The Secret Life of Carolyn Glauser, Episode III

Thomas Edison once said, "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.  The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."
Through extensive experimentation and hundreds of trial runs over the last few years, I've come to the conclusion that I might not meet my future boyfriend (or any friends, for that matter) in my basement, in front of my tv, in my kitchen, in my yard, or even at the community gym.  While I'm still firmly following Edison's advice and plan to try many more iterations of weekend nights watching tv, I decided to throw something else into the mix a few weeks ago.
Every day on my commute I drive past a new indoor soccer arena.  As I watched it being built, I thought it seemed like good idea.  Then once it opened I saw signs for open registration for adult leagues.  I put myself on the email list a couple months ago, but all the team openings were for super late night games (10-11ish: no thank you!), so I let it pass.  But about a month ago I got an email saying they were taking registration for the new season and they had one team left to fill.  I went to the website, and the open team was for the lowest skill level, playing late afternoons on Saturdays.  I decided to go for it.  So I'm on a soccer team now.  I've played two games so far. 
I haven't played soccer since I was 10 or 11, so I had no idea what to expect.  First of all, I had to google how to put on shin guards (without looking, who knows if they go over or under socks?).  And then I showed up.  I was expecting a nice group of people to mingle with, and maybe after the game we'd all go out and get ice cream.  I was wrong.  It turns out soccer is the new roller derby.  My team is a little softer than the other teams I've seen so far (my team is a married couple and their teenage son, two other high-schoolers, two girls in their twenties who might be LDS, one guy who stays in the goal box the whole time but seems nice enough, and two guys covered in tattoos, but all the other teams are covered in tattoos, have a steady stream of obscenities streaming from their mouths, and could possibly pass for meth addicts.  It's an interesting mix of people. 
Most of my team has been playing there since the place opened and didn't realize they were signing up for a low-level team, so once they realized I didn't know what I was doing, they stopped passing the ball to me.  So I established myself as the person who charges the other team and doesn't let them think about what to do with the ball.  During the first game, at one point I had a guy on the other team cornered against the wall with no way to get away with the ball, so he twerked me.  That's the only word I can think of for what happened.  I was stunned, and he got away.  During yesterday's game, I got slammed into the wall by a much bigger girl and now have welts and bruises down my arm.  My best move yesterday (and the only one for which I got commended) was when my back was turned and the other team tried to kick the ball to one of their own, but instead the ball hit me in the back of the leg and bounced to one of my teammates.  I'm feeling that one today, too.  Soccer is a young person's sport.  Last week my thighs were sore until Wednesday or Thursday from all the running around.  I'm feeling better after yesterday's game, but only because we had more people show up so I sat out for more of the game.  Here's a picture from yesterday.  I'm not in it.  It's hard to take a picture of myself playing soccer.

And I thought my last one was gross...

If I thought talking about gum surgery in a blog post was gross, I didn't know what I was in for.  I'll try to use delicate words, but the subject matter of this post is hard to be delicate with.  It's just gross. You've been warned.  But also kind of super interesting.  To me, anyway.

I had a whole post written out with a daily play by play of my last three weeks, but then I realized, nobody probably wants to read about how regular I have or have not been lately.  So now you’re getting the short version.  I’ll try to just include the stuff that I’ve found particularly interesting (and a few details that are crucial to the story line).

Three weeks ago on a Wednesday night I went to bed feeling completely fine.  The next morning I felt anything but.  I’ll spare you the details, but I was in and out of the bathroom six or seven times before I even left for work.  That continued through the day.  Plus, I was nauseated all day and had a headache that wasn’t my normal type of headache (they usually start in my head and grow to my stomach; this one started in my stomach and grew to my head).  Anyway, I wrote it off as some kind of stomach bug. 

The next day the nauseous feeling and headache were gone, but the other symptoms remained.  And they’ve remained ever since.  Again, I’ll spare you the details.  Let’s just say, I’ve been able to eat whatever I want because I knew it wouldn’t be with me long, but I really didn’t feel like eating anything because I knew I would feel sick in short order, and not much sounded good.  It’s been gross.  And it’s been seriously messing with my life.  I don’t eat for a couple hours before meetings (which means no breakfast on Sundays because we have primary first and I’m at the piano for two straight hours), no walks (even the three minute walk to the gym often becomes an emergency situation), no movies, etc).

I’ve been doing some research to figure out what was going on.  I started with Crohn’s disease (why not go straight to the worst scenario, right?).  Some of the symptoms listed were the same as what I was dealing with, but not all.  But all the information I found on Crohn’s said that a doctor would first test for IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).  So then I researched IBS.  Bingo.  If you really want the details of my life in the recent past, go to http://www.webmd.com/ibs/guide/irritable-bowel-syndrome-ibs-symptoms

But I wasn’t about to just accept an internet diagnosis of IBS and carry on with my life.  And I had a feeling that if I went to the doctor, it would just mean a $40 copay to be told to take some immodium and watch my symptoms over the next few months.  I’d rather watch my symptoms, gather information, and be better prepared for a more in depth doctor visit.  So I did some more research.  Most of the websites I found on IBS say that dairy and sugar are triggers.  After a particularly trying day last weekend, I decided to go dairy free and see what happened.  The next day, I had no symptoms.  It was wonderful!  So there it is; I’m lactose intolerant.  But then I kept thinking about it and it didn’t make sense to me that I could suddenly become lactose intolerant overnight.  How could that happen?!  Here’s where it starts getting good.

I googled ‘adult-onset lactose intolerance’ and found a chat string about people becoming suddenly lactose intolerant.  Lactose intolerance is caused by the intestines not producing enough lactase, which is the enzyme which breaks down lactose.  The production of lactase can be stopped by a short illness (I don’t think I was sick, but maybe that first day of symptoms was an illness that interrupted my lactase production), or it can be affected by taking antibiotics.  The probiotics that help in lactase production (or at least its effectiveness) can be killed off by antibiotics.  I don’t think I’ve ever taken antibiotics before, but for my most recent gum surgery I had to take them for two weeks, meaning I finished them about two weeks before this whole thing started.  So my theory is that the antibiotics threw off the balance of my probiotics and messed up all my regularity.  Now, normally when I hear the word ‘probiotic’, I think we’re venturing a little too far into the realm of Whole Foods and natural healing and unscience and my mind turns off.  But when we’re dealing with the possibility of a lifetime without ice cream or other sugary or cheesy dairy goodness, I’m willing to explore my options.  So on Monday I found myself in a Whole Foods Market.  And let me tell you, it’s another world in there, where people live in a different sphere or something.  But that’s a story for another post.  Wow.  I found a bottle of probiotics that was loaded with the strains containing the prefix ‘lac-‘, and I got out of there.  I think I’m getting back to normal.  My symptoms aren’t totally gone yet, but I’m definitely climbing back to normalcy.  I don’t know if it’s due to the probiotics or if I was just going through a debugging stage.  Either way, I think the way nutrition works is amazing.  There really is a delicate ecosystem going on in there, and it’s incredible how it all balances out just right.  I often think about what I would do differently if I could start over as an 18 year old freshman in college.  Economics is still one of my first choices, but nutrition is definitely at the top of the list.  There’s so much to learn about it!