Phase 4, week 7 of treatment

I tried to split this post into three sections- insights from the last week, background, and a summary of each day. If you are a friend or family member, I’d recommend sticking with the background and insights. If you’re someone who is having digestive issues, or is wondering what treatment might be like, I’d recommend reading everything.

This post is for informational purposes only and is not intended to treat or diagnose anyone. Go see a doctor for diagnosis and treatment.

Also, my brain fog is pretty intense at times. I try to make sure what I write is correct, but I may get things wrong from time to time.

Insights from the last week:

This week was rough. I’ve felt nauseous almost the whole week, my digestive system has stopped moving, and I’ve had very little energy.

 I spent a long time thinking the Fluconazole I took last week was causing the issues this week. 

Towards the end of this week I started looking into what can cause nausea and constipation. After some searching, I found that berberine (which I also started taking last week) could cause constipation, so I stopped taking it. After a day or two of stopping the berberine I no longer felt nauseous. My digestive track is still super stopped up though, which I’m really worried about. SIBO is notoriously re-occurent. One of the ways it can reoccur is from bacteria backing up from the large intestine. Since I haven’t had movement in over a week at this point, I’m feeling discouraged because it feels like the first several phases of treatment may be coming undone.

About food: This week I’ve been terrible about food. While I’m still trying to stick to low FODMAP, some of the paleo bits have gone out the window. I’ve been nauseous almost all the time, but when I eat just meat or veggies it feels worse. I’ve been eating more rice because it feels better. Some meals I just mixed some rice in bone broth and called it good. I’ve also been taking ginger pills to help with the nausea, but with limited success. I have wanted to make a big batch of soup all week, I just don’t have the energy.

Background:

This particular bout of health issues flared in 2015. My job had become extremely stressful and travel intensive, in conjunction with some major life changes: moving in with my boyfriend, becoming a Christian, getting married 2 weeks after being proposed to, becoming a step parent, then planning a wedding reception for the following summer.

 In 2016, I was finding I could no longer work full days, and my hair was falling out. When I felt that work was finally slow enough to go to the doctor, I was diagnosed with adrenal fatigue and told to take a month off of work to rest. HA! It didn’t seem possible at that point. However, I did take 2 weeks off then go back at half time in May of 2016. Over the summer I was able to do less and less, and I finally ended up quitting my job in October 2016.

Between October 2016 and June 2018 I had the opportunity to learn how to rest and was able to work on a treatment plan for adrenal fatigue. I was feeling like I was making good progress in the first 3-4 months of 2018. Looking back now, I can see where I was sliding back a bit in April and May. In June, I experienced an extreme energy crash that left me looking for answers, since I didn’t think I had done anything significantly different than I had previously. In the beginning of July 2018, I went and saw a functional medicine doctor who ran a bunch of tests up front to figure out what other things might be wrong with me.

As mentioned in my post about the results from the last visit, my test results show that I have a yeast overgrowth, a parasite, SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth), and gut dysbiosis.
Previous test results indicated I have low stomach acid, nutritional deficiencies, and hormone imbalances with the adrenal glands, ovaries, and thyroid.

I have been on supplements for the hormone imbalances (previously diagnosed as adrenal fatigue) for a while. They started with my previous doctor. The new doctor is continuing to work on those issues, but with different supplements.

I started the seventh week of my 4 phase, 10 week treatment plan on October 15th, 2018. Phase 1 worked on the yeast, phase 2 worked on SIBO, phase 3 worked on SIBO and the parasite, and phase 4 will continue with the SIBO. The supplements for everything else will continue through the whole treatment period. This week is all phase 3.

I currently take 12 different supplements throughout the day. Two are a phase specific treatment pill. Three are for the hormone imbalances, 3 are for nutritional deficiencies, and 4 are for digestive support.

Day 43

I slept a long time last night- 9 or 10 hours, but have felt fatigued all day. 

After eating lunch, I’ve felt nauseous all day. Lunch is actually the only food I’ve eaten all day, and I took my breakfast pills with lunch. I had some bone broth for ‘breakfast’ because it was the only thing I could stomach.

The oral thrush is still present, so I called the doctor’s office today to see if there are any options besides the Fluconazole to deal with it. I have felt so horrible since taking the first pill I can’t bring myself to take the second dose they prescribed. I have been using a thrush paste that I made from baking soda, salt, coconut oil, and tea tree oil to try and help get rid of it. The paste few days I’ve also been oil pulling and trying to hold Greek yogurt in my mouth a few times a day. While the thrush doesn’t seem to be getting worse, it doesn’t seem to be getting better, either.

