My (ongoing) chronic illness journey and its experiments

Hey folks,

I am currently taking time away from work (only a small part of this was a matter of choice) to focus on getting in control of my chronic illness, and learning how my body works and how to help it heal.

As someone who feels very anxious about spending my time productively, this feels like a great deal. What am I going to be "producing" in that time away from "proper paid work"? How will I be contributing to the world?

It's aaaaaall the time that I would have otherwise spent working for a company earning money and contributing to the company's objectives that I'm now completely investing just in myself and my health, and I feel anxious about what "tangible results" I will have to show for it at the end.

Getting well would be the ideal of course. But fibromyalgia and CFS can be unpredictable and temperamental in how they insidiously (and sometimes obviously) run your life. I am cautiously optimistic but I know that this journey could take much much much longer than I currently think I have the patience and resilience for.

In any case, it is a journey, as I have been and am still completely committed to experimenting with different modalities of healing to figure out how to get in control of these conditions.

A friend suggested I should pick up my blog again and use it as a vehicle to help other people who may be in a similar situation to mine. This feels like a good way of "having something to show" for this "time off".

So here goes. I hope that I manage to keep it constructive and informative and that my varying emotional states (as I am struggling through my bad days and riding high on my good days) help make the reading interesting rather than pathetic, boring or grating.

Here are some of the modalities I have already been experimenting with (and still am for some) in parallel with conventional medicine:

- nutrition

- herbal medicine

- iridology (as a diagnostic tool)

- acupuncture

- Bowen technique

- osteopathy and physiotherapy

- Rolfing

- reiki

- art therapy

- counselling and psychotherapy

- hypnotherapy

- Bach flower therapy

- essential oils

- naturopathy

I will have a think about how I write about these, as after nearly a year and a half after I was hospitalised and first off work, I feel like I am connecting more dots and the picture is coming together more clearly.

I hope it will make sense to you and give you some useful insights if you or someone you love is going through a chronic illness as well or even simply feeling overwhelmed by stress in your / their life.

Please do comment with your experience or any comments / questions you may have, as this will make the information sharing more meaningful and relevant!

Stuffed bitter melon soup

When it comes to the madeleines of your childhood, those foods that instantly call up a memory of your childhood, while some people have sweet cakes to show for, I have weird and wonderful Chinese dishes.

One of these madeleines is a stuffed bitter melon soup which my grandmother used to make for me. I took to it as a very young child, perhaps proving yet again that I am a Teochew girl through and through. The other evidence of it is the unrelented desire I had as a child to eat congee and salted turnip omelette. 

The taste for congee and salted turnip omelette is somewhat understandable: soft stodgy comforting food with a highlight of saltiness. The taste for bitter melon less so, with most children unable to eat bitter foods altogether.

My uncle says that you have to have tasted bitterness to enjoy bitter melon. I clearly hadn't at that age; on the contrary, stuffed bitter melon soup evoked comfort and lightness for me.

Bone broth is a comforting staple at home, but there is something about this knobbly, pale green vegetable which suggests a feeling resembling compassion for a sad friend.

The weather has been extremely hot in the South-East of England lately, and although I used to enjoy 30 degree weather as a young adult, 17 years of adaptation to the weather here has left me with very low tolerance to any temperature higher than 23 degrees.

I have been hot and bothered for weeks now, and also suffering from allergy to a very high grass pollen count, feeling sticky and snotty and generally yukky.

There is something about the bitter taste that is clean, refreshing, light. I even find that it highlights sweetness in foods that it is combined with.

I like to contrast the bitter taste with something savoury and a little fatty, and I find that pork works great with it.

But enough of my rambling, I shall leave you with my recipe for stuffed bitter melon soup.

If you try it, please leave me comments on your thoughts or add a picture of it in the comments!

Bon appétit! 

 

Ingredients for 1 person:

For the bone broth:

Organic pork bones 

8L water

For the stuffed bitter melon:

1 small bitter melon

100g good quality (preferably organic) pork mince

A couple of dried shiitake mushrooms

A couple of tbsp soya sauce

A pinch of salt

1 tsp sesame oil

Method:

1. Make some pork bone broth (I order pork bones from an online organic farm).

2. Soak a couple of dried shiitake mushrooms for 20 minutes.

3. Marinate the pork mince in soya sauce, salt, and sesame oil.

4. In the meantime, clean the bitter melon, trim the ends and cut in roughly 3cm chunks.

5. Cut the inside white pith off and discard it, leaving rings of the lovely knobbly green flesh.

 

6. Once the shiitake mushrooms are rehydrated, chop them finely. Add them to the pork mince and mix.

7. Stuff the bitter melon rings with the pork mince mixture.

 

8. Add the stuffed bitter melon chunks to the boiling pork broth and cook on medium heat for about half an hour.

9. Et voilà! Ladle the stuffed bitter melon chunks with some soup into your favourite bowl, and tuck in. You can use some dipping chilli sauce, and you can also eat the meat on the pork bones, which is incredibly tender!

