus on it. I am loaded with feeling. I am loaded with emotions. I am full of life and never stop seeing the shadow of this disease over my shoulder. It has caused me to fall deeply in love with myself and live and to put it all in the proper perspective while I still have time to. Now that is a stroke of luck but we make our own luck, life does not hand it to us.

I've never known the person I have become. I can see in myself all the people that I've been but now I have on my hands an entirely new self and it is constantly surprising me. I am able to get thru some tough places alone in life and with only a little help emotionally from my friends. I'd like to be closer to some people and I'd like some new people in my life but you can't nudge someone closer to you and life has its own time, it just does not give us what we need when we need it every time, sometimes we have to think and reason our way into new territory. I'm patient. I can do that but don't expect for me to bullshit you about the meaning of patience. I will promise you though it increases endurance as well as performance.

Now back to my life of bird coo and breaking surf.
Aloha