Cystitis - more suffering hidden by embarrassment

I can really sympathise with this article posted on 'The F Word' although I think broadly speaking IBS sufferers get a better time of it. Perhaps this is because it is an illness which effects men (although it mostly seems to target women).

I understand the frustration of going to a doctor and having your condition dismissed as non serious or trivial. Luckily the doctors at my current practice are much more sympathetic and are taking the time to help me work through my difficulties with IBS. I also understand the pain of cystitis, having once rather unfortunately been forced to resort to visiting accident and emergency because of it. 

I'd suffered from the infection in the past and at the time had been told by my doctor to drink cranberry juice to stop it happening again. Some time later I found that I had a minor infection again and tried to get an appointment at my doctors to get some antibiotics. My doctor couldn't see me that day and probably not the day after that. With no where to turn to, I drank cranberry juice in the hope that this natural remedy would sort me out.

I woke up in the middle of that night with the most agonising pain both in my urninary tract and in my kidneys. I didn't really know where my kidneys were before that night, but right then they were so red hot with pain that I could have surgically removed them myself.

Barely able to move, I had to get my friend to take me to the local A+E. I remember sitting there with a large bowl for fear that I'd be sick. I was taken into triage by a male nurse who had a slightly dismissive attitude when I told him my complaint. To be fair to him, I'm not the sort of person who roles around in pain making a fuss so perhaps I didn't look as bad as I felt.

What frustrates me about the whole incident is what happens next. I provided a urine sample, he used one of those dip tests. I watched him do it and I can remember him almost starting back with shock when he saw the result, after which his attitude was totally different. He told me that I had a 'raging' infection and ushured me through to one of the waiting rooms. I had blood tests to see if it had entered my kidneys which apparently it hadn't. To this day I'm not pursuaded of that, why they hurt so much if they weren't infected is beyond me.

The doctor who eventually saw me asked me what I'd been drinking and I told her I'd had a lot of cranberry juice. She told me it was the worst thing I could have done and that drinking sugary drinks makes the infection worse!

I still feel that a little minor but permenant damage was done that day. What irritates me is that it could have been avoided if I'd been able to see a Doctor straight away or see someone else who could deal with the problem.. Why if cystitis is so easy to diagnose can the test and antibiotics not be offered by nurses working in GPs practises? The infection moves so quickly and becomes unmanagble so quickly that early intervention is crucial. In these times where GPs are more stretched then ever surely the responsibility for dealing with such a common yet easy to diagnose and treat ailment could be handed down to Nurses? Also why was the information I was provided so contradictory? Some Doctors have told me to drink Cranberry juice, another has told me its a bad move.

The next time it happened I didn't even wait for the next morning to try and get a GPs appointment, I took myself straight to the NHS walk-in centre and got my antibiotics. 

 The F Word - Cystitis

This website I have linked to is website discussing feminist issues. It contains information that some readers might find triggering.

What I ate today - 9th August 2010

I'm still getting my act together on the organisational front, so today's lunch included yesterday's left overs. We'd had vegetarian hotdog sandwiches for tea and there were a couple left over to put in a salad.

With mayonnaise and wholegrain mustard.

Pulses wise I was down to my second to last tin of green lentils so I put them together with a tin of tomatoes spiced with the following.

• 1 tsp chilli powder
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• Pinch of salt
• Pinch of tumeric
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/2 garam masala spice blend
• Some fresh ground black pepper.

At first taste this was somewhat bland so I ended up putting a load more chilli powder in. Unfortunately this was something of a mistake. The sauce was very spicy when I came to eat it at lunch time. Nevermind, lesson learned!

Mmm spicy . . . maybe too spicy!

I will make it again though as it was very tasty and filling. The chopped up sausages made it really interesting as they have a very deep savoury flavour.

Financially speaking it wasn't so bad either. Around 20p worth of vegetarian hotdog about 70p for the tin of lentils and about 45p for the tomatoes and a couple of pennies worth of spices. It works out at about £1.50 in total so just £0.75 per portion. Bargin!

