Missing This Face

Two years ago today, my mom woke up.

 Not here, but on the other side. I know that she stretched her arms, smiled, and reunited with my dad and became reacquainted with the eternities. You see, we know where we have been and know where we are going. When, we too, wake up on the other side, it will not be new to us, it will be a homecoming.

If you have lost someone--- they are more than ok, and they walk among you and are closer than you realize.

If you know someone battling cancer or any other form illness, terminal, mental, etc there is hope-always hope whether they stay here with us or move on to their next adventure.

If you are or know someone who is a caretaker, YOU are physically holding the hands of someone who is almost done here, someone who cannot do for themselves what you can for them and they do appreciate you. Take care of yourself too. It’s easy to get lost.

The grief never leaves. I never move on, but I move forward. I know what’s next and I want to be ready for it by making the good choices now, by choosing happiness now.

You don’t get to graduate from this life without learning anything, it only makes sense. So let’s keep going, keep learning and growing. Knowing joy and sorrow, appreciating the right and good and standing up against wrongs. You know right from wrong, it’s inherent to who you are, a child of a loving Heavenly Father. This world will tell you that right and wrong do not exist, that is, quite simply a lie. One of many. You are not of this world but are a divine heritage that will come as naturally to you as breathing when it is indeed your turn to wake up. 

My mom, with my dad, expects a lot from me, from us. I aim to not disappoint. 

I miss her advice, her singing and dancing, shopping, Costco trips, saying hi to everyone-even people she’s only just met as if they were all best friends. I miss her encouragement and validation, the kind you can only get from a mom. I miss everything.

Thanks for giving me the two things that mattered mi mon Shéri l'amour- love and knowledge.

Families can be together forever. Best news ever right?! :)

FOOD FEAR

We are organic, free range, grass-fed, non-gmo people.

Hehehehehe, okay, kinda funny right? Too soon? :)

Ok, let’s face the Food Fear!

You, as an informed human being know very well that our food industry has let the government regulate the heck out of it. Chemicals this, harvesting for better shipping that, nuclear apples big enough to feed a family of 7 etc. Do we have evidence that this is what is causing cancer, autoimmune diseases, food allergies/intolerances and/or webbed feet etc? 

Well, you can find the answers to that on Google---both sides of the debate. Actually the NSEW of the debate. Studies, misinterpreted studies, that ladies’ opinion from Some Town, USA, the nice dude at the health food store, your doctor, your nutritionist, your nature-path, WebMD, wikipedia and all sorts of correct, semi-correct and misapplied information including even more skewed/or not studies. 

You get the picture.You can find anything you want on the internet. You type in your query and someone, somewhere will back you up or vehemently disagree with you. 

So how do you wade through the Food Fear that starts to accompany your changing lifestyle? Step-by-step, in moderation and by keeping your priorities in line. What is more important to you? That the chicken your eating had a best friend, a regulated sleep schedule and only ate certain foods? Orrrrr that you get to work on time with a lunch and snacks packed, play with your kids and maybe get a load of laundry done and still be able to serve your fellowman? 

Priorities.

As you begin to gather information and books this recipe will happen to you:

1 lb of grass fed beef

2 tsp of organic pink himalayan sea salt

1 tsp of non-gmo something or other

4 heritage grown squash

6 cups of no other ingredients ever ever*

.5 tsp of overnight soaked nuts as a garnish

BURN ALL THE GRAIN IN YOUR HOUSE

Okay, I know you know what I’m getting at here. I also know that you know that I know that it is a WONDERFUL and incredible effort and I wish that ALL food could be perfect and not cost a mortgage payment every month, but it can’t. We can’t always or sometimes even ever do it like that. PS I eat brown rice and buckwheat. Grains have a place in our homes, just not quite what that pyramid thing says. GOOGLE IT. (PPS I am on a protocol as set by my docs, using my particular blood chemistry, which takes the guess work out of what I am doing. I will be on it for a certain period of time, nevermind, I will just write about my protocol soon. :)

Point of todays word barf:

Educate yourself on what you currently worry about most, from perceivably credible sources (wait! Lindsay! You just said that the internet is crazysauce! Yes, yes I did, good luck, you can do it!), and the other information will come right along with it. If you choose to eat one way or another—great, YOUR CHOICE! If you live in small town Idaho and can get up to Boise sometimes or maybe grab a Bountiful Basket other times, but still haven’t ordered from US Wellness Meats yet, I am right there with you and spend a lot of time and $$$ at Wal-Mart and Amazon.com and we happily make it work for us. We do what we can if we place importance on it. 