 

Rome trip - Feb 2017, culture and history

I gave you an update on the food highlights of our weekend in Rome last week.
Seriously, if there wasn't that slight bottleneck in life that is the need to digest your food before you start eating again, I could have just stopped at that, but hey, I thought maybe we should also check out all that historical stuff going on in the city.

Culturally, our highlight was a guided tour of Ancient Rome we booked with the company Through Eternity. The company is passionate about giving excellent quality tours from the knowledge and professionalism of their tour guides. 

Ours, Enrica, a well-travelled PhD in archaeology with fantastic English and a real passion for being a tour guide, stoked our imagination with her skilful storytelling and frequent references to Anglo-saxon culture.

From insightful etymological facts to the real intentions of political intrigue behind historical events, her rapid and constant flow of stories kept me transfixed for the whole 3.5 hour tour, taking us from the Roman Forum through Palatine Hill to the Colosseum.

Beating the crowds at 9am on our way to the meet up point by the Colosseum

Let me give you a little taster.

You may have heard of the legend of the founding of Rome by Romulus, the first Roman King.

Legend goes that Rhea Silvia, a vestal virgin, was "visited" by the god Mars during her sleep and found herself pregnant with twins, Romulus and Remus (no, definitely not immaculate conception and yes, somehow in ancient mythology, rape was not an abomination but just something that happened when the gods lacking self-control would just use humans for the relief of their sexual impulses). 

Vestal virgins were highly venerated young ladies who had been carefully selected from aristocratic families to dedicate their lives to tending to the fire in the temple of Vesta (the goddess of the hearth) day and night. The fire should never die, lest some misfortune should come to pass. 

These young ladies had to make a vow of chastity, and would be buried alive as punishment for breaking their vow.

Poor Rhea Silvia found herself having to abandon her sons in the forest, where it is said that they were found and raised by a she-wolf or lupa. 

The new information for me was that the word lupa is also used for brothel, and therefore maybe those twins did exist but they were raised by a kind and caring prostitute and not by a wolf!

I really liked this version of the story, one that not only makes the legend a more realistic version of reality but also that shows humanity and the main role of a social outcast in the making of a king.



Another story which struck me was about the reality of life for the gladiators.

Those men were enemies of war captured on the victory by the Roman Empire, carefully selected for their fighting skills then trained in the gladiator complex next to the Colosseum.

They were expensive, highly trained slaves which were rented by the Roman emperor for the free games they would offer the Roman people to increase their popularity.

It was likely for friends or brothers would have to fight each other for the amusement of the Romans.
Fighting weapons were only carefully handed to the gladiators once they would reach the arena, after many of them would rather commit suicide rather than fighting each other to amuse their enemies. 
Some stabbed themselves after having been given their weapon on the ramp before the entrance to the arena, another choked themselves to death with the dirty sponge used in the toilet, and a group of Saxons strangled each other to death in their cell, the last one hanging himself.


On that cheerful note, here are a few pictures of just light strolling we did around the city. We used the book Strolling Through Rome by Mario Erasmo, which was marvellous in giving us snippets of insightful and interesting information along our walks.

The Trevi Fountain, mobbed as usual

View over the Via Sacra from higher on Palatine Hill

Colosseum and Constantine's triumph arch

Yep I AM trying to imitate one of the saints' awkward pose on St Peter's Square, Vatican! 

My lover and me in front of St Peter's Basilica, Vatican

Pigeons having a bath in one of the many water fountains in the city

I turned into a pigeon for a minute and basked in the February sun, on our walk up to the Terrace of the Janiculum

Another great view on our walk up to the panoramic view point at the top of the Janiculum

We reached the top and had sore legs and feet and a peanut butter and double chocolate Magnum!

Rome trip - Feb 2017, Food highlights

We decided to stay in the Testaccio area, a half hour walk south of the Colosseum, to experience the "real Rome" slightly away from the crammed touristic areas, and we were very glad we did!

