Saturday, October 15, 2011

How to convince your stomach to produce too much acid

1. Go to graduate school or seminary.
2. Get a urinary tract infection (UTI).
3. Instead of going to the doctor for your UTI, try and take care of it yourself with cranberry.
4. Consume about half a gallon of cranberry juice every day.
5. Skip school because you are in too much pain to go to class.
6. Finally go to the doctor when the pain become unbearable (after about a month of self treatment).
7. Take 10 days of the strongest antibiotics the doctor feels like giving you.
8. While taking the antibiotics, travel to a funeral in another state and back (9 hours of driving each way).
9. Miss three days of school right before midterms because you are going to the funeral.
10. Continue to drink cranberry juice at incredible rates while on the antibiotics.
11. Survive midterms by staying up late, eating lots of greasy food, and generally not caring well for yourself.
12. Finish the antibiotics.
13. Realize that you are still in pain and convince yourself that you still have a UTI, because it seems like the most pleasant option.
14. Drink more cranberry juice.
15. Add apple cider vinegar to your plan for kicking this UTI in the behind.
16. Drink more cranberry juice.
17. A week after the antibiotics are gone, realize you are still in pain and it's not getting better.
18. Go to the doctor again.
19. Let the doctor poke you where it hurts.
20. Discover that your stomach has decide that producing massive amounts of acid is the best way to get your attention.
And this my friends is how you convince your stomach to produce too much acid.
So now I'm on a low acid, non greasy, non spicy diet as well as acid reducers for the next two weeks to see if that fixes the problem. If not, it will be back to the drawing board again. 
 Unfortunately, most of my favorite foods fall into the categories of acidic, greasy, or spicy (or some combination of the above!). I suppose the bacon I ate the day before going to the doctor was a bad idea, as was the apple cider I had been drinking like it was going out of style and the cranberry juice and the cinnamon and, and, and....
It's definitely been a learning curve. I learned to broil fish today instead of pan frying it like I usually do. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with my Sunday chicken to eliminate the grease. The best option seems to be to boil it, let it cool, scrape the grease off and then do something with the meat. Not quite sure what yet. Maybe chicken salad or some non-spicy type of chicken tortilla, though that doesn't sound too awesome. 
I'm open to suggestions, so if you have suggestions on how to eat "bland" (as the doctor so appealingly put it), please, please, let me know. Otherwise it's going to be a long 2 weeks!

2 comments:

Nomad said...

Chicken Alfredo, (if allowed) chicken-tangerine Cesare salad, shredded chicken with melted mozzarella in flour tortilla, more options pending approval of these... =)

Joy said...

I appreciate the input, but those are all heavy on the dairy which means they are out for me...I'm dairy free.