EverlyWell and giant needles

Allergies are the worst. I've been dealing with them in varying degrees for over 15 years. They have gotten progressively worse, to the point where taking Claritin D every day is barely cutting it anymore. 

I've long been aware of certain things I'm allergic to...mold, dust, cottonwood trees and cats. 🤧 The latter has gotten so bad that when I went to meet Matt's new kitten (Alfred) back in August, I could only stay an hour before I got seriously uncomfortable (sinus headache, runny nose, itchy eyes). Ooh, and he scratched me when we were playing (as kittens do) and I ended up with a quarter-sized welt around the scratch (similar to testing super positive to an allergy test scratch). It settled down and went away within about 24 hours, so it was just kind of funny. 🐈

I have wondered if any food allergies I didn't know about were possibly aggravating the situation. I noticed the last couple of years that I'm mildly allergic to white peaches (they make my ears itch...so weird), but it's not to the extent that I'll stop eating them, lol. I became curious enough* about what else I could be allergic to that I decided to take an at-home food sensitivity test and chose to go with EverlyWell.  

Here's the short version of their spiel: 

"This at-home test measures your body’s immune response to 96 foods to help provide guidance on what foods may be the best to choose for an elimination diet."

Using blood samples (don't keep scrolling if you're squeamish about blood), they test your sensitivity to different foods. They sent a fairly user friendly kit, including stabby-stabby finger pricking thingies (that's the technical term), the card/sheet where you deposit your blood samples, a little biohazard baggie (because blood 🩸) and a bag with return postage. 

I put mine together toot-sweet (see below) and sent it back to them. 

I can't remember exactly how long it took, but I got an email letting me know my results were ready more quickly than I'd expected. 

Luckily I didn't test "highly sensitive" to anything, which would be if I'd scored over 116 on any of the foods (my highest score was an 84). Each food item included information on your sensitivity, hidden sources (things that you might react to that aren't obvious) and a little about the food itself. 

I was only "moderately reactive" to two things, so I included their breakdowns below. They definitely surprised me, not just because I've never noticed a reaction to either of them, but because you don't get much more boring than egg whites! 😳

I pulled a selection of other foods and their reaction levels, just for the heck of it. 

Mildly reactive: 

Almonds 26 

Chicken 31  🐔

Crab 26 🦀

Egg yolk 22

Garlic 58 (whaaaaaa?) 😬😨

Milk, cows 30 🐄

Mushroom 38

Orange 20 

Black pepper 19 (I would have guess that one would be higher)

Salmon 20

Soybean 22

Black Tea 28

Tuna 27 🐟

Wheat 20 (I'd have guess that one would be higher too)

Yogurt 40

Normal reactive: 

Apple 1 🍏

Avocado 9

Green bean 8

Beef 13 🐮

Blueberry 1

Broccoli 5

Cashew 0

Cauliflower 2

Cheddar 2 🧀

Mozzarella 12

Cinnamon 8  (whew!)

Coconut 3

Coffee 7  (double whew!!)

Corn 5

Gluten 9

Grapefruit 7

Honey 8 🍯

Lamb 16

Lemon 1

Lettuce 6

Mustard 9

Onion 5

Peach 3 🍑  (This really surprised me. I definitely have some reaction to peaches, though mostly/more strongly to white peaches)

Pear 3

Pork 4

Sweet potato 9

White potato 14

Spinach 3

Strawberry 10

Tomato 4 🍅

Turkey 14

Watermelon 12 🍉

Brewer's yeast 12

I admit I was kind of hoping to find out I was really allergic to something, so I could cut it out of my diet and start feeling better/react less to things. So while I'm glad there's nothing I have to actively avoid (because let's face it, I'm not giving up garlic, lol), I'm also a little bummed it didn't offer an easy/quick fix. 

And while we're on the subject of health, lemme tell you about some giant ass needles. 😐

Being a woman is great...and by great, I mean a giant pain in the patootie. I started typing a long rant about women getting the short end of the stick in just about everything, specifically in the arena of healthcare (if you think I exaggerate, check out the racist and sexist history of the pill, how it takes an average of 8 years to get an endometriosis diagnosis, how women often have to visit 3 different doctors to get a PCOS diagnosis, that pelvic exams on unconscious women in teaching hospitals happen without their knowledge and the easy changes that decreased maternal mortality rates in California which should be implemented EVERYWHERE because why wouldn't we want to save women's lives?)...but I decided not to. 😊  

Instead, I thought I'd approach the joys of womanhood from a different direction...all those damn hormones. 

Every human deals with hormones. They regulate everything, from growth to sleep to your metabolism. Women get to deal with the added affects of estrogen and progesterone, which amazingly aren't taught or discussed as a normal course of events...which people should find weirder than they do, given that approximately half the population is female. An imbalance of those hormones in any direction can affect so much, from weight gain to acne to apocalyptically painful craps. Most of the time the medical community pushes "band-aids" on women, like the pill or pain meds stronger than ibuprofen, instead of looking for the root cause of what's going on. I find this infuriating and unacceptable. 

Thankfully there are good doctors and organizations, such as Pope Paul VI Institute and NaProTECHNOLOGY, that actually seek causes/solutions. Thanks to both, there are more OBGYNs willing to look into the reasons for complications in women's health, instead of just masking the symptoms. Fortunately for me, mine is one of them. 

Over the last 18-24 months, I've been dealing with worsening and an increasing number of PMS symptoms. They finally got bad enough (and started affecting me more than just during "that time of the month") that I met with my doctor to discuss the possible cause(s). Some are "just because," the kind of symptoms that just appear and you can't really do a lot about, other than try remedies that have worked anecdotally, such as taking vitamin E or cutting back on caffeine. On the plus side, after doing some research, I found that those symptoms could be so much worse...so I'm grateful to be stuck at bad, instead of unbearable. 

