Idaho camping recap

Let me just start out by saying HOLY SMOKES!  Forest fires everywhere.  I really didn't understand until I drove to the eastern part of our state and there is just a trough of smoke coming out of the Chelan/Methow area.  Wow!  I don't have cable tv and don't watch the news.  I browse the newspaper every day but there really hasn't been much printed.  We only had one day where you could smell the smoke strongly and woke up the next day with ash on the car.  The rest of the time it was sufficiently windy that we could see it but not really smell it.

So this is what I ate for breakfast just about every morning while camping.  Hamburger patty, grilled green beans, 1/2 avocado and hot chocolate. Oh, and a shot of probiotic tonic (sauerkraut juice).

This was my usual lunch (more like a snack) - Pemmican, kale chips and macadamia nuts. We were really bummed that our US Wellness meats order arrived the day we left so we couldn't pack beef sticks (same as pepperoni but without the spice).

I ended up needing to get rid of veggies in the refrigerator before we left so I ended up with a few days of the usual sauteed curry vegetables I eat at home, usually with grilled chicken. 

I ate salmon the first night we were there and broke out in a belly rash.  It was the first time I have tried it since it came up positive on my Array 10.  I pretty much remained rashed and just a bit itchy because I ate eggs too.  

Wine, oh wine.  I really don't miss it but we drank it 3 nights.  One night my husband and I split a whole bottle while sitting around the fire pit at the ranch we stayed at in Cle Elum.  It was so nice to have a fire and we celebrated.  My digestion transitioned to great and stayed there.  I tapered off of all my antimicrobials while camping as I ran out.  I switched from Kal Garlicare with Red Yeast Rice to Jarrow Formulas Red Yeast Rice + Nattokinase.  I should have kept track of the switch but didn't.  It happened sometime during the trip and could be responsible for some of the increase in motility.

And the potatoes....  gained yet another 2 lbs eating potatoes.  I know I shouldn't but I love the skin of baked potatoes and my son and husband do not.  I can't stand to see they get tossed so ended up eating them a couple of different nights.  And the potato chips, I consumed more than my fair share of those!

The last night I tossed thinly sliced carrots in ghee, sprinkled them with salt and roasted them.  I called them carrot fries so the kids would try them and they liked them. Yay!  My husband said they were better than sweet potato fries.  I beg to differ but then again I actually love sweet potatoes and he doesn't even like them :)

The plan for now is to try to add the OrthoBiotic back in and add some Motilpro.  Probiotics and Prokinetics.  I think the bloating I was experiencing before I left was due to the sauteed kale and not the OrthoBiotic.  I'm still not very good at chewing sauteed kale, I do better with dehydrated because it just breaks apart when you chew it.  I continued to bloat off and on during the trip but I also ate kale (and potatoes and wine and waaaaay too much chocolate) throughout the trip.  So we'll see how things settle out over the next week.

Off to buy school supplies.  Where did the summer go???

Vacation recovery time

The bugs in me still love the carbs.  I have been trying to get my digestion back on track the last couple of days since returning from vacation and it's just a struggle.  I'm bloated, constipated and annoyed.  I have a love/hate relationship with vacations.  I find them fun but incredibly stressful (to be honest this was probably the most stress filled vacation I have ever been on).  

We were in Whistler and stayed in a condo with a full refrigerator and kitchen.  I packed a ton of food - ground meat, offal muffins, chicken thighs, veggie soup, stir fry veggies, coconut milk, etc.  I ate my usual breakfast of an offal muffin, veggie soup and hot chocolate.  I was doing several hours of yoga workshops/classes for 5 days (Wanderlust) so I would eat nut butter and drink tea at lunchtime, do more yoga and then come home for a dinner of curried veggies and chicken.  My digestion was holding it's own.  Same rigid diet on the same schedule I had been eating at home.

Wanderlust went away and I went back to eating 3 meals a day.  We were doing a lot of biking, hanging out at the lake, having more relaxing days.  I started nibbling on potato chips here and there with meals and ate french fries one day when we went out to dinner with friends.  I drank a glass of wine one night too close to bedtime and ended up a bloated, nauseuos, painful mess in the middle of the night. We packed up and moved into a yurt and everything just trickled to a halt. Bristol scale - 1. I'm not complaining, I thank my lucky stars that things are moving.  I have to admit I am a little envious of the people who easily clear this or move on with life, asymptomatic even though they still have some infection.  For some of us, it's just not that easy, we blink and things just fall apart.  

Came home Monday night and I treated myself to a hot chocolate after nearly 8 hours on the road home.  Again, too close to bedtime and I ended up awake half the night, bloated and nauseous.  Arg!  Oh, and I'm still actively treating (red yeast rice with garlic, oreganol, Biocidin, Olivirex, etc, etc) so what the heck!  Shouldn't all these antimicrobials be taking care of business!  

I started in with this.  Aromatic spice formula, ha!  It feels like squirting fire up your nose.  I have always had sinus issues so I wonder about an overgrowth of commensal bacteria.  I'm too lazy to schedule an appt to get my sinuses cultured (I have an appt in late September) so I thought I'd see if the SinuOrega would make a difference with my symptoms. 

Things I would have changed:

• Taken my probiotics with me and LOADED up.  I took my probiotic tonic but that was not enough.
• Stayed away from the carbs! Knowing that my system was already taxed from stress I should have stayed away from the carbs!  I tolerate them okay when life is easy and good but clearly not otherwise.
• Been a little better prepared before leaving and not overpacked on everything.  This creates more stress because things start thawing and produce starts spoiling.
• Communicate better with my family so we all are on the same page before splitting up or making plans.  To be honest, much of the time it felt like we were on someone else's vacation.  We didn't do enough of the things that we love doing.
• Sometimes you just have to embrace "the hippy shit" as my husband's friend Amy calls it.  My family was doing yoga together and it turned into a big circle lovefest and we ran.  We should have just gone with it, but in all honesty I kinda wanted to go meditate.

I have a week to get my shit together before we pack up and head to Idaho.  Will definitely be better prepared and do things differently.