good bye savannah

It seems another chapter of my life has in it's way come to a close. My
last guide dog, my wonderful girl savannah died on the 11th of this
month. Apparrently she had cancer and there was fluid building up
around her lungs and heart.

The email i got from peggy said that she was happy and hyper till the
last, she loved to play ball and have fun.

I've always missed her since she left, but in some ways i miss her more.
A large part of me wishes i'd kept her after retirement because i never
was able to get another dog, but at the same time, i know they took care
of her in a way i never could. They have a dog for her to play with, and
she'll be missed greatly by their dog willow and bob and peggy.

I'll always miss her and i hope one day maybe I'll have another shephard
again, guide dog or pet. No dog can replace her, but shephards are
wonderful dogs.:)

bella says feed me.

Bella has really opened up since she's been here. she's starting to stay
out when the doorbell rings and i think this is incredible progress on
her part. I almost dread the day we move out of here.:P

We had a bit of fun with her earlier this week.

http://deedra.the-brannons.com/podcasts/bella-says-feed-me.mp3

new naturopath, there might be hope after all.

Well, I saw a naturopath last week. she took an extensive medical
history, i think i was able to tell her more of what was going on then
i was able to tell the homeopath. She really took the time to listen to
me, she had a great deal to say, and she said i was right on track with
the suppliments i was taking. She had some questions about my probiotics
and suggested i increase the s boulardii more. I explained the
probiotics to her. Essentially to high of a dose of probiotic tends to
make me queezey though the s boulardii and the scd probiotics dont do that.

Tuesday we had our follow up apointment and she layed out her treatment
plan. Essentially it involves a great deal of detoxing, combine with
trying to reawaken my vagus nerve and try to get control over the
stomach acid problems, and also try to balance my hormones. It's been an
expensive trip so to speak, but i've got a great deal of hope that it
will actually work.

Jennifer is nice open and honest. She thinks she can help and we truely
hope she can.

Well, it's been almost a week since my origional backslide on scd last
week and my body is just now starting to completely bounce back. I felt
pretty crappy for a couple of days but i'm starting to feel decent
again, so we'll see how things go. I've found replacement foods to deal
with those insane cravings, so guess we need to overstock on dates.:P

measuring cups and spoons with braille

So a friend told me about these, the spoons are the pourfect 12 piece
set and the cups are the pourfect 9 piece set. Both of these have
specific braille labels on them. The spoons go from 2 tbsp to 1/64 tsp.
There is apparrently print to go on certain of these spoons. 1/4tsp is
considered a drop in recipes. if i remember correctly, 1/32 is a
smidgen, 1/16 is a dash, and 1/8 is a pinch.

These seem to be measurements to help folks who aren't sure what those
measurements should look like. Some recipes dont get that specific i
think but i suppose when you are dealing with spices you will run into
these measurements.

Either way I give these 5 stars so to speak and thanks to christina
for telling me about these!

This same company also makes a set of mixing bowls 1 cup, 2 cup, 4 cup,
6 cup, 8 cup, and 12 cup bowls.

I dont have the smaller bowls but i have the ones from 6 8 12 and find
them extremely useful. They're easy to measure things in because they
have raised lines at the cup marks. They also have egg crackers on the
side to help in cracking eggs. I find those particularly handy.

I'm going to test all of these rather extensively in the next several
days. I need to make bread along with bbq chicken, I'll glaze the
carrots in some duck sauce i have, and maybe i'll make jello and yoghurt
soon. Almond milk is a definit on the list for tomorrow along with the
chicken and carrots.

I may do the bread tomorrow or i may wait till wednesday.

I need to go over to safeway in the next couple days to. I want to get
fish that i know i'll like along with some uncured bacon, and maybe
another package of chicken. I also need to get juice for chris and i.

I have my next naturopath apointment wednesday. The lavela seems to be
working well, more so then the klonapin i'm happy about that. No real
angziety since i switched to the lavela.

the search for a doctor continues

Well the other day i went to see my new doctor. Basically i came away
with no better help then before. she essentially told me that do to my
many medical issues she wasn't experienced enough to help me and i
needed an internal medicine doctor.

How frustrating. She was my third doctor since i've been here. It seems
as though it's almost impossible to find a good doctor.

adventures in the kitchen: carrots, beans, and salmon!

Today's adventures in the kitchen was a busy day but semi-short podcast.
I made scd carrots, scd salmon, and black beans and rice for chris. Link
is here:
http://deedra.the-brannons.com/podcasts/carrots-and-beans-and-salmon.mp3

good bye starbucks

I've been almost completely scd for about a month now. The only thing i
wasn't really willing to give up was the weekly or so trip to starbucks.
It's a fun walk the people are friendly and so on. The problem though is
that i'm tollerating their stuff less and less and today is kind of the
final straw.

I went today thinking to get a nice solid breakfast which i've always
done but today when i went things went downfind but it resulted in
horrible diaria. Meh oh well, No more starbucks. That's not all bad it
will save us money anyway. Least i handle diluted coffee with almond
milk in it better.

s boulardii, the miracle probiotic/yeast

s boulardii is commonly used with those with digestive disorders. I
would suggest reading about it as it's very helpful in managing certain
things. At any rate, I started taking a boulardii 2 days ago. It's
supposed to help with diaria and things like killing bad bacteria etc
etc. Immediately the diaria i've had for almost a month seemed to stop.
I'm still playing with the doseage on the s boulardii but over all i've
found it to be very helpful and i'm glad i learned about it from the scd
folks.

the potential for hope

Well, a couple things have happened in the last couple of weeks that
give me a little hope in terms of my stomach. Well i ended up in the
hospital last week as usual, but things were a little different. The
thole nausia/vommitting thing came completely out of nowhere. I was
cooking food one minute and puking my brains out the next.

I was in for about 5 days or so and that was bad, but the changes in my
diet with scd seem to be helping in certain ways. I was quite ill as
usual but i was also a bit better able to function. As long as i didn't
get any illegals in my food i seemed to actually do alright.

So Now that i'm better able to function tomorrow i'm going to do quite a
chunk of cooking. I'm going to cook up some carrots as well as a ham i
got when we ordered food a while ago. I love ham and this one seems to
be quite interesting. so i'm going to prep it and hopefully it wont take
50 years to cook tomorrow.