Tackling Costochondritis - My Regimen

This blog entry is about my nearly two year struggle with costochondritis. You can read my story and follow my blog entries in chronological order by going to this link.

Writing a blog entry for dealing with this monster (costochondritis) is not easy. I probably should start writing down a list of thoughts before I blog about this. I have a feeling I'll be sitting here cutting and pasting my words so that they'll not be so jumbly (and the spell-check says "jumbly" is not a word--but I'm saying it is today). More than a year's research is floating around in my brain, and I know that there's no possible way that I can get it all in in one blog entry (hence the need for a whole series of posts so that you can read on your own time). Today I'm going to devote my blog entry to the regimen I'm going to attempt to follow. I say attempt because my history doesn't exactly include a heaping amount of determination or will-power. However, I'd love to get my life back, and that's a whole lot of determination right there. And that also reminds me to tell you that I'm going to write a post (or maybe more?) about what a bad day is like for me and what a good day is like for me.

But first I want to share with you what I'm going to do to tackle this problem, and with God's help, eliminate it. Speaking of God, I also need to share with you in a blog entry about my struggle and my spiritual growth.

Diet Life-Changing Eating Plan
I hate that word Diet, and anyone who has ever been on a diet surely hates it, too. The word is not pleasant and brings back the thought of endless FAILED attempts at changing my eating habits. The word Diet has an unpleasant letter arrangement that I also associate with failed attempts at changing my eating--d-i-e. Yup, every time I go on a diet, the plan always dies. I don't have much will-power. So, that being said, I have chosen--instead of Diet--to use the phrase Life-Changing Eating Plan.

My eating plan is developed around the perfect whole foods diet eating plan. ;) Whole foods means that there is nothing processed in such a way that nutrients are stripped. So, basically, here is a list of foods I will be eating, followed by a list I won't be eating.

Life-Changing foods (what I'll be eating):

• whole grain bread, crackers, with no sugar or ingredients that contain -ose
• fresh fruits and frozen (no sugar added, no preservatives)
• fresh vegetables and frozen (no preservatives)
• brown rice, barley, etc. (not refined)
• no-salt nuts
• non-breaded meats
• organic yogurt (no sugar), cheese (no processed junk)

Life-Inhibiting foods (what I won't eat):

• white flour
• canned fruit, dried fruit (including GMO fruits and veggies, which I avoid anyway)
• white rice
• breaded, processed meat
• anything with sugar in the ingredients or -ose or -ol in the ingredient list
• anything with monosodium glutamate in the ingredient list

Since I also suffer from acid reflux, I also plan to eliminate tomatoes, onions and celery from my diet (my acid triggers) for a while.

Relaxation

Stress & Tension - My Slow but Steadily Plunge into Pain
Relaxation is going to be a huge part of my regimen because I've developed the habit of bracing. During the last thirteen years, I have bit by bit held tension in my upper torso. As a result, my neck was my first source of problem. I have alignment issues (because of one leg being longer than the other), but that is only half of my neck problems. When I was 22, I started getting tension headaches. I just thought for years that I was afflicted with migraines; looking back on it and knowing what I do now, it was a part of my stress problem. Thirteen years later, I still have neck problems, but I've added upper back, shoulder, mid back and lower back to my list of pain. Last February, I added chest to the mix. Instead of now simply responding to a stressful situation by tensing my shoulders and my chest muscles, I now tense my shoulders and chest muscles when I am not stressed. I will be sitting in front of the television, reading a book, or simply having a conversation and realize that my muscles in those areas are tense. I consciously realize it several times a day and force myself to relax those muscles.

Morning Pain
My mornings are rough. When I wake up, my sternum and ribs (front and back) are sore. If I awake while lying on my side, it feels like my sternum is being squished. Painful. As the morning progresses, I begin to feel better. This lets me know that I tense my muscles up during sleep.

How I'm Hoping to Fix It - Skilled Relaxation

Last year I discovered a website that has brought me my greatest number of resources in fighting and winning the battle against acid reflux and costochondritis. And that website introduced to me the book on the left: Recapture Your Health. I bought it (and no, I have not been paid to talk about this book), and boy has it been an eye-opener. It's a holistic look at healing your problems when allopathic medication won't bring you healing. (The authors don't dismiss modern medicine--they prefer a natural healing when possible combined with allopathic means of handling other health needs, such as genetic illnesses.)

One third of this book's major topics deals with relaxation (the other two main topics cover exercise and whole foods diet). The idea behind relaxation is to teach your body not to respond to the fight or flight mode that many folks find themselves constantly in. For me, relaxation is simply lying on the bed for half an hour, focusing on my breathing and keeping thoughts at bay. I also occasionally listen to classical music (Pachelbel's Canon is one of my favorites) when I'm having trouble with focusing on relaxing. I don't listen to relaxation CDs with people telling you what to do, nor do I do self-hypnosis or things like that. I simply lie down and relax. I do this twice a day, according to the suggestion in the book. I've not done it long enough to see results. As a matter of fact, the book states that it can take 6-12 months to see major results. Maybe three months before I see noticeable results. I don't care if I have to wait a year--if it'll work, I'll try it three times a day if I need to.

