Candida Complete Recap
I started to get away from writing about Candida when I started to feel a bit better. But, the thing is, that after over three years of treating it, Candida still runs my life. And I wanted to look back through all of my posts and pull together a comprehensive look at the beginnings, middle and nearing the end for anyone out there who might also be searching for an answer or working through changing their diet and lifestyle.
At first, I was really sick and no one could figure out why but I had all of these constant and worsening symptoms. I was exhausted all of the time, I lost about 30 pounds – and dropped from a size 9/10 to a size 1/2 in about a month, my tongue had leisons on it all of the time, and my throat would close up making it painful to swallow almost constantly. Eventually I had a constant pain in my lower right abdomen that was there all of the time.
I saw a lot of doctors and specialists, all of whom thought that this was all in my head. For details see this post. I saw A LOT of pompous, ridiculous doctors (everyone from a ear nose and throat specialist, to a OBGYN, to a GI to a dermatologist) who I had to fight with at every appointment just to try to be heard. The absolute worst was the GI the day he said all of this and called everything I was doing “Hocus Pocus”! It made me so angry. All they did was give me more antibiotics which, in turn, made the candida worse. The only person who showed some signs of hope was the rheumatologist.
I had every kind of test done – catscans, colonoscopy, gastroscopy, ultrasounds and even and endoscopy.
Finally I started to see a naturopath who also sent me to see an osteopath (and here). She did koru food sensitivity testing and I had a seven page report of all of the foods I couldn’t tolerate (in general, gluten, sugar, cow dairy, mushrooms, melons, citrus, and anything fungusy). She also did a candida test and my numbers were off the charts (in the bad way). The naturopath was amazing and actually LISTENED, which was more of a relief than anything else. Though she did make me cry as the saga of the candida waged on, she got to the heart of the matter and, more importantly, the correct diagnosis.
After over three years of feeling ill and searching for an answer, I finally admitted that I had Candida and wrote up this synopsis of the condition.
I switched my diet and started on anti-fungals right away. I wrote and followed all of these (which cover the treatment):
What to do if you think you have candida
More Candida Advice and Lessons Learned
Candida Combat Starter and Questions
And constantly tracked down information, guide books, and (most importantly) cookbooks. And I also wanted to let other people know about Candida – so that they were not misdiagnosed and so that they would have the ammunition they needed to explain how they felt to doctors. And, how to eat! There are lots of posts on Candida here and on Gluten, dairy, sugar free food here. And more on my experiences with “the dyingness” (as I called it).
Even a year in, my family doctor was still angry with me. And two years later he actually admitted “well, I’m a medical doctor, so I can’t believe in that stuff”.
So stick with it – I can’t even imagine not having candida now. And not eating this way! I’m still fighting it every day, but there are much worse things (and I want to make sure that this candida doesn’t turn into anything worse as there are some links to cancer from candida).
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