Insight into IBS: IBS and the Menstrual Cycle - A happy combination leading to joy

OK part of the title of this post was a lie.

Do you remember that ex-boyfriend of that friend of yours. You remember the one, he was always changing his behaviour, acting differently under different circumstances. He was really nice to her when they were alone, but he was a bit of prat when he was around his friends. Yeah you remember him.

My IBS is a bit like that. Except that it's a prat all the time, it's just a different sort of prat when it's friend Aunty Flo comes to visit and behaves as though it were a completely different condition. Gone is the constipation/diarrhoea alternating combination. Instead we have almost normal motions. I say almost normal, these motions come with an interesting side effect, what I like to think of as the Lamborghini effect. For those who are not familiar with fast cars (I include myself in this group, I had to Google this) the Lamborghini can go from 0mph to over 60mph in 4 seconds.

This is what my bowels like to do when Aunty Flo is around. They all get into her lovely Lamborghini and are just sat there relaxing. I'm totally calm and unaware when suddenly they make a bolt for it. In the space of a few seconds I've gone from not needing the loo at all to needing it so desperately I almost have to do that half crouched running to the loo dance.

The only positive thing I can say about this is that, unlike my IBS symptoms the rest of the time, this is at least predictable so I can prepare for it. Unfortunately it means that my activities on the days when I'm on my period are pretty limited.

So there you have it, another one of the joys of being an IBS sufferer.

What I ate today - 6th August 2010

OK. I'm going to be honest with you. Today wasn't a great day.

Last night I had really bad IBS. Despite feeling really tired my stomach was burning and my intestines were doing the conga.  In the end I didn't drop off until well after 1pm which meant I was a very sleepy head in the morning.

I did manage to stoke up the energy to make myself a nice packed lunch but I couldn't manage breakfast before I left the house.

For lunch I used half a packet of mixed salad on top of which I placed some roughly chopped chunks of Somerset Brie and chopped up sweet red pepper.

Mmmm cheese

For a dressing I quickly made a honey and mustard dressing. To make this I combined the following ingredients.

• 1 tsp runny honey
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 tsp rice wine vinegar
• 1 heaped tablespoon of wholegrain mustard
• 4 tablespoons of warm water

I found that adding the warm water helps to mix the honey and the oil together and helps spread the dressing more evenly.

Extreme Honey and Mustard Dressing close-up

I put all of this into my regular lunch box in layers with the salad leaves first, then the peppers, then the cheese,  drizzling a trickle of salad dressing on every layer as I went. 

I love a good drizzle

It all looks pretty good in this photo below but it was somewhat flattened by the time I got it to work. The poor salad leaves collapsed under the sogginess of the dressing and the massive portion of cheese! 

Lunch is ready to go

I'm not really sure how this ranks on the health scale. I suppose at least it had green leaves in it. I suspect there was way too much fat and sugar because it was a pretty big portion of cheese. I've recently been told I may have a calcium deficiency which may be why I'm craving so much soft cheese at the moment. 

Cost wise however it was good, just £1 for the salad, 60p for the pepper and £1.20 for the cheese. The amount of ingredients used to make the dressing probably only cost about 10p. So that's a total cost of £2.90 over all so a total of £1.45 per portion. 

It was very filling and I didn't feel hungry till about 3pm. I really enjoyed the tastes. It was nice to have the crisp peppers and leaves with the sweet tang of the dressing and I liked the slightly gritty texture of the mustard grains against the cheese. I'll definitely be making this again.

Unfortunately the rest of my day didn't go so well food wise. As I mentioned earlier I couldn't face breakfast when I was in the house so I grabbed something on my way into work. 

I am a bad 'grabber'. Feeling tired I went for the quick sugary burst that only a chocolate muffin from Greggs the Bakers and a bottle of Lucozade can provide. 

