As you already saw, I'M HOME! I'm not a missionary anymore! This is weird! I had the longest day of my life yesterday flying home. Literally 36 hours... with like 4 hours of airplane sleep, patay! But it's so good to be home! I'm really looking forward to reconnecting with you and getting caught up on all your life changes! (or just stalking you on Facebook...haha) In case you didn't know, I had the most amazing mission ever. THE CRAZIEST. but the best:) Wouldn't have had it any other way. I'm excited to go to the doctor, get better and see what other crazy adventures the Lord has in store for me.
P.s. I'm staying in Texas until the end of August and I'll head up to Provo again for school! SO stoaked.
p.p.s Isn't it scary how much I look EXACTLY like my mom? It's a sister pike thing...
Love, Mary --> I still can't believe that's actually my name... haha
So, it's pretty crazy to me that one of the most exciting things was to go to a doctor and get better and I feel like that's something I'm still doing! Which is crazy. But it's also important to remember how far I really have come. When I got home, I was in bed ALL day every day except for when my mom was dragging me to various doctor appointments. Going up the stairs left me out of breathe and ready to take a nap. I was still eating gluten. I still couldn't really see much out of my right eye. I didn't really want to do anything except read. Even when we went to a reunion, I was super tired and didn't participate much.
Fast forward two years: I still sleep a lot but it's probably only like 10 hours! I almost never take naps (except Sundays when I need to wake up early for church). I still drive to Draper 4 days a week for acupuncture and I'm still loving it. I love to go on long walks and sometimes I go to Seven Peaks by myself to get some exercise walking in the lazy river or treading water in the wave pool. I still read a lot. I can eat a lot more variety of food. Still no gluten, sometimes dairy (but usually with a pill). I still try to eat a lot of cooked vegetables, but I've been enjoying the fruits of summer too.
I huge change I saw this week is one of the reasons I haven't been able to do school for the past few semesters (besides a writing class) is because one of my symptoms was brain fog. I couldn't just sit down and concentrate so when I'm expected to do engineering classes where the homework is to sit down and concentrate for a few hours, it was just too much to handle. BUT last week a friend reached out and asked if I would be willing to tutor a guy who was in Calculus 2 this term and was desperate for help and would pay well. My first thought was, "NO WAY!!! I haven't taken that class in over 5 years! And it was the worst! And I haven't done a class with math in almost 2 years!" And my friend said that's what everyone said and that was way he was having such a hard time. Finally, I decided to give it a try and if I wasn't helpful at all, he could just find someone else. In preparation, I watched a YouTube video on the unit they were doing so I could be refreshed and maybe could actually help. Guess what?? It worked! I was helpful and I could explain stuff and I could do trig and integrals and derivatives, and for being math and everyone's least favorite of all the math classes, I loved it. It came back fairly quickly and it felt so great. So, it's not much, only a few hours for a few days a week, but this feels like a major stepping stone and I'll take it. Also, every time I do math/engineering for the first time in a long time and leave super happy, I'm reminded that I totally chose the right major.
So, a lot of people ask me what my plans for Fall are and it's really the same as previous semesters- I usually have no idea how capable I will be until literally the day before or even the week of so I always sign up for a full schedule and as it gets closer and I drop according to my abilities. So, I have a full schedule "planned" but really I'll be VERY happy if I get to take my 1pm Bio 100 class (my last general) and maybe, if I'm lucky, one engineering class. i should be able to handle that, right? Only time will really tell.
The #1 problem I see with school right now is I have a pretty good schedule going for me right now that helps me feel okay, but it's really time consuming. Fully cooked healthy meals? Lots of sleep? Walking for a few miles every day? And most importantly, acupuncture in Draper almost every day? But my plan is to maybe see if I can drop acupuncture to only Tuesday and Thursday then focus on class MWF, but we'll see.
So these past few months have been interesting... especially April. So, last time I wrote, I said I could tell I was becoming lactose intolerant because every time I ate dairy, immediately after, I felt sick to my stomach. I have frequently had the symptoms of nausea and stomach discomfort, but never as a direct correlation to things I ate. So, I stopped dairy, but soon the stomachaches continued...and it seemed like nothing was safe! Even the vegetables I used to saute for breakfast that I knew were super good for me began to have an effect. So, I started to write down what I was eating to see if there was a correlation, but the list kept getting longer and longer and I just felt completely overwhelmed. It came to a point I was afraid to eat anything because I was so sick of being sick and terrified that I would perpetuate it. It was so stressful and scary. And I was super frustrated because I had changed my diet SO many times and I was being super diligent in choosing the food that would be helpful to me and it seemed like it was all for nothing and it seemed it was not enough. Then by some miracle, I got an appointment for my naturalist that I used to go to, and even though she didn't have all the answers for me, she did have answers for this. And the answer was, my parasites( or even perhaps a candida yeast infection) had returned and basically ruined my digestive system. I have developed a condition called "leaky gut" which is where your body can't break down your food to get the nutrients so it was like my body was intolerant to EVERYTHING. So, this led me to a lot of research. There are different things you can try, #1 get back on supplements to get rid of the parasites, again. #2 go on a specific diet which was cooked vegetables and things easily digested, which I've already been doing! So that was good, and gave me more confidence that my acupuncturist knew what she was doing. #3 Stomach enzymes! To help your digestive system out until it is healed and you can do it on it's own. And I looked up a specific protocol that had me (#4) taking generous doses of the powdered supplement L-Glutamine. There was also a specific diet called GAPS, but it was SUPER long term and really difficult to maintain so I decided to try out the simpler plan first. Also, I was told to go on a 3 day bone broth fast, but honestly, I just felt I didn't get all the nutrients I needed to function so I still had bone broth! But other food with it. And it worked!!! (here's the Link to the protocol) I was diligent for a month and I was so relieved. Being able to eat food is the best.
Soon after this, even though I was feeling way better, I decided to I needed to be extra thorough and I wanted to be sure it was actually parasites because I've heard of that being a misdiagnosis for Candida yeast. I looked into getting the stool test to be extra sure, but I contacted my Dr. in Texas that had helped me with this before and I asked if I could get the test! He said it would be easier if he sent me some pills that would get rid of both and would do no harm if I didn't. Sounds great, right? Well, it worked for a week, but then I got REALLY sick which I was informed was caused by killing off too quickly. So I stopped for a few days, then resumed on half dose. And everything has been fine and dandy since. Well, mostly.
A few weeks ago when my stomach issues were finally being resolved, my fatigue came back. Ugh! But, the good news is it had gone away for a significant amount of time so I believe it can happen again! Also, while taking to my sister about all these various sicknesses, she asked, "Which do you prefer, stomach problems or fatigue?" And I literally went back and forth for about 5 minutes until my indecision answered itself: neither. But the good thing about this fatigue I guess is it still mostly doesn't cause naps or inhibit my day and life is still really good, filled with fun things and great people. My summer thus far has mostly been sticking to my routine and being diligent in the things that help me feel better even if I really, really don't feel like it, but it's always worth it!
I would just like to end this with my testimony. Heavenly Father reminded me this week that I haven't shared my testimony in a long time! I was planning on sharing today in fast and testimony meeting, but alas, I was too sick this morning to make it so I figured this was the next best thing. When I ended my mission two years ago, I would've told you the biggest lesson I learned was relying on the Atonement to receive strength to complete my mission and make it through some really hard times. As I've been reflecting on these past two years, I definitely still have a very strong testimony of the Atonement and of my Savior and all he has helped me through, but the biggest thing for me has been the power of revelation and the spirit.
-Mary
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