For the other symptoms...we're pretty sure they're due to low progesterone production. After discussing some options, I decided to try taking a bioidentical progesterone. This is a manmade progesterone generally made from plants and is chemically identical/same molecular structure as the progesterone the human body produces. Traditional hormone replacement therapies are either synthetic or made from the urine of pregnant horses (so gross). You can see why I decided to go with the bioidential option. 😐

I'm generally slow to absorb pretty much anything...which means I need a higher dose or have to take meds for longer than the average person in order to see the same results. My doctor suggested I take progesterone in pill form for three months, which is how long it takes to tell if it's working. I took them for 6, since I'm me. 😳 When the only symptom it seemed to help were the migraines, I went back in to discuss the next step. I had three choices, two of which basically just addressed the symptoms and the third was to "upgrade" the mode of receiving the progesterone...to shots. Three shots a month, to be exact. Some of her patients have responded better to taking it that way, including the very nice nurse who helped show me how to self-administer the shots. 

I'm officially done with the first month. I'll admit to being a little proud of myself. The needle is giant...GIANT! Don't believe me? Check out the pic below. 

G.i.a.n.t. 

I was terrified about the pain factor. Shots tend to be rather unpleasant, so I assumed this would be even more so with the whole big needle thing. Surprisingly, administering the shot isn't that bad, just super awkward and a little tricky. The pain comes later, with site soreness and a super unhappy muscle. It takes about 3-4 days for it to downgrade from painful to sore and, depending which side of your...hip-ish area...you started on, you get to rinse and repeat (the three shots are spaced out with three days between each one). They recommend you don't administer the shot on the same side two times in a row, since that increases the likelihood of complications and pain. 

Post-first shot, I did some Googling and found a couple suggestions to help decrease the pain, such as walking/stretching to help the progesterone absorb into the muscle and using a heating pad on the injection site to thin the solution, which also makes it easier for your body to absorb. I think those things helped with shots 2 & 3, but not a whole lot. 

About a week after the last shot I had an allergic reaction to them. Weird, right? I have no idea why it took so long, but clearly my body doesn't believe in doing things the easy way. 😖 Thank God for Benadryl. After taking it in pill form (well, Equate allergy relief**) and using a topical Benadryl cream for a week, things settled down and got back to normal. I called the doctor's office and they changed up the prescription (using a different base oil - ethyl oleate instead of sesame oil), so hopefully I won't react to it as badly next month.

Some other side affects I noticed were fatigue*** and increased irritability for about two days post-shot. There were little pockets of mood swings too, but they hit and passed pretty quickly. 

So.much.fun. 😩

As with the pills, my plan is to give the shots 6 months, at which point I'll reevaluate how things are going and if I want to continue. 

Oh, and did I mention none of this is covered by insurance? 😒

I'm of two minds about the whole thing. One the one hand, I hope they work. I'm taking them because I end up being in enough pain/discomfort that taking 3 shots a month seems like a viable solution. On the other hand, if it works, I'll have to keep doing it. This kind of feels like a no-win situation. 

I admit to whining a bit, but it's really no fun, man. The only good thing is I've learned more about myself, biologically speaking, both specific to me and as a female in general. I had a reasonable amount of understand as to "how things worked," but in trying to figure out specifically what's wrong, I've done a lot of research and even attended an NFP for Singles class. It wasn't about how to achieve/prevent pregnancy, but more the intricacies of biology, how everything works in unison and what can go wrong when your body isn't functioning properly. It was informative and gross...and further solidified my stance that should I ever get married, I'm not sitting next to someone else's fiancė during the required NFP class. It will be bad enough discussing such things with the man I'm spending the rest of my life with, thank you very much! 😬😆 

To round things out, my back is (still) slowly healing. I am doing a lot better - it's down to being stiff when I get up in morning (requiring approx. 25 minutes of stretching before I start my day...if I skip doing it, I definitely pay for it), not being able to sit on most soft couches/surfaces (I'm still using the wooden chair at work), slower back pressure when I've been standing for too long, general achiness and discomfort...but it hasn't been officially painful in a while (knocks on chair), so that's progress. 

Enough about me...anything new and exciting going on in your life? 



~ Katie Q. 🐧


*The reason I didn't go to an allergist for testing is because you have to be off allergy meds for 5 days beforehand. I tried to do that a few years ago and only made it 3 days before crying "uncle." Another alternative is a more extensive blood test, where you have to get blood drawn, but that costs a few hundred bucks (around $400, if I remember correctly) and I'm not willing to invest that much right now. 

**Because I take Claritin D every day, I can't take regular Benadryl. They use the same main ingredient, which you can overdose. Equate uses a different antihistamine, so I use that instead. 

***Two days after the 3rd shot I had about an hour and a half to kill before heading over to a friend's house for a movie night, so I decided to grab dinner at Paneras. I was so fatigued (beyond normal tired) that I had a really tough time staying awake driving and, once I got to Paneras, I climbed into my back seat and took a 25 minute power nap before heading inside. 

♫ ♫ ♫

Music Bonus: My latest musical obsession is with FINNEAS (Finneas Baird O'Connell). He's a singer/composer/musician/producer and Billie Ellish's older brother. Great voice, amazing songs. Yes, I now own all his songs...but these three are my favorites. 

"Break My Heart Again"

"I Lost A Friend"

"I Don't Miss You At All"