So wrong but  so right

One day I plan to have an array of healthy snacks on hand for these situations. However I have to say that bad for you though it may be Lucozade has got me through some really tough, post rubbish nights sleep IBS days and it had really helped me to perk up by mid morning. 

Unfortunately as I am not efficient or organised at the moment I had no idea of what to make for tea so I ended up buying a pizza, some garlic ciabatta bread and worst of all chocolate eclairs for desert. I felt that as it was a Friday I deserved a treat. 

Overall I reckon I have consumed about 90million calories today and not nearly enough nutrients. It will be interesting to see however if the effect of having consumed all this sugar and flour will make a difference to my IBS tomorrow. 

Searching for Energy by saving time.

One of my theories about how to increase my energy levels is centred around my daily activities. I believe that if I break my daily tasks down into small parts, I might find them easier to do. I'm also looking for what I think of as 'hidden' time. Those five minutes here and there that I could have spent doing something useful.

I found a hidden five minutes today while I was waiting for the oven to warm up. I used it to do a few little online administrative jobs I needed to get done.

It was such a small little change but it was really beneficial to me. I got the jobs done quickly because I knew I had a time limit and I felt much more relaxed while eating my tea because the jobs were already done.

I'm going to spend next week looking for hidden five minutes. I'd love to hear your ideas for where you can find your hidden five minutes.

What I ate today - 5th August 2010

I'm trying to eat more healthily and save money so I am taking my lunch into work with me every day. I'm going through a deli box style salad phase at the moment so today I made a spicy chick pea salad with marinated tofu and pine nuts.

First I made the spicy chick peas. I buy canned chick peas as I'm too lazy and disorganised to soak dried beans over night. I cooked these in the microwave according to the instructions on the tin and then made a sauce for them by combining the following.

• A tablespoon of Brown Sauce
• A tablespoon of Tomato Ketchup
• Half a teaspoon of chilli powder
• Half a teaspoon of paprika

Extreme chickpea close up

This was added to a bed of salad which I bought for £1 from a well known supermarket. 

I then added some marinated firm tofu. I buy the Cauldron brand which was pre-marinated, but I wanted to add a little extra sauce both to add more flavour to the tofu and to provide a bit of dressing for the salad. I made a quick dressing by combining 

• 1 tbsp of light low salt soy sauce
• half a tspn of rice wine vinegar
• a pinch of ground black pepper.

I sprinkled a handful of pinenuts over it and this was the overall result. 

This made a filling and I think overall reasonably healthy lunch. It didn't leave me feeling flat and tired in the way that a sandwich and a packet of crisps type lunch sometimes can and I believe it is much more nutritious over all. However I wasn't sure that I'd got the combinations of flavours right. The spicy chick peas tasted lovely as did the tofu but together they didn't taste quite right. The saltiness of the tofu overpowered the taste of the chickpeas. I think I would definitely make these two again but I wouldn't put them together in the same salad box.

Price wise this was fairly reasonable. I estimate it worked out at about £2.20 a portion which isn't bad for such a filling lunch. I'm on the hunt for cheaper, not marinated firm tofu so that I can marinate it myself and hopefully save a few pennies. 

For tea I made I chilli using this recipe. I made a few alterations, I halved the quantity, added a sweet red pepper instead of a green one and added red jalapeno peppers but no green ones. I also used half a packet of Quorn mince as I didn't know what a burger crumble was!  I served it with corn tortillas and some slightly salted Doritos. 

I'd show you a picture but I forgot to take one before we ate it! I'm not a massive chilli fan and I didn't find this particularly tasty, probably because of all the alterations that I made. I'm not sure that I got the quantities of the herbs and spices correct so I will definitely try this one again to see if I can follow the instructions more closely. The other half liked it though, so he gets to eat the left overs for his lunch tomorrow!