All the great meals worth writing home about, we had in Testaccio; the others in tourist areas being delicious but not exceptional.

On the first night, upon arriving, we had a late dinner at the local Pizzeria Da Remo, a delightfully cramped and noisy local place with stocky waiters expertly carried armfuls of plates around and cleared tables in one swift sweep, folding the paper tablecloth into a parcel then efficiently taken away.

The pizze had an amazingly thin crust baked to a crunchy crisp on the edges in the wood oven; the capricciosa offered the separate flavours of the mushrooms, cured ham, and artichoke, while the pizza Remo had a delicious topping of soft roasted aubergines, chunks of succulent rosemary and fennel infused sausage meat. This welcome to Rome left us elated and looking forward to the rest of the trip.

We went to Barberini, a caffe / pasticceria around the corner, for breakfast the next morning and returned every morning thereafter! Reminiscent of the scene in Eat Pray Love where Julia Roberts tries to order a coffee in a fast-paced gilt-colour decorated coffee shop where she first meets her Swedish friend Sophie, this was a bustling place where local people would gulp down a quick caffè and cornetto (croissant) standing over the savoury pastry counter before starting their day.

As I was wondering how I was going to make it to the counter, with a slightly stunned and anxious look on my face, the staff would ask for my order and humour my limited Italian by generously filling in the gaps with the missing Italian words in my broken sentences.

Our last hour in Rome before our mid morning flight was spent savouring their creamy and light cappuccino and the warm prosciutto e funghi panino, the bread evoking the comfort of a mother's embrace, with its crispy outside crust and delicately fluffy and light flesh in the middle, the mild saltiness of the prosciutto cotto e funghi elevating the taste of whole panino.

On another morning when Charlie was vegetating back at the Airbnb after a hangover from the previous night's mezzo litro of the house red, I decided to visit the local Testaccio indoor market. The stalls were brimming with fresh and colourful vegetables and fruits, and particularly carciofi (globe artichokes) which are in season.

I stumbled upon Casa Manco, a stall opened 3 months ago by a couple of former architects who chose to pursue their passion for pizza. The dough is organic and they leave it to rise for 3 days, making it taste of real bread that satisfies your stomach and your soul. The lady in her conveniently fluent English insisted on me sampling liberal portions of the arm-long pizze freshly coming out of the oven one after the other, with inventive toppings such as grated fresh zucchini, houmous & rosemary-infused shredded cabbage, onion soup, or simply sesame seeds with sprinkled coarse sea salt. 

As I stuffed my face, trying to keep my pleasurable murmurings at low volume, I observed the locals snapping up whole pizze in their entirety to take back to their families.   I settled on generous slices of zucchini, onion soup and sesame pizza, which I brought back to my hungover beloved. Now there's feeding and there's feeding; and I felt proud and happy to bring food that was not only delicious but also nurturing for mind and soul.

After all the pizza and pasta, my gut was craving vegetables. The merchant helpfully directed me to a stall where Zoe made juices from fresh fruit and vegetables (estratti). Mine was personalised - "lo faccio io?" (shall I choose the ingredients for you?), she asks for my permission, standing behind all her fresh produce.

The sweetness of the ingredients including cabbage, fennel and pineapple triggered happy hormones in my brain as the juice was sliding from the straw through my mouth and into my stomach.

Another great place for juices was Foodie Mercato Fresco on Piazza Testaccio, with their amazing array of colourful fruit and veg, a great local place for vegans, with their estratti, soups, panini, and Pukka & Clipper teas. 

We also had a great meal at Tavernaccia Da Bruno, starting with a bruschetta of cured lard and dollops of thick and intense honey - heaven!

The wild boar pappardelle and rigatoni amatriciana left us silently savouring every mouthful, and the suckling pig was so succulent that although we already felt uncomfortably full, the plates were left empty, the juices mopped with bread.

With the globe artichokes in season, one restaurant in the Jewish ghetto offered an 8-course carciofi menu.
We loved the carciofi a la giuda, fried until the leaves are crisp, while the heart is tender and perfectly cooked in the middle.

All those meals were satisfyingly inexpensive, the cappuccino at Barberini costing €1, the pizza at Da Remo €6-7, the pasta at la Tavernaccia €9. It made us feel welcome into the community to have access to real honest nutritious food at the cost that locals pay. 

This week's menu is going to be mostly veg soups, bone broths and smoothies - the body is happy but feeling heavy!