Don’t get the food fear and Do remember to make one better choice today than yesterday, food, or otherwise. Internal and external choices affect everything.

OUT

SIDE SToRY!

I have been avoiding dairy like the plague, something I may write about, something I may not. I haven’t decided. I have been lactose intolerant my entire life so it’s easy for me to avoid. But my kids? What do I do there? Well, after I put my family on a dairy-fast for a few weeks my husband said, Lindsay dear, it’s okay once in awhile. Remember, this is your protocol, not theirs. He’s right. My kids get a cheesestick now sometimes, some milk in their cereal for snacks or whatevs too. That’s how we do it in this family. Your’s is your choice. So, as you continue reading labels, and 'the google' :) you will gather some good info. You are currently reading this and I’m not an expert on anything right!? I’m a woman/wife/SAH mom fighting a disease and sharing some info.

Last side story. Sam happily ate his veggie-ridden dinner last night (after 93 days of doing this) and I may have cried, which hurt my still-smarting eyes from surgery. It was such a wonderful moment.

Pants-less and stoked about how strong his veggies make him.

I Don't WORK OUT

I don’t work out anymore.

Yet.

So last fall I tried to exercise. I’ve always been able to at least run(ish) a mile. But the last few years, not so much. When my OB gave me the go-ahead to work out at my six week after baby appt., I laughed, heartily. I rarely plucked my eyebrows or unloaded my dishwasher at this point, let alone worked out. So at the six MONTH mark, I grabbed T-25 and thought, I have no energy because I don’t work out! Duh!

If you can only imagine, three days into it, I was on the floor, wondering why I wasn’t getting any endorphins from this horrible daily awfulness I was putting myself through (I loved the workout format, but I’m no SeanT). So I thought, it’s not like people worked out for all of history, they picked up kids and toys all day and did daily and huge amounts of manual labor, but not T25. So, I’m good, I'm a mom, that's a workout enough.

POINT OF STORY

I was not healing while I slept. Hashimotos means that my body is constantly attacking my thyroid and then spending it’s time trying to fix what it's breaking, leaving no energy to expend on exercise and recovery. What!! Yep. SO DON'T feel bad if you are not signing up for iron-mans!!!!!! It might be all you can do to put on jeans in the morning, I get it! Promise!

So I was just adding to my own fatigue, not helping it. EXHAUSTED. Exercise was one of the FIRST things we cut out of my protocol. 

Where am I at today? Still not exercising. Mind you, I keep a house, two children going and a gazillion other things, but I’m not DIGGING DEEP. :) (Get it? T25? No? Yes? Cool). Just three weeks ago I was told to start adding in a daily 20 minute walk. That’s it. I now get to start to build up some endurance, but I am no where near being athletic or googling CrossFit. Someday maybe, but for now I will relish that walk on the days I feel up to it. I may have let my inner athlete get dusty, but it’ll come back someday, just not today, and that’s okay.

OUT

PS I had Lasik done yesterday after scheduling an apt 6 years ago. I think that’s worth noting and yes, I talked to my hashi doc and he was cool with it. Annnnd I have my faux mom here to take care of me and make me veggies for a few days. Thanks to you Angela, we love you.

Those goggles, so awesome.

Side story, from a reader:

LINDSAY!  I read labels now like crazy and it's as if everything has chemicals in it and food coloring poison and alien space dust and the world is ending and my husband thinks I'm paranoid and AHHHHHHHHH. 
(Okay, slight exaggeration, but you know this scenario).

Yep, sorry. Avoid nitrates and anything over 2 grams of sugar per serving. Ya know, if you can. It ain't easy or for the faint of heart. MODERATION. We can't do it all, or we lose the point of living, which is NOT reading labels and passing out in the grocery store.
What a pep talk eh?

I LOATHE Vegetables

Side Story! Why LindsayNieHashi? My dad served an LDS Mission in Japan and therefore taught us bits and pieces of the language growing up. The name of my blog sounds as if you are counting to four (ichi ni san shi) in that beautiful language. He made us eat Raman with chopsticks, just FYI. I love and miss that Dad of mine. Here's to you Dad!

I loathe vegetables. 

Eating them has always been a chore (still is). Growing up, they made me sick, no really. In fact, I felt downright nauseous often and would get headaches from it. No wonder I didn’t like them, hello! Veggie headaches! Weird!