The Poo Issue

I’ve already warned you on this blog that I talk about pooh. I don’t talk about it because I want to make you feel sick or disgust you but because I think that digestive health is too serious a problem to ignore. I know it has a significant and unhappy effect on my life and I’m hoping that by reading this you’ll perhaps see what it’s like for someone living with my condition or see some of your own struggle in it.

At the moment I’m having really bad IBS symptoms. When its this bad I feel uncomfortable from my stomach right the way down to my bottom. Right now my stomach feels acidic and sore. My intestines are gurgling away. I feel as though my intestines are a series of tunnels under construction. I can feel hundreds of workers in there moving their big heavy scaffolding and walking across the floor with their steel toed boots. All this makes me feel like I need to go, but I can’t. This is because I’ve already experienced diahorea three times today. I have nothing to go on, but my intestines are acting like I’ve eaten a life time supply of laxatives.

It’s been like this for the last two or three days. Before that it was long days of feeling dull and constipation. This is the joy of IBS.

While this is all very uncomfortable and distressing it would be bearable if it weren’t for the other effects it has on my life. All this stomach action leaves me feeling exhausted. For the last few nights I’ve gone to bed at around 9pm, but irritatingly I can’t sleep. I’m too uncomfortable. So I toss and turn for an hour or two and eventually drop off. I wake up the next day exhausted and consider calling into work sick. But I need the money so I can’t. So I go to work. I have enough energy to get through the day but after that I’m pretty much done. The short walk from the bus stop to my house seems insurmountable and I call my other half to come and collect me.

I have things I need to do when I get home. I get by doing the bare minimum. The cleaning, ironing and social activities I would like to do go out of the window. I don’t literally throw my ironing out of the window you understand, while tempting it would be counter productive, and it was just a metaphor. I have things to do for the morning but I’m too tired to stand up. I convince myself that I will feel better in the morning and that I’ll catch up then. I lie in bed with my laptop reading and writing this blog entry. This is the only way in which I’m marginally comfortable.

All of this makes me feel so frustrated. Frustrated that I can’t seem to find a path to eat and live the way that is going to make me feel better. Frustrated that I only have the energy to get by and not enough energy to have fun. Frustrated that there isn’t a magic wand I can use to make this all go away.

I've also decided to be optimistic about this and I'm determined to do everything that I can to change the situation. So this is why I want to write this blog and why I want to talk about poo. I'm going to use this blog to find my way to a better lifestyle and hopefully make a few friends along the way.

FAQ

FAQ

To be honest I haven’t actually received any questions so these aren’t true FAQ. They are questions I’d imagined readers might ask. They will of course be amended under two conditions. The first being that I get some readers and the second that repeatedly ask me the same question.

1. Why did you decide to write this blog?

I want to find the most healthy vegetarian lifestyle that I can possibly live by exploring the resources that are available on the internet and by connecting with others in a similar situation. I have a terrible memory so I thought that starting a blog and writing some of this stuff down might actually help me to make some progress.

2. Why did you decide to write about pooh?

My issues with IBS have had a serious negative impact on my life. Part of this impact comes from my embarrassment over discussing these issues. It’s really hard to say to someone that you can’t go out tonight because your pooh is also really hard. I hoped that by saying these things on paper I’d be more comfortable saying them in ‘real’ life. In an ideal world, I’d like to see this become more true of society as a whole so that we can talk about our problems with our pooh free from embarrassment.

3. Why do you call yourself A Dab Genteel Grove Peony?

I couldn't think of a username for the blog and so I used an anagram machine to make up a name for me. This was my favourite of the many options it came up with by using the title of this blog.

4. Are any of the recipes featured on your site original?

No they are not. I always take my recipes from other sites and I link to the sites they are taken from. If you have noticed a link is broken, please let me know. If there is no link to a specific recipe this is because it is something I have made up myself, but it is so heavily based on the different recipe books and websites that I have read over the years, that though there is no one specific to credit, I can't claim to have invented something truly original.

Under construction

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