bombay birthday

Tuesday was my birthday. Ian made me this for dinner. Delightful doesn’t even come close. Nor does plentiful. We both had leftovers for lunch today; I’ve been snacking all night while working on my budget simulation, and there’s lunch redeux tomorrow still left. We normally would have gone out to Angelica or maybe even squeezed out a couple of extra dimes from our wallets at Gobo for a birthday celebration, but eating out is pretty much not in the cards for me right now. It wasn’t a problem thanks to the Bombay Aloo.

Some Christmas Cheer

Saturday night we had a little Christmas tree decorating party. It was really little. We started with this:

We had some of these:

We ended up with this!

There hasn’t been much time for knitting lately, so no knitted ornaments, much to my chagrin. We toyed with the idea of dough ornaments but we were very much afraid they’d be too much of a temptation for mice and rats. There are lots on our block. So, we ended up with the paper shapers and the construction paper.

My parents were Jehovah’s Witnesses, so Christmas isn’t something I grew up with. In fact, I can say with absolute assurance that its only these last few years that I’ve really been making my own way with major holidays. This is not Ian and I’s first Christmas, but it’s our first Christmas in New York, with our first real tree. It’s going to be great! Yes, that is a white velvet pear on the tree.

or just brooklyn so-so

I just imported a few posts from my lonely live journal. I wasn’t aware that this was possible. They’re now in the March and June archives. It’s fun to read these posts, made before I felt gross all the time. One’s about the last time I thought I might not make it through poor health and one is about a bloody scene that occurred under my bedroom window. I guess I’ve always been New York fabulous.

biliary colic and fat-free salad dressing and love love love

There are a ton of reasons why I’m really torn up about this gallbladder removal. There isn’t an issue that I have ever seen the conventional medical community and the holistic medical community more comletely in disagreeance about.

CONVENTIONAL (a summation of arguments)

• It’s simple and easy and you are sent home from the hospital the same day. Depending on your doctor, you may have little to no dietary restrictions after the procedure.
• Any complications that arise afterward are usually due to a stone left behind in one of the bile ducts or totally a figment of your imagination. Diarreah can occur due to the constant drip of bile into the small intestines, now that the bile parking lot (your gallbladder) is gone, but this can be easily managed with a low-fat diet and medications if need be.
• The dangers of not removing a problem gallbladder are many – it may rupture and kill you, you may have multiple attacks which make an emergency removal difficult.

HOLISTIC (a summation of arguments)

• Removal of the gallbladder disrupts your digestive system for life.
• You will no longer be able to process any fats, including many vitamins such as A, C, and E.
• You may develop or exacerbate IBS due to the “insult to your gut” that is surgery.
• My naturopath calls me every week and leaves a message that I better not get my gallbladder removed.

But mostly, I am terrified because of things like this.

I mean. WTF? Okay, so there is the woman that eats fried chicken without the skin and wonders what’s wrong with her. But its still pretty scary. Since I saw the surgeon on Tuesday (the post is dated Wednesday for some reason) I have kept a fat-restricted diet and the pain has all but subsided. Amazing. Unfortunately, I’m still huge. I’m so distended that I can’t fit into most of my clothes. The scales say I haven’t gained any weight, but my tummy seems to think differently. I also stopped drinking soda, but so far it has been to no avail. The next day I saw my lady doctor at NYU and expressed my concerns. Although she couldn’t give me a lot of concrete assurance, she’s more than willing to try a few more things before my surgery date. Right now I’m on a 10-day course of antibiotics in case we’re dealing with SIBO. Its nearly a long-shot, but there are few side effects, and I take it for ten days and then I’m either still bloated or not bloated anymore. And she scheduled me for an endoscopy at the end of the month.

I spoke to my supervisor today, who has a background in nutrition. I’ve been wondering if I’m not dealing with two problems simultaneously, like gallstones and a fructose malabsorption. Or an ulcer. She said to me, “Look. If I have an open wound on my arm and I put this on it” she picked up her glasses and placed them on her arm, “it’s going to hurt. Then if I put this on it,” she picked up a sheet of paper and placed it on her arm, “that’s going to hurt. It’s because I have an open wound on my arm. Likewise, if my leg is broken, it’s going to hurt and swell no matter which shoes I wear. Something is wrong with you and its not very easy to see because it’s on the inside, but it’s there and you can wear yourself out eliminating things from your already very restricted diet and never get anywhere.” Just a reminder: I’ve been vegan for 8 years now.

I’m starting to think she’s right. In addition to speaking with her, I also made contact with someone very important today, my mother. I can’t describe for someone who doesn’t know, the frustration accompanying 7 months of doctor’s visits where the answer to any questions about my family history have to be “I don’t know.” But I don’t know, because I’m adopted. The long story of the tender but not very close relationship that I have with my mother will have to be another entry, but we have met in the past, and she is a wonderful woman, very bright and caring and incredibly talented. We just don’t keep in touch very regularly. In fact its been about eight years. This is mostly my fault. I really cringed at the thought of calling her up out of the blue to ask medical questions, especially since she has occasionally written to me at pretty much all of the addresses I’ve kept, and I hadn’t yet kept up my side of the letter-writing bargain. But we did speak today and I’m so glad. She’s doing okay; having some health problems herself, and I really hope she quickly recovers from them. There isn’t a strong history of gallbladder disease/problems in my family, but my cousin did have to have hers removed at a very young age and has had no complications that she knew of since.

