How am I?

People ask, but I'm sure they don't really want to know.
They're just being polite and I put on a damn good show.

"Pretty good."
"I'm fine."
"Doing better."
Lies...

To put it simply: I have black mold (the deadly kind) growing inside my body. It's in my blood and thus everywhere. I'm starting to think there's more of It, now, than what's left of me. It causes my brain to swell causing blurred vision, headaches and fatigue. It causes my heart and kidneys to work extra hard and inefficiently resulting in toxins building up in my blood so I have to have my blood filtered often. It lowers my immune system making it difficult for my body to fight illness and leads to chronic respiratory, ear, vaginal yeast and skin infections. It causes my joints, bones and muscles to be stiff and achy which makes sitting, standing, lying down, walking, running and basically just being alive painful. It causes mucus and fungus to build up in my lungs making my breaths shallow and arduous. It makes my skin sensitive to touch, irritation, sun, wind, cold, heat and prone to bruising. Showers are difficult because if the water is too cold my muscles throb and my bones scream, but if it's too hot my skin prickles and peels. It's causing my acne to flair up. It's causing my hair to thin and fall out in handfuls. I have constant diarrhea and I throw up frequently (most often at about 2am). I have to take high doses of anti-fungals that leave me exhausted, disoriented and crazy. I'm basically living on raw vegetables, medications, vitamins and filtered water. I'm anemic. I have nosebleeds and rectal bleeding. I'm always starving and I've lost 25lbs, yet I'm flabby because I'm losing muscle tone. I'm tired all the time but I have difficulty sleeping or staying asleep. I'm constantly cold, yet sweaty. I get tired very easily and winded after walking short distances. I'm dead broke, having to work less hours than I'd like and had to accept a handout from my parents(an extremely difficult and humiliating thing for me). I cry at the drop of a hat and the hat drops often. I'm either short fused or too sick and tired to care about things that should bother me. I'm sick as hell, but I'll be fine.

Actually, I feel more alive than I ever have in my life.

"Thanks for asking."

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

In February, I went skiing for the first time and rode down the bunny slope on my face(I'll tell you that story another time), enduring second degree ice-burn on my nose.



Then, got a bacterial infection in the wound and was given antibiotics.



However, as a result of having been prescribed too many antibiotics over the years, they weren't working. In the meantime, my nose kept getting sunburned and progressively more infected.



I was prescribed a very heavy dose of antibiotics and it started clearing up(or I thought it was).

Then, I contracted Chronic Mucocutaneous Candidiasis in my nose wound and on my hands and feet.





Apparently those heavy antibiotics were wiping out my immune system and all the probiotics in my intestines. Let's also mention here that I have IBS. As a result of that, and having basically no probiotics in my intestines, the Candidiasis spread to my GI tract where it turned into Candida Albicans. (You still following this?)

Then (yup, there’s more), apparently I have leak-gut due to my weakened immune system and IBS, so the infection spread to my blood, becoming a Systemic Candidiasis. Once the infection was in my blood is spread rapidly to all my organs. This includes EVERY cell of my body: skin, eyes, lungs, heart, brain, liver, kidneys, etc., etc. (Wait, there’s more) THEN, I got Aspergillus fumigatus.

By that point, in early May, I was horribly sick, but they couldn’t figure out what was going on and since I don’t have insurance I was reluctant to let them perform all the tests they wanted to…then, things got pretty scary and ugly(I’ll spare the gross details here, but feel free to ask me).

I had no choice but to agree to the tests and by the end of May they finally figured out what I have, much to the doctors’ surprise. Apparently only people with HIV, HPV or cancer and premature infants contract Aspergillosis (none of which apply to me).

(Wait, there’s more) On top of having Aspergillosis, it turns out I am also Hypoglycemic (yay, go me!) The problem with having both these conditions is that Aspergillosis feeds on sugar, so, in order to kill the fungus, I have to eliminate sugar from my body, however, due to my Hypoglycemia, my body NEEDS the sugar (cue the violins).

Apparently the chance of all these factors aligning for me to be in the position I’m in is one in a trillion, thus confirming just how special I truly am.

So, in addition to all my medications, being overwhelmingly exhausted, and in quite a bit of physical pain, I am now on a very regimented, restricted and monitored diet which excludes gluten, dairy, sugar(except for one serving of fruit if my blood sugar is low), anything processed, most things cooked, most carbs(I can have up to 50g a day-but only 15g at a time- 50g is equivelant to a tortilla, in case you were wondering) and basically everything that I normally eat.

Honestly, changing my diet has been the hardest part of this entire process, and I'm barely a month into it. I’m starting this blog to document my journey through this whole new way of eating. So I’m raising a glass of herbal tea(I hate tea, btw) to this new endeavor. Cheers.