The Ideal Protein Diet

The Ideal Protein diet is a low carb and low fat diet that relies heavily on protein supplementation.  The protein is designed to be easily assimilated to ensure as little muscle loss as possible.  The dieter makes the transition from burning carbohydrates to burning fat, a metabolic state called ketosis.

My wife started the diet on Thursday under the weekly care of a multi-specialist clinic that includes a nutritionist/cardiologist.  She's been having the diet drinks for breakfast and lunch, diet snacks plus a meat and vegetable dinner, which she prepares herself.  The meat portion is 8 ounces, and the vegetable portion is 2 cups cooked, plus some raw.  She must also drink 8 glasses of water each day, and she eat or drink anything else that's 0 calorie, such as tea, coffee, diet soda.  She's allowed to have skim milk.

How's it going?  She feels like shit.  Totally.  I've never seen her so inflamed.  We don't know whether the inflammation is due to the diet or from the undiagnosed MS-Sjogrens-Fibromyalgia-Lupus that has been torturing her since Fall of 2006.  The primary care doctor recently stopped prescribing the $3 prednisone, which allowed her to function well.  Instead, he wants her to undergo the $35-copay physical therapy and work with a $35-copay rheumatologist.  The most intense pain appears to be from flare up of sacrolitis.

Anyway, and inflammation aside, this diet seems to be a good fit for my wife because:

1. You pay a shitload of money upfront.  Anything that's expensive must work.
2. All literature and products feature a special logo and graphic layout with pleasing colors that must've allowed an advertising agency to buy its own tropical island.
3. The diet tells you exactly what to eat.  You don't need to think about it or know anything about the relationship between various foods and their impact on your weight and health.
4. You need to buy most of the stuff that you eat and drink.
5. You need to check in every week for evaluation.

The above list of reasons are the reasons it wouldn't work me.  Besides, the food they give you is highly processed.  The sweet desserts and snacks certainly use some artificial sweetener that will probably give you cancer or seizures eventually.

But if I had to choose between the Ideal Protein diet and, say, bariatric surgery, I'd pick the diet without hesitation.

From MS to Spinal Stenosis

After my wife's attack of Transverse Myelitis in September 2006, the follow up visits with her neurologists consisted of ...

• Cursory reflex and strength tests.
• Discussions of pain med dosage.
• Comments like, "You probably have MS."

But the most recent visit went like this ...

• Cursory reflex and strength tests.
• Discussions of pain med dosage.
• Comments like, "You probably don't have MS."

This time, we actually had an MRI we could look at and actually see Spinal Stenosis.

My wife is still reeling from this new development. After more than two years of hearing about how she harbors rare, inexplicable and incurable diseases, we now have something that's common and treatable. So on the one hand, she's certainly glad that she not under the sentence of MS. However, she's extremely apprehensive about having surgery to remove the impinging tissue.

There's also the uncertainty of how much pain is caused by the lingering effect of myelitis, and how much is due to the stenosis. If she knew that an operation would mean that she could stop taking Neurontin, Baclofen, Cymbalta and Ultram, she'd probably be hopeful. But suppose she undergoes a successful operation and still has the same pain as before?

If This Were My Wife's Blog...

I keep trying to get my wife to start a blog. When I come home from work, I hear stories like this:

I went to see the new neurologist today. (The previous neurologists were merely residents at this teaching university. Not only did they not help her, she'd get a new one every six months and have to explain everything to him all over, at the end of which he would say, "You probably have MS. Let us know when you can't walk." This all changed when she called and insisted to see the head doctor. "Oh, you have good insurance!" said the receptionist's supervisor. "I can get you in with Dr. M. next Monday. He's a regular doctor, I promise.")

I get there (10:30), and they call my name after about five minutes. So I go in one of the exam rooms and wait. And I'm waiting. And waiting. After about 45 minutes, I start to wonder whether I should open the door to see what's up, and the doctor looks in and says, "Oh, I didn't know I had a patient booked!"

So he does some tests. Like he rubs alcohol on my leg and asks if I have any strange sensations. "No," I told him, "it just feels cold." "Then you don't have neuropathy," he says.

Then he did the knee reflex test. When he hit my knee, my leg kicked. I thought that was a good thing. But he said no, it indicates a nerve problem.

He listened to my symptoms and he said he thinks I have MS. He wanted to admit me to the hospital right then and give me IV steroid treatment. Of course I refused. He was very good about it and funny. He said he didn't blame me -- hospitals aren't a good place to be.

He gave me samples of a new med. It's supposed to be a substitute for Zoloft, plus it has pain killer. (The expiration date on the bottle is 10/2007.)

He wants me to get an MRI. And he sent me off for a blood test.

So I walk over to the blood lab and hand them the requisition. There's no one else waiting, but I sit down. After a few minutes, a technician comes up to me with the requisition and points to a code and asks, "Do you know what this is for?" "No, I don't." "I'll have to call the doctor then."

More time goes by. Then a different technician comes up to me with the requisition and points to a diagnosis code and asks, "Do you know what this is for?" "No, I don't." "I'll have to call the doctor then." "That's what the other technician said! How much longer will this take?" "About ten minutes. I could take some blood now, but then you'd have to come back for the remaining test." "I'd rather get it done all at once."

Even more time goes by. Yet a third technician comes up to me with the requisition and points to a diagnosis code and asks, "Do you know what this is for?" "No, I don't." "I'll have to call the doctor then." "Two other people told me the same thing. Let me try to call him. I really don't want to have to come back."

But there's no signal on my cell phone. The technician invites me to use her phone. "Wait, let me dial it for you." Eventually, I get someone to fax the information over. Apparently it's a special test that's done at the Mayo clinic. "Haven't you ever seen the code before?" "No we haven't." "Well, now that you have the information, you should file it so you don't have to track down the doctor when you need to do it again." "That's a good idea. We do have a file for this sort of thing." This is a teaching hospital, supposedly doing lots of research.

Finally, someone draws the blood. I get out of there at 1:30.

I get home and I get a call from "Tim" from the blood draw lab. He let's out a big sigh. "I don't like the sound of that sigh. What's wrong?" "We forgot to label two of your vials. You'll have to come back to have them redrawn."

This is a typical story, believe it or not. As stress is a trigger for MS, folks like my wife are supposed to lead stress-free lives. That would seem to be impossible as long as we're stuck with this university.