FMS/IBS Study

I'm writing this post from a conference room in Excellent Teaching/Research Hospital. For the past 6 weeks I've been involved in a dietary study for people with fibromyalgia and IBS.

For 4 weeks I had to completely avoid MSG, glutamates, and all other excitotoxins. Then last week and this week I came in on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday for the challenge. Each day I drink a glass of juice and then wait 2 hours at the hospital. One week the juice is just juice. The other week it is laced with a dose of MSG equal to the amount in a Chinese meal.

I'm pretty sure I am getting the control this week and the MSG last week. After a month of feeling pretty good, shortly after drinking the juice each time I felt extremely ill.

Not only did I have severe fatigue and an increase in pain, but I even got to scare the researcher as she watched me quickly deteriorate neurologically. I got the whole brain fog, dizziness, muscle weakness, headache, loss of short-term memory, having difficulty finding words for common objects, and even starting to slur my speech. It came on quickly, with a definite difference between the before and after states.

What a relief to know that the unnerving symptoms I've been getting seemingly randomly may actually be some kind of reaction to excitotoxins. It would be wonderful if it turned out to be something I could just avoid eating, and cut down significantly a lot of those symptoms.

I'm so glad I took part in this study. Not only am I helping further knowledge for health care professionals and scientists working on treatments for fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, but I'm also learning information that will be immediately helpful for myself.

Bunnies at the Beach

Last week's rabbit show was a lot of fun, except that I didn't realize it was going to be in an open horse arena and the girls and I didn't dress for being semi-outdoors in the snow and wind.

Having the college student live with us is going pretty well. It helps that we like each other and get along well. :) The kids really like her, too.

She has been helping quite a bit with meal preparation and things like that. But mainly it's just nice to bless someone by sharing our home and helping meet needs. She is looking for a job, so if anyone knows of an opening in our area (or even just wants to hire a babysitter), she would love the opportunity to apply.

Right now I'm typing from a hotel on the coast, about 4.5 hours southwest of our home. DH and I decided to get a friend to stay with the kids and animals so we could make it a weekend away together.

I'll go to the rabbit shows, and he'll enjoy hanging out and relaxing on the beach and in our room. Then we'll have tomorrow evening to relax on the beach together, and Sunday morning we'll head home. We've always enjoyed long car rides together. Lots of time to talk, with few distractions.

DH found a very nice roadside inn, located about 30 minutes from the show in Sounds-Like-Abandoned by the Sea. The rooms are much nicer than your average motel room, tastefully decorated with amenities usually found in a suite rather than just a motel room.

Our rabbits haven't done too badly so far. We haven't won anything (well, a few best of class and one best of variety, but only one where we actually beat a rabbit entered by someone else--it's not quite as exciting to win best of variety when your rabbit is the only one in the contest. :) ) Even our rabbits who place low in the class are mostly getting good comments from the judge--it's just very stiff competition.

I went ahead and brought the mini satin doe who was supposed to kindle several days ago. After putting in the nestbox almost a week ago and seeing her cart hay around that day, and then nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing . . . I assumed it must have been a miss or reabsorption, and she wasn't going to have babies. But a more experienced breeder felt her for me and could feel babies in there, so she's just overdue.

Hopefully both she and the babies will be all right. I'm going to pull her out of tomorrow's show and leave her in peace to have her babies. I gave her a box with hay in it, and stuffed lots of extra hay in the biggest carrying cage for her.

My siamese junior doe kept thumping her feet at the judge tonight, so hopefully she won't get too grumpy by the end of the day tomorrow. The other rabbits seem to be doing well--eating fine, active and not showing signs of being too stressed out.

I'm so impressed with how kind and friendly everyone is at the rabbit shows, both judges and exhibitors. I'm learning a lot and having a great time.

And now, I need to go to bed so I can get up early for the show in the morning!

News

We're still sick here, so we ended up canceling our normal weekend activities. I fully intended to get up and get some things done around the house today, but I ended up just going back to bed and staying there most of the day.

I don't like being sick, but I'm very thankful when it happens on the weekend and DH is able to let me rest. He was feeling better today and I let him sleep all afternoon and evening yesterday, so it worked out.

Tomorrow an 18-year-old college student is moving in with us for a few weeks. She needed a place to stay for the rest of the term, and advertised that she'd be willing to help with housework/childcare in exchange for rent. Her references gave her glowing reviews. I still need to find a reputable place online to run a background check tonight, but assuming nothing surprising shows up on that, the kids and I will go get her and her luggage tomorrow afternoon.

The kids loved her immediately when they met her, and DH and I liked her too. AJ has moved in with M&M and Ebee so our Art Student can have AJ's room.

I'm also looking for a place to stay a couple of hours North and then 4.5 hours Southwest of here for the next two weekends. DH did not approve of the sleeping in the van idea at all. I guess it was rather a harebrained idea (pun intended, since we're talking about rabbit shows, har har).

The girls and I can drive to the show next weekend and back the day of the show if we need to, but it would be helpful if we could find a place to stay Friday night so we don't have to get up in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday. I'll work on finding a place to sleep at the coast the next weekend, too.