oh man

[dragonlady7]

via https://ift.tt/2YCY0pv

i do not have the guts to be a vegan.

i mean like literally, lentils hurt me

i am Suffering y’all

(the soup even had bacon in it, it’s not the vegan thing, it’s just. ooooh boy i’m fulla beans.) (Your picture was not posted)

Comments

beans

[light_of_summer]

Do you ever take any kind of bean-digestion enzyme helper right before eating a meal that contains legumes? I find that that helps me quite a bit.

This is the one I like best, of the ones I've tried: (Link to Beanaid product at cvs.com) I actually experimented with Beano, first, which also works, but with the CVS house brand, I can take 1 tasteless capsule instead of Beano's 2 slightly weird-tasting and chalky chewable tablets. Win!

Re: beans

[dragonlady7]

I have never tried that! This is a new problem for me, like within the last month, so I have not yet figured out what makes it happen!

beans (and health support)

[light_of_summer]

Ouch! My sympathies!

Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional, but I went through an extended period or two where my digestion was Really Problematic. I did a whole thing of working with both a gastroenterologist and an herbalist. I can provide somewhat more info on that, if you like, though some of the details are lost in the mists of time. (I slowly got better.)

For now, knowing a little re your situation re health care, here are some fairly cheap and easy things that I think are worth trying:

Bean-specific enzyme pills, as previously recommended.

Eat some yogurt or drink some kefir with live cultures in it, in case your intestinal micro-organisms need some replenishing. (This is not bean-specific advice, but it's been recommended to me as something to help with digestion after a course of antibiotics has messed up the digestive environment.)

Take some flax oil for awhile. It's one of the things I recall the herbalist recommending as something that helps upset guts to heal. Kind of an acquired taste, though.

Drink nettle leaf tea for awhile. (Same source and reason as for flax oil.) I find the taste of this fairly pleasant.

I hope you might find one or more of those helpful.

Just in case, though, could you bring yourself to have a conversation with your Dude &/or BFF &/or some combination of family members, about them giving you some help to get health insurance and some help to schedule appointments and to interact with health care providers? (On the money side, a Patreon for health insurance money might be an additional thing to try, but not so helpful for appointment logistics.)

(BTW, it is absolutely OK to take a helper-advocate to your appointments—anyone can be upset or flustered or forgetful in a medical context, and benefit from having a calm and sensible companion to help them get the best care.)

Even though I understand that these issues are painful, I'm bringing them up because you are just about the age my mom was when she was diagnosed with colon cancer, and I think sudden change in how your digestion behaves is one of the warning signs.

My mom went through a lot in order to live only a few more years. I really hope you'll be around much longer than she was.

I value your life. Clearly, your loved ones do, too, but I worry that they may sometimes take you for granted. I don't want them to come to regret not offering you more help.

If you would like me to write a letter to your loved ones about this, that you could just hand to them or forward to them in email, asking them if they'd be willing and able to collaborate on helping you to get good health care, I'd be very willing to write such a letter. You could beta-read it or never look at it, whichever you prefer.

If you're not sure, I could send you a copy of the letter I wrote to my friends, some years ago, to enlist their help for myself before I had major surgery. My idea then was that if everyone knew what I needed, and each person could volunteer for just a little bit, then no one would get overloaded and feel resentful. It worked out pretty well.

Let me know if you'd like to see the old letter, &/or have me draft a new one, on your behalf?

Maybe a container of live-culture yogurt will be enough. I hope so! But, for the longer run, I hope you'll also consider my offer.

Best wishes, regardless!

Re: beans (and health support)

[light_of_summer]

Oops, I meant to reply to your reply, but I clearly clicked the wrong Reply button.