Step One

A new opportunity for success in healing

This has been at least six months in the making at this point, but as of June 2, I will be flying to England to receive a fecal microbiota transplant at the Taymount Clinic.

As soon as I heard of these things a couple years ago, there was a voice in the back of my mind that said, "This is for me. This could be it." With every development that would allow me to receive this treatment, my excitement grew: there was a reputable place in England, it wasn't that difficult to get to, my father (who was enjoying keeping up with the research unrelated to my interest) was willing to pay for me to give it a try, Chris Kresser recommended it to me in case all of the things he knew to suggest didn't work (they didn't)...

I'm doing my best to reframe my thinking to not get my hopes up too high. I realize that even if I do see great results, it's not because this treatment is "it." This is only one (large) step of many that I've taken recently to regain (or finally, for the first time, be) healthy. I long ago gave up looking for a magic pill to take away my myriad of diseases and other symptoms. The microbiologist I spoke to last fall said they consider a successful treatment one where the patient is able to get off his/her "survival diet." This is in no way my marker of a successful treatment for me. I am fully entrenched in the real food world and won't be looking back, no matter what specific label may be most appropriate for my diet at any given point in the future. It has woven its way into all areas of my life and has made me who I am today and who I hope to be in the future.

That being said, my goal for this treatment is to get me to a place where real food and alternative therapies actually and finally work for me, like they seem to for many other people, because I have yet to see more than very minor improvements from the drastic upheaval of my diet and lifestyle these past few years.

The timescale for improvement (if there is any, and apparently improvement is only seen about 70% of the time, but that's for their entire population, and not the people who are willing to do whatever it takes to keep their new bugs healthy–Chris said the rate of improvement for his patients is nearly 100%, albeit the sample size is smaller and degree of improvement is varied) is several months to a couple of years. However, I've definitely proven that I'm in this for the long haul. My only fear is that the necessary stresses of vet school's third and fourth years will impede my true healing potential.

Step One

The first step is to being taking a bowel softener one month ahead of the start of treatment. The ingredients are very clean - it's essentially just a high dose of magnesium and vitamin C. 

No matter what your bowels' preferred state is, you have to take this to help clean things out. Surprisingly, given that I can count the number of times in my life I have been constipated on one hand while one hand more often than not would not be enough to count the number of diarrheal episodes I have had in a single day over the last fifteen years, I've been having to take more than I thought. They advise taking 1 more each day until soft stools are achieved, and I have to take three. Ah, the mysteries of the human body... 

In other health news...

My thyroid antibodies have been elevated ever since they were first tested over two years ago; however, this time they've reached the danger zone (a TPO of >60). My actual thyroid values are still within normal limits, so hopefully I will be able to avoid adding another autoimmune disease to the list. 

After one and a half years of intensive supplementation and sun exposure (relatively speaking for this ginger), my vitamin D levels are finally in a normal range. Some might actually argue they've gone too high, so I'm going to be backing off the supplements until I enter the cave that is a New England winter again. I credit this supplement far more than any others (yes, even including FCLO, which did nothing to raise my values over the last three years), because that's the only thing that has changed since I had my values tested in December.