When my current doctor told me to eat vegetables at all three main meals, I had a panic attack of sorts. ‘Ok, I eat pretty good,’ I tell myself (and I did-ish)...but wait, this means that I will wake up and eat vegetables for breakfast! BREAKFAST! The meal that is just pretty much dessert (nutritionally speaking)! That glorious time of day where syrup and pancakes rule all! Have you ever been to an international buffet for breakfast? I have! What on earth are the Japanese eating? Fish and vegetables!? How is this possible? Don’t get me wrong--total respect--but boy oh boy, I proudly skipped right over it to my very American fare and loaded up on french toast, pastries, bacon, (YUM-and I still eat bacon) tons of fruit, and cheese-covered eggs if they could fit on the plate....and then back again to try out anything else I couldn’t fit on my first plate. LOVED EVERY SECOND.

Long story short, when I ate bread and cheese and sugar, I felt satiated and good. I wanted more. It’s almost as if my brain would wake up during and after I ate and I felt great. MMMmmmm. Then a crash would come, which was normal, it just meant that I needed to eat again right? Right!? Sugar addiction? Yep.

STORYTIME! I noticed a FB post the other day of a gorgeously awesome friend of mine who wrote this: "When I eat crap, like Betos or taco stands or unsure leftovers, I feel fine. It's when I eat healthy crap like squash & salads that I feel sick, nauseous & get close to puking. Pretty sure that's the way God intended me to be…” 

(Hope you don’t mind the shout-out Lady E!)

I totally understand!!!!!! So much so, that when my mom was going through chemo treatments we ended up at a nature-paths office to see if we could find her some relief for her digestive issues and I straight-up asked the nice man why I feel sick when I eat ‘healthy’. 

"Veggies hurt when I eat them, I never feel full and I get this weird ‘empty headache’ (I had no idea how to describe it!)." HELP ME! The answer, thankfully, was what I needed to hear, “You probably just don’t digest them easily in a raw state.”

 "Oh! That’s it?" 

“Yep, either cook them (not overly so you don’t cook the nutrients out) or at least eat them with something that will help break down the fibers for you, like vinegar. Oh, and chew them up better.” Okay so cooking, vinegar and chewing---I can do that, I thought. Low and behold, it worked. I always tolerated cooked vegetables, but adding vinegars* to salads seemed to help too. As for chewing more? Well, I can see where giving your stomach a bit more help before the food gets there helps to break it down.

So, the moral of todays story is....we need to eat veggies often and constantly- the nutrition, the roughage (fiber) etc. Especially you, you autoimmuners.** Ok especially everyone really. Google it. FIND A WAY. Eat them at every meal, at least a serving to start and then try to eat at least two kinds or twice as much! All that $$ you were spending on fast food can now be used for veggies! LOL? Too soon?. :)

 I still don’t digest veggies raw without feeling a bit terrible, but, I have gone to great lengths to find ways to eat them cooked and actually enjoy them! For me, I need a bit of fat and spice and salt with it, Mmmmm. 

Soooo if you are my sister who is part-rabbit and can go out to a garden and chow down on earth’s bounty-good for you! I am envious of you in the best way possible. 

But as for me and my house, we will cook and dress our veggies. 

OUT

*Aged vinegars can and will have some yeasty properties to it and I am currently not eating yeast sooooo, needless to say, I just cook most of my vegetables and add yummy spices. :)

**My doc and I have been working on improving my digestion-and I am happy to say that they are good at what they do. I'm a work in progress.

Breakfast! Turkey sausage (one of my less-than five pre-made foods, which I will write about later), zucchini noodles (microsteamed for 3 minutes at 50% power), olives, toasted pecans and those dang awesome coconut aminos.

Response & Creed(ish)

*Follow-Up*

Dang!! Thank you so much for your support and reaching out. I got so many responses and PM’s about all of your personal struggles and my hat’s off to you. For real. If we all knew what heartaches, both public and private, that everyone struggles with- it would change us. The great thing is, y’all keep on keeping on. Whoop whoop! Plus a world where butterflies and rainbows abounded with unicorns and flowers and chocolate all the time would, in my humble opinion, be lame. Bring on the rough seas! TEACH ME MY STRENGTH! BOO YAH!

Now for my creed:

You eat more than three times a day. If you believe what you eat affects you, you’d be right. 

The end.

