The Unbearable Lightness Of Farting
Gasoline Underpants, Ahoy!
Dr. Ding tentatively titled this post “Hi. I’m Living In Hell While Wearing Gasoline Underpants. Won’t You Join Me?” but I resisted. Color you impressed.
I also briefly considered the Lovecraftian: In Her House At Whole Foods’lyeh Dead Dr. Dingthulhu Lies Dreaming, but frankly that seemed like a reach.
Let me share my schizoaffective, semi-coherent story with you. Three weeks ago my doctor noticed that my routine labwork had suddenly come back all hinky: various lipids elevated, increased blood pressure, weight soaring, yadda yadda. You know. The whole you-have-to-totally-change-your-diet-right-fucking-now thing.
My doctor is pretty cutting-edge in his understanding of PCOS and endometriosis, two conditions I’ve had for years. He’s smart and compassionate. But he is also incredibly, artfully sneaky. This was no ordinary diet he put me on.
“So honey,” he says, in a very charming and offhanded way as I sit, goggle-eyed at my horrid lab values, “we’re going to put you on a diet. It’s a very simple diet, very easy to follow, it’s a cleansing diet. You’ll see the nutritionist next. Come back in 4 weeks to see me.”
That sounded doable. A cleansing diet. Sounded positively spiritual So I trundled off the next week to see the nutritionist, totally unsuspecting what was about to happen next.
“No dairy. No cheese, no milk, no casein, no eggs, no salt” she said, reading the list in front of me of acceptable vs unacceptable foods. Well gee sure, I thought: what silly goose ever heard of a cleansing diet gunked up with cheese and salt?
No Bacon For Ding
“No red meat. No alcohol. No pork. No caffeine,” she continued. I was starting to get uneasy because I really, really, really love bacon, as many of you know. My relationship with its salty, porkfatty goodness is both ancient and profound. But I took a deep breath and didn’t freak out or grab her by her skinny nutritionist arms and threaten her into allowing me to eat bacon. I am very proud of this.
“No artificial sweeteners. No sugar. No peanut butter. No diet soda. No gluten. No wheat, barley, rye, corn, or oats. No citrus.”
By this time I was ready to cry, hot, bacony tears of fear. What did she mean, no diet soda or lattes? Or diet Jell-O? Or strawberries? Or shrimp? What the helly helle kind of diet was this, anyway? But then the final blow was delivered.
“Oh and you have to drink these nutritional shakes designed to clean out your gastrointestinal system on an increasing schedule for 11 days, when you’ll be up to 4 of them a day. And days 12 through 14 you will be fasting, save for drinking 5 of these shakes each day. You will drink a shake per day for breakfast every day for the next 3 months.”
Oh sweet GirlJesus™. Fasting is against the way of my people. I vainly searched her face for signs of sarcasm, irony, or practical jokery. Bupkes. You see, I had had these so-called shakes a few years ago, with disastrous results. And when I say disastrous, I mean: repeatedly gagging and then upchucking into the sink because they taste exactly like a foot rolled in turmeric.
She said a lot of other stuff about how I’d “get to” eat any kind of legume I wanted, and could eat any kind of vegetable but I couldn’t have fruit more than twice a day, but I could barely hear her through my bacon, cheese, and Diet Pepsi withdrawals which had already commenced. Yes, I am that suggestible when it comes to food. Duh.
I would like to tell you what all has happened since that time, but to be blunt, I really can’t remember. Turns out this is an elimination diet protocol i.e. giving up anything that tastes good to you in hopes of healing the immune system by way of healing the digestive tract. Simple, my ass. There’s nothing simple about it.
I’ve pretty much been in a state of shock for three weeks. The first week was spent trying to wean my shaky, tired self off caffeine. The second week was spent trying not to have a psychotic break from all the turmeric plus lack of solid food. This last week I’ve been able to chop vegetables without supervision and perform other simple tasks like laundry and even sometimes returning phonecalls! Today is the first day I’ve felt like writing been able to compose my thoughts in a sufficiently logical fashion to permit writing to happen.
Somehow throughout all of this I’ve managed to assess and treat 25+ new patients. Of course, I can’t remember any of their names or where their rooms are located, but hey that’s what charts are for, motherfuckers.
I have lost 11 pounds, as of today’s doctor visit, and my diastolic BP is down nearly 10 points. When my doc asked me how I was, I was honest: “I’m freaking starving and P.S. I totally just cut one. A really big one. In fact, that fart was so well-developed it had teeth and hair and what I suspect might be the first glimmerings of a soul.” He was unperturbed by this revelation, and encouraged me to keep going, said most people lose 10 to 14 pounds in the first month and that I was actually a little ahead of schedule in terms of shitting my giblets out my bunghole.
Of course this means now I’m all smug and high on myself in addition to being slightly dissociated from reality. I am also pretty much some kind of neurotoxic fart machine from all the beans and raw veggies.
You know what’s funny? As loath as I am to admit it, I feel a LOT better. My eyesight is actually clearer. My joints don’t ache like they used to. Oddly enough, I am getting to like herbal tea a whole lot. I attribute this some kinda fuckity version of the Stockholm Syndrome. My GI tract, although sonically rather magnificent in its trumpetings, is now functioning 100% perfectly which it hadn’t in years; I’d always thought it was the endo. Turns out I might actually have a gluten intolerance, and that this in turn makes the endo pain way worse than it needs to be, among other things. Aren’t you fascinated? Fucking endo.
I will probably bore you with more tales of my flatulent, grumpily shrinking ass later.
In the meantime, I will drink herbal tea with motherfucking stevia in it. I may be living a disgustingly healthy lifestyle for the next 3 months but I don’t have to like it and I will be using words like “motherfucker” “bacon-centric” and “fucktarded” a whole lot. Look for them.
| Etsy: QueenBodacious |
The Call Of Nerdthulhu
This is where Dr. Ding is this weekend, loyal readers. The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and Cthulhucon in rainy, porny, cigarettey Portland, OR — the literal and spiritual home of every art history major that ever lived to ascend the cutthroat ranks of record-store assistant managership.
Portland? Is fucking bleak, dude. It’s like an entire generation or three smoked, like, waay too much ditchweed laced with PCP and now everyone is on a total, permanent bummer. I know this to be true because Portlandites wear faded hoodies and dark, sarcastic clothing and slump around in the rain with no umbrella.
The festival itself is more entertaining, which is part of why we try to attend every year. It is very, very nerdy up in the historic Hollywood Theater, and the air is redolent with the smell of unwashed gamers, patchouli’d-up hippies, and whatever it is that Goth folk use to make their hair stand up so purty.
The Beyoncé and I are ridin’ at least two hundred deep amidst the weirdos and malcontents. In fact, I would daresay that we could safely number ourselves amongst the “squares” and “The Establishment” here, man.
That is all.
| Etsy: QueenBodacious |