I took my daughter to a doctors appointment today in the late afternoon, and I felt so nauseous on the way to pick her up, take her to the appointment, and take her back to school.

I’m not sure if my feeling bad is related to the medicine, yeast die-off, or somethign else. I have heard from others that yeast die off can be pretty bad. I haven’t had a normal bowel movement in 3-4 days, so I’m sure it doesn’t help that I’m not eliminating correctly.

It’s past my normal dinner time, but the thought of eating makes the nausea worse. I may try more bone broth for some sort of nutrients. Maybe going back to liquid food for a while will also help some with digestion.

Day 44

It has been rather frustrating to call the doctors office to try and get additional information on side effects that have been happening. I FINALLY realized today that I have the doctors email address, and that it would make way more sense to email her.

I asked about how to handle the thrush and what to do about the lack of bowel movements and if I should be on a prokinetic.

She did respond rather quickly, which was refereshing after waiting several days for answers last week.

She said to keep doing what I’m doing with the thrush, but to add either an activated charcoal or thieves mouthwash. I couldn’t find either, but I got a mouthwash that had a few essential oils, some of which are in thieves.

For lack of bowel movements, she had mentioned psyllium husk and increased hydration. I have been on psyillium husk for several weeks now. It’s been on a lower dose than recommended, but historically, if I take a lot of fiber at once it makes things worse. The dose I have been on has been working up to this point, so not sure what has changed.

She also said I could come in and pick up a sample of a prokinetic.

Day 45-47

This was a rough week and I just didn’t get around to updating things on a daily basis. I spent the large majority of the week feeling nauseous most of the time. I felt the worst on day 46 when I went to parent teacher conferences. I didn’t really eat before I went because I felt so nauseous. I was there for about 3 hours talking to all the teachers I could. The last 30 minutes or so, I started to feel like I might pass out while standing in line, which was not a fun feeling.

I also had a hard time sleeping that night. I was super frustrated with feeling nauseous, so I spend some time looking up potential reasons for it’s cause. At first, I thought it might be related to the antifungal, but it has been long enough at this point that it feels like it has to be something else. 

One thing I searched for is why people with SIBO have nausea, and one article that came up talked about delayed gastric emptying (#4 https://www.restartmed.com/sibo-symptoms/). I read later that delayed gastric emptying is kind of rare, so I kept looking.

I found that Berberine can cause digestive side effects, one of which is constipation . I thought it was interesting that it’s really hard to find side effects on supplements, but it’s super easy to find out about side effects on prescription pills.

 I don’t know what’s going on, but something is super messed up in my digestive tract- I’ve had to resort to enemas to have any sort of bowel movement. I haven’t been doing them everyday, I wait 2-3 days in between to give my body a chance to respond. Interestingly, the second time I used an enema (on day 45 or 46) the stool was a Bristol scale 3-4, so normal looking, it just wasn’t moving.

On day 47 I decided to stop taking the berberine given what I had read.

I got 3 packets of the prokinetic on day 44. I forgot to take them for a day or two, but then I took one pill morning and evening for 3 days straight. I was disappointed to find that they did not help.

Day 48

Today my daughter had a cheer competition about an  hour and half away from where we live. My husband and I had planned to go down to support her, but we moved a little slow leaving the house.

I was pretty sluggish in the morning, then decided a little before we left that I felt like I needed to do another enema. Like the 2^nd time, the stool was a Bristol scale 3-4, which I still didn’t expect given how long I hadn’t had a normal bowel movement.

The cheer team took 2^nd place that day, which was super exciting. Everyone was tired the rest of the day, so the whole family spent time resting.

Day 49

Today was the first day I realized I wasn’t super nauseous all the time. I’m still not feeling well, but not feeling nauseous is a huge plus!

I ended up helping out in the nursery at church today. I haven’t served anywhere since about mid July when I stepped down from everything I was doing. It was good to go and take care of babies for a little while.

Later in the day, there was a corn maze event for the church. I took my daughter and her friend and we went for a few hours. By the time the event was over I was pretty tired and ready to come home.

I emailed my doctor tonight to tell her about the lack of bowel movements, the enemas, and that I stopped taking berberine. I know for sure something is not right, I just don’t know what.