Woo Hoo!

This is my big, post-doctor-visit, health-report post. For those of you who are interested. If you're not, just skip this one.
I finally had my follow-up today after a couple of years of mysterious symptoms and general malaise and exasperated doctor visits and a final stab at solving the puzzle with a natural health practitioner. They did LOTS of tests and put me on a really strict diet and some pretty strong anti-bacterial medicine, guessing that I had an systemic candida infection. Most likely due to the years and years of antibiotics I took for acne.
Sure enough, that looks like one of the main problems! So, the FANTASTIC news is that I am not allergic to dairy or wheat or soy, like I thought, it's just that I have some other bacterial issues that make it hard for me to tolerate lots of different foods. So, I have to stay pretty strict on my diet and take some stronger medicine for the candida and the other, very rare, unknown-previously-to-my-doctor bacteria that I tested positive for. As a matter of fact, she couldn't even find it in her little book of bacteria. She said we could both go home and research it online and see what we could find. So far, it looks like it comes from plants, it often wipes out entire crops of eucalyptus, and it isn't often found in people. I have no idea what that means for me. But the good news is, I read that it isn't often fatal.
But there will be lots of food I can eat again soon. On the flip side, though, I am really allergic to eggs and corn syrup. And pineapple and peanuts. So, it's not like I can go back to eating baked goods or really anything pre-packaged or even peanut butter on apples, which I love. I had wondered why, even on all this medicine and with the very few foods I was allowed to eat, my skin was still itchy - worse than before! It's probably because I have been eating eggs for breakfast every day (figuring that I was allergic to wheat and not being allowed to eat corn really limited me...) and very often for lunch! I laughed really hard when I figured that out.
But you know what the first thing was that I did after I left her office? I went to Starbucks. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about my first cup of coffee in the longest time ever, so I figured it'd be safer to slink away to my mom's house (two blocks away from Starbucks) and enjoy. Sure enough, I teared up a little bit. Yes, yes, I am actually emotionally connected to coffee (she said with no small amount of shame in her voice). But enjoy I did.
And then, you know what else? I made spaghetti - with non-whole-grain noodles - and meatballs for supper. I had a little glass of wine (which for the first time in a long time did not make me turn beet red and feel like I was burning up from the inside out) and I finished it off with some really good, dark chocolate.
I won't be able to do that again for a while, but I figured that it was okay to celebrate a little bit for now. Now I know that I will feel better eventually. Even better than I already feel. And, as Becky cheekily admonished me, I did not go overboard.
So, tonight, I will sit back and knit and listen to Harry Potter on CD with my husband. He just hasn't had time to read the books and wants to know the whole story, so we've resorted to the audio books. I will enjoy feeling full for the first time in a very long time, and just a little bit warm - the right amount of warm for having had a glass of wine. And the lingering taste of chocolate in my mouth. That's really nice too. And then, I'll go back to all of my regimens tomorrow, feeling smug, knowing that soon enough I will betray all of those vegetables with a big bowl of ice cream.

DAILY BLISS: A cup of coffee! Duh!