Does any of this matter? I guess I have about a month to make my decision. I’m scheduled for surgery on January 12th. My surgeon is hoping I’ll move the date up to the 10th but I need at least the weekend to think about it.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)

I saw my surgeon today. I was mortified for him and for me before I even met him. I imagined him telling me all sorts of things, using words like “chance” and “odds” and give it a try.” I imagined feeling insulted and ashamed. I walked, burning through my body in the cold, to the train. Unable to imagine any of the words that had kept me up all night: regression analyses, complications, bile duct injury.

I waited in the office with Ian and a cabled owl and all of the words bubbled forth and then exploded. I felt foolish, I felt hungry. Tired, and hopeful. I kept knitting.

Ian left. Then I went back to the exam room. And now I’m outside. Burning in the cold.

The surgeon pretty much lived up to all of my lowest expectations of him. Like Ian said later, I used to put all of my hope in these doctors and then I would go to see them and they would let me down so much that it would be like being a kid and having the horns cut off all my unicorns all over again. Now I go to their offices with devestatingly low expectations, and they are nearly always met. And I still feel terrible. The surgeon was argumentative, and he was vague. And yet I know this has nothing to do with his abilities as a surgeon. I just don’t know what to do.

He examined me and told me that I wasn’t bloated. This on a day when I am having trouble breathing because I am so large. He hasn’t even cut me open and he already thinks I’m crazy. If I end up with terrible complications from the surgery then I dont know where I’ll be.

figs are sweet, but sugar is sweeter.

Thanksgiving was wonderful. Pumpkin pie plans, with a little sense, and a lot less money, easily became pumpkin pie cookie plans. That was a supergood idea which created supergood cookies.

I seriously had almost all of this stuff at home already. I swear. The batter was a little difficult at first; creaming the organic shortening with no electric mixer proved quite the task. I dont know why we dont have one, but we deal with this nearly everytime we bake, with no lessons learned. What we usually do is just take turns until it gets done.

I love vegweb and most everything I make originates from the site. Although I do change recipies from time to time, one of my greatest pet peeves when it comes to that site are the whiny substituters. Not a single cookie or pie is safe on that site from at least a few of them. Like this, the last comment you’ll see on the recipie page: I tried making these last night and they turned out to be a disaster. I subbed applesauce and more pumpkin for the shortening. The consistency of these cookies was really gross. They were wet and chewy, but not in a good way. My husband and I each ate one and I’m pretty sure he only ate it to be nice. I ended up cramming them down the garbage disposal.

From people who shouldn’t be in the dessert section to begin with to people who obviously don’t know a thing about baking, these subsituters create all sorts of unholy matrimonies in their kitchens, and then make the rest of us listen to them whine about it. Its fine if you want to substitute maple leaves for maple sugar, but you probably shouldn’t blame the recipie when your cookies taste like grass. I think that these people are pretty much one step under the “Why don’t we all just eat an apple?” trolls that come into websites like vegweb, trying to make us all feel bad for wanting to make chocolate cakes and seitan burritos, as if we are all somehow on some higher eschelon of humanity because we don’t eat meat and dairy.

Up in Harlem we had yummy mock duck, and there was turkey for the omnivores. Mashed potatoes, root vegetables, southern style greens, mac n’ cheese for the dairy-eaters, and more great food than I have ever remembered. Its remarkable to me that my gastrointestinal distress allowed me to enjoy the day. Of course I was pretty bloated after the meal, but nothing terrible in the way of pain or anything else.

Which brings me to my doctor visit on Monday. I think for the entire first 2 minutes of our consultation he thought I had already had my gallbladder removed. Kind of like a morbid whos-on-first routine about my organs.

Doctor: Okay, so you saw another doctor, why did you see her?

Me: Because you don’t return my calls and I needed some help before the 6 weeks that I had to wait for my appointment was up.

Doctor: Okay, but why did you need to see her? What is your main complaint?

Me: The bloating! And the pain! You know?

Doctor: Because of your gall bladder? Why do you still have it?

Me: Because I need a referral from you!

Seems he thought that the esteemed gentleman doctor who cut into my bile ducts back in September was going to refer me to a surgeon. I had thought the same, myself, but it didn’t go that way. He thought I should wait it out. So my doctor referred me to a surgeon and I have a consultation on Tuesday. I’m terrified and elated at the same time. I find myself giving some thought to the ridiculous gallbladder flushes and liver cleanses after all. I mean, if it’s going to come out anyway, I may as well try, right? Well, not exactly. The simple fact that there is a woman named Ingrid with a site called “Kitchen doctor” who claims that (paraphrasing) no matter what anyone thinks they know about stones, one cannot get stuck in the bile duct, is enough to turn me off nearly completely.

Got sick today; couldn’t keep my food down until around 6pm. Missed more work and more school. Oh and knitting hasn’t been getting done any quicker than my schoolwork, what with all this sleeping. I guess I got some sort of lucious NYC subway bug this week. Its totally rad when you cant tell if youre puking because of your gallbladder or because of the woman that coughed in your face on the L last week.