Okay, so now that that’s clear I apparently have a few things I live by when it comes to my (food) life:

1. Moderation in all things.
2. The Word of Wisdom is the best base for a healthier life (PS that link is to an article written in 1977, how oldschoolawesome is that).
3. I am not one thing or another, I am not Paleo or anti-grain or totally anti-inflammatory etc., but I love so many of the recipes used in each that I will reference them, and others. I currently do not eat gluten, I have a wheat allergy. Things change too. Flexibility is key.
4. If you are not drinking water, you are doing yourself the biggest disservice of them all. Aim for half your body weight in OZ. I mean it. The bathroom will become a place of refuge and annoyance, but it will clear up things you didn’t even realize. When you reach for Not-Water, Stop, just stop it. Vitamin water...not worth it. Today and now, get used to the flavor of plain freee water. If you need to filter it-great. W-a-t-e-r. That’s today preachystatement. Nothing else you do will make as big a change as this. NOTHING. NOTHING!!!!!! Sorry, you get it. Okay. Moving on. SOMEONE JUST SIPPED DIET COKE! I JUST KNOW IT! Okay, now I am done.

Roll your eyes all you want, but just ONE change today is one change today. When--not if---you backtrack (notice I did't say fail!)--just keep on.

And last, but not least; you know me, whether you really do or just read this. This is how I talk in real life and I cannot for the life of me care about grammar or spelling right now, even though I will regret it later and judge myself on it. And who doesn’t LOVE a run-on sentence that you have to read twice! C'est la vie!

PS My fourth grade teacher told my mom that spell check was invented for children like me. Ov makes way more sense than Of. I mean really.

OUT

Thank Sam for this one. This is an exaggeration and should not be attempted at home, in your husband's sweatshirt, on your floor in your 'house-shoes' that you wear in order to not step on toys or crumbs because you have not picked up or swept up such things yet today, but hey, lip glossed! YES!

Hashimoto

*Diagnosed*

So it's been a rough couple of years in my little family, yours too probably and that's life. I can tell you one of my stories, if I share with you every personal detail of my life it wouldn't accomplish anything for anyone. I count my blessings daily, my husband and I have two children and we are so happy and chaotic and I wouldn't trade it for the world. I am a stay at home mom by choice, which is a choice I can make because of my husband's ability to provide for our family at this time. I feel that this is where I should be, where you should be is hopefully your choice, either way, go you, you rock.

To summarize, I had been emotionally in charge of my mother from the day my father died in 2005. After my mother was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor in 2010 I was then physically in charge of her. I had been married two years and was six weeks along with our first baby. My husband was in a dental residency and applying for an endodontic residency and we lived in NorCal. Mom was in Spokane. I then lived in Spokane and my husband in CA. She and I and countless others fought her cancer for nearly two years till she succumbed to the horrific disease in April 2012, two years ago this month. During that time France and I had a baby, finished a residency and knew flight attendants by name as we traveled back and forth to just hold hands and watch an episode or two of the West Wing while we laughed and cried and cried and cried. My mom was a warrior and I wouldn't have changed anything about our war together, other than the obvious, I wish she was still here. You see, my parents have both passed away and I am still dealing with the awful grief that comes with it and the overseeing of the closing of an estate, which- shocker, is still happening. My husband's parents too have passed away. We are a strange anomaly in this country. We are no one's priority. 

We find the joy in our everyday and lean on many people to help- both physically and emotional. Friends and family alike. Friends that have quite literally become family.

In all this time I may have let myself get swept under the rug a bit and that's okay. I didn't sleep or take care of myself and when someone asked how I was, 'fine and great!' were my answers. And that's okay!

But, then I really wasn't okay. I wasn't recovering from my pregnancy well. I was a bit too tired all the time and then we were lucky to get pregnant again! Yes! Still, I was too tired, but isn't everybody? France had been accepted into an endodontic residency and I couldn't bear the thought of being home without him all the time with two children. How selfish of me! We had decided together after a lot of prayer and pros&cons to not accept the residency (I was willing!!!). This opened us up to move anywhere and in the same vein causing major stress again, where are we going!? My hands hurt constantly. Picking up my first child became a little too hard, changing his diaper would terrify me because of the pain involved. Headaches? Check. Sleepless nights? Check. Nightmares from cancer? Check. And so many other little things I passed off as 'nursing hormones' craziness or then 'pregnancy related' craziness.

Our little B was born. Now we had two boys, 22 months a part and I was euphoric! I had my arms full and I would now get to breathe and recover (eventually, I mean, newborn eh?). 