Supplements & Helpful Practices
Here is a list of supplements that I am taking:

• regular multivitamin
• folate
• fish oil and/or flax seed oil
• magnesium
• B12
• Frankincense oil
• Vit. D
• chiropractic care & massage therapy as needed
• gentle stretching & walking
• Echinacea (two weeks on, two off)

I'm keeping a notebook to keep track of my relaxation sessions, vitamins,and symptoms. This will help me to see if there is a pattern to my pain. Some people claim that weather makes costochondritis worse. I've not been able to see if there is a pattern yet for me. Time will tell.

My goal is to be whole and well again. The ultimate goal would be to pass on my findings to someone else battling this so that they can be made whole and well again, too.

Life Afterward - It's ok to talk

In three days, it will be two months since I found out that we were expecting a third child. I waited until now to write about it all, because--frankly--it's been too hard to write about. I've been too angry, bitter, sad--you name it. I think it's safe to say now that I'm healing well emotionally.

There are days that I think about what it would have been like. This Saturday I would have reached the thirteen week mark. No doubt, like his/her brothers, I'd have felt movement by now. At first, each Saturday that marked a new week brought grief and despair. Sundays were awful, because everything fell apart on a Sunday.

It's strange the depth of emotion that losing a baby brings. One day, I would be a heaping mass of tears and sobbing. The next day I would be fine, and that made me feel so guilty. Brad felt the same way. I almost felt during that first couple of weeks like I had to grieve for a certain amount of time, because if I didn't, I would be a horrible person. But I didn't make myself grieve--trust me, it came whether I wanted it to or not.

For the first two weeks, phone calls were awful to bear. If someone called, I cried. It was inevitable. Talking about losing the baby was just unbearable. Talking about it made it more real, and part of me wanted to deny it. At one point about a month afterward, I felt like it had all not been real. I had only known that I was pregnant for four days before things fell apart. I'd not had enough time to really feel like the pregnancy was real before I found out that it was over. The emotions from the loss are all over the place. I can't begin to explain to someone who's not experienced it how it literally takes over your mind. Everything else fades in importance. Retreating inward. Eating, eating, eating in my grief. No one had to worry that I'd starve to death--no, I responded in the opposite way. The scale bears witness.

The physical pain was quite awful. On Mother's Day when I went to the ER and was told that I was miscarrying, I went home and tried to accept it. The pain was maddening. It hurt to sit--it felt like I was sitting on a knife, especially if I sat on a hard surface. Days went by, and I saw my ob/gyn. Had two ultrasounds which neither confirmed a sac anywhere. It was unofficially determined that I had an ectopic pregnancy. No idea where the baby landed. That explained my pain.

D&C. Methotrexate. Sent home to heal. And wait. I didn't realize that it would take so long for hCG to lower. My hCG was so low--only got as high as 89--but it took three weeks to get back down to 0. No folate, no vitamins. Methotrexate depletes the folate in the body so that fetal tissue that is remaining is reabsorbed by the mother's body. I didn't realize how much food had folate, and it was frustrating to not be able to eat any of it until my hCG was 0. Three weeks eating chicken and rice, crackers, and cheese. And lots of prunes. I think you can figure out why with that diet.

For a month after the D&C, I had pain. A good portion of the pain was in the area of my ovaries, and it would come and go. Sharp little needle-like sensations that would show up, and then ebb away. And then there was the cramping that was similar to post-partum cramping. And I learned that methotrexate causes a lot of abdominal pain. You'd better believe it. Some days I remained in my recliner for hours. Some days I didn't want to get out of bed.

This week, my ob/gyn gave me the all-clear. I'm back to normal now physically, and now I feel like I can move on. People have told me that I never will forget. That there will be times when I'll just cry. The due date--January 12--may be a hard day. Mother's Day will always be hard, because that was when I lost the baby. I take comfort in the fact that my little one is with my Lord. That makes it easier for me to bear, even though it hurts that I'll never get to hear his/her first cries, watch it make bubbles out of saliva, make little cooing sounds or watch in fascination as Jacob plays the Star Wars theme on the piano. (Because any child of mine would HAVE to love Star Wars, right? :P) But it's ok--my mind takes me to heaven where one day I'll see that little person that is a part of me and a part of Brad and hug him/her and have forever to talk and laugh.

And now, it's ok to talk about losing the baby. I want to talk about the baby. I think there's this unspoken understanding that I sense among some that a miscarriage is not a real loss. That there's nothing that can be done, and so you should just accept it and snap out of it. Does someone just accept and snap out of it when a relative dies? A spouse? A child? Of course not. To suggest that a woman shouldn't grieve the loss of her unborn child is insensitive. No one is going to tell me that I can't talk about my child that I lost.

Have you suffered a miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy? Don't be silent! Share your story with me--share your pain, your own "what ifs", your life afterward.

Not My Decision

I sat down to write a blog for the ChristianWriters.com September blog, but this came out instead. I'm not a poet by any stretch, but it encapsulates my inner battle while dealing with costochondritis for the last (almost) seven months. These are my thoughts just put down--they're not meant for publishing.

Not My Decision

I sit alone in a prison
Not made by me
It was not my decision.

Aching body, jaw clenched

I wait alone in a prison
Not made by me
It was not my decision.

In a crowd, with smile pasted

I walk alone in a prison
Not made by me
It was not my decision.

Holding His Book, the tears flow

I read alone in a prison
Not made by me
It was not my decision.

Before the throne, I make my plea
To make my leave

To never be alone in a prison
Not made by me, for
It was not my decision.

His eyes gaze into mine
He takes my hand

To guide me from my prison
Not made by me, and
It was His decision.