I am so sorry to have to renege on my promise this week about weighing in on Wednesday and reporting my results.
I also am sad to say that I’ve not stuck with the menu!
The reason is because on Saturday evening I got accosted by an attack of diverticulitis. It wasn’t until Sunday that I knew that I was in bad trouble. It wasn’t until Monday that I knew what was going on. Suffice it to say that I’ve eaten soft foods all week, have had to avoid a lot of foods that I prefer to eat and exchange them with watery soups, potatoes, bananas–foods that digest well. Raw veggies, nuts, etc. are out. Salad is out. Anything that could drag this out has been shelved or frozen until I’m well again.
What is diverticulitis? I’ve heard that a few times this week. It’s where the colon develops pockets that get food particles (seeds, peels, undigested particles, etc.) trapped and results in infection. It feels like the worst abdominal muscle pull that you could ever have. It feels like someone’s pummeled me in my left side until I could no longer walk. Speaking of walking–that’s bad. I’m really slow right now, and I want to hold my belly with my hand. It’s almost as if I’ve had another cesarean. Very tender, very sore, but binding the belly is a NO-NO. That would rob the colon of the blood that it needs and only make things worse. So even though it feels better to hold my stomach, I can’t.
This is the first time I’ve had diverticulitis, but it runs rampant in my family, and when I called my mom (a frequent-diverticulitis-flyer) with my suspicion, she verified it. I just so happened to be put on an oral antibiotic for my eye that is one of the medications that also treats diverticulitis, so I’ve already got that going for me. At this point, I don’t have to take any pain medication anymore. My pain level is about at a 5, instead of the 8 that it was when it all began. So apparently the antibiotic is doing its thing, thank God!
That said, 75% of the food on my Monday Menu is verboten. At this point, it doesn’t look like I can even use that menu next week.