I didn't. When Bennett was six months old I was crying constantly at how lacking I was in my ability to be a mother. I couldn't keep a house together. I couldn't make dinner. I couldn't keep up on anything and I needed to lay down all the time. Sam, my first would ask me to get up and play tag. I couldn't and it broke my heart. On more than one occasion my husband would come home to a state of such chaos that I, frankly, was ashamed, and feeling very pathetic. Sure I can put mascara and a good face on if I needed too! How many times have you wiped the tears and just shown up because you had too? ALL THE TIME.

So my beloved came home one particularly hard day (which bytheway he never once said a thing about dinner not being made or the house not being clean, bless his soul) and looked at me and held me and told me to just let it out. We came to an agreement, I needed help. I thought it was cancer or MS, I was terrified. I do depression checks on myself all the time, it is a very real struggle, but surprisingly I was still okay there and those that fight it, WAY TO GO. But despite all of this, I was still happy, but scared, just a ridiculous mess of a human being. My kids were fed and happy, but I was sick. Okay, let's go see a doctor, I said.

*At 19 I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and placed on levothyroxine, very typical. Very common, you know someone with it whether you 'know it' or not. No problem, here you go, take a pill at 5 am for the rest of your life.

Well, at 28 I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's autoimmune disease. At some point through all the emotional and physical stress-my body broke. It gave up. My body was attacking my thyroid when it worked. So the thyroid gland would shut down and so would I. It would try to start up again and then get kicked again. Sound familiar to anyone? I bet. Anyhoo. I was given a higher dosage of the SAME pill and told we were going to simply overdose me to shut my thyroid down so my body would stop attacking itself. I stopped sleeping entirely, my brain was so buzzed I couldn't shut it off. My symptoms never went away. I waited the allotted three months to make sure it was working and it most certainly was not.

So I sought a different kind of help, one that once I had been educated about I couldn't stop counting down the seconds till I could begin my very own autoimmune protocol. (Which, BTW, my primary care physician who is awesome, fully supports). Yep. My blood chemistry, salivary info and even 'other' testing :) were now going to become my future. Among the diagnoses were anemia, hypoglycemia, adrenal fatigue, profusion, low blood pressure and immune disfunction (and more). YIKES! All interrelated. Once something breaks, everything else kinda shuts down too. You don't have to believe me, I have science to back me up. :)

When my new doc asked me how serious I was about getting better on a scale of 1-10 I think I said 14. You cannot cure an autoimmune disease, but you can manage it and hopefully prevent more, which is a very likely event. Once you have one, your chances of another go up. 

I take it very seriously, so no, I have not faltered, my choice. It's getting easier, but I have ups and downs like you wouldn't believe. I CANNOT, by choice, quit. I have improved - because of my docs, my husband and the choices I make everyday. Right now I am at my computer, typing again, my hands hurt less. My dishwasher is running. We've had breakfast and said our morning prayers. I've vacuumed and cleaned and naps have been taken. I am contemplating taking my kids to the park soon-and that makes me want to cry in the happiest of ways. I can play with my kids now, which if you look at my medical information sheet happened to be my number one goal.

So I eat different and I talk about it. One of the points of the protocol is to take out foods that trigger your immune system to perk up and draw it's sword, which in someone with an autoimmune disease means that I go from a perked up immune system to a full on internal war immediately and it knocks me out. Lots of days are still hard and I need to adjust here and there, both with my protocol and my attitude. BUT this is my battle and my story and I am okay and WE are happy. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but you gotta enjoy the...tunnel? Right? :)

Really, I AM someone's priority, my Heavenly Father and my Savior's, and They are watching over me and help me constantly remember why I am living my life-to be happy, to endure, to know joy from sorrow and to be with my family for eternity. I am a Mormon and I know the truth, I don't question it, I have sought my answers and received them and been to the edge of Heaven and Hell and back and retain that testimony that I rely on- that I NEED to be true.

You see my battle is my own, and it is just ONE of MANY, like you. My husband chooses to fight with me, and I with him, everyday. Is this the hardest thing I have ever gone through? Nope, but it's sure rough. So I am going to write about it, for me. If you read it and get some good info from it, awesome.

We find the happy, so that's why I try and share it a bit. Choosing to be healthier allows each of us to serve those around us better. We cannot choose the consequences of our actions, we can only change the choices we make right?! :)

Mike dropped, Lindsay OUT.

PS If you have watched my kids, wiped my tears, eye-rolled while listening to me or any of the above, I love you dearly and thank you, again.

PPS If you are going through anything like this, I can point you in the right direction, I'm no doctor, but I am well-informed and can point one out to you. :)