Dealing with derailments

Stuff happens. We have two choices; rage against the vagaries of fate, or adapt ourselves to changing circumstances and make the best of it. Only one of these choices results in success.

Over the past couple of months I've been dealing with pneumonia (which could be life-threatening) and a mean sinus infection (I'd rather have the life-threatening thing, thanks) which led to three rounds of antibiotics. They all had to be taken with food.

Add in my husband's chronic illness (he's great for bringing tea, but cannot get out to the grocery store) and the fact that I'd eaten my store of frozen meals during the first illness. Now we have a series of challenges that would only be topped by being teleported to Planet of the Vegans.

Fortunately, the only thing that would be wrong in these kinds of circumstances is giving up. Which I won't do.

Not every schedule gets kept.

The "every twelve hours" regimen of the antibiotics was a challenge because I generally skip breakfast.

When I discovered eating breakfast actually made me more hungry by lunch than if I skipped it; I started skipping it.

And I couldn't just have a snack with that pill, either. One of the rules which works for me is No Snacking.

It seems that when I eat a tiny meal, my pancreas doesn't release a tiny amount of insulin in response. It releases TANKER CAR of insulin. So I have to eat a meal. Every time. In this case, every twelve hours.

That is another beauty of eating low carb; a good, satisfying meal keeps me going for hours and hours!

Since I was too exhausted to cook, I relied on deli meat and block cheese and pre-sliced mushrooms and bell peppers which work well nibbled together in stacks. I grilled burgers four at a time and ate them wrapped in lettuce. I bought a lot of rotisserie chicken and bagged coleslaw and blue cheese dressing.

Even when the antibiotics upset my stomach, I just sighed and added more food; even foods like black beans or sweet potatoes that are normally too carby for me. They seemed to be soothing to my stomach, and they wouldn't do the harm that a bowl of chicken noodle soup would do.

When we eat low carb, there are very few options in the boxed and frozen sections of the supermarket. When we eat gluten-free, there aren't any. So I don't regret the extra effort, ever, that eating fresh and unprocessed requires.

It simply comes with the territory.