A Letter About My Ailments [And A Request for Menu Ideas]

 I'm actually looking for ideas about what to eat, but first this post will sound like the letters my Yoder aunts would send in the family circle letter. "Was to the dr. yest. to talk about my aches and pains ha."

The "ha" was a frequent insertion in their letters, telling you this was an attempt at humor. I guess you might not pick up on that otherwise.

If you've been around me for over an hour, you know I'm afflicted with the Yoder Cough, a soft persistent hacking that becomes easily-ignored background noise.

The cough comes from the Yoder Lungs, fragile organs which struggle to do their job even on their best days and also catch every respiratory virus in the wind. At that point, the gentle coughing transitions to a deep gasping and rasping, sort of like a choking German Shepherd, that cannot be ignored and causes great worry to any  listeners.

Actually, Yoders have a family tradition of being sickly and frail but also living a long time. Dad's mom, "Kansas Mommi", wasn't expected to reach adulthood but lived to 103 years old.

Dad was always thin and forever coughing and also had the Yoder Stomach, [de Yeddah schwache Mahwa] but he lived to 102.

So I coughed a lot for many years, inhaled lots of asthma medications, fought bronchitis and Covid and other recurring  respiratory ills, and assumed I'd live a long time despite all this. I am committed to family tradition, after all.

Of course, I have also tried to take care of myself and eat well and get enough sleep and never ever get cold feet. I avoid artificial scents, especially Glade plug-ins, because they are plastic death, probably invented by the devil himself, ha. In addition to prescription meds, I have tried multiple supplements from vitamins to CBD to various MLM products.

The inhaled steroids keep me alive. The CBD cream has helped the most of any potion I've tried. Both took the edge off the cough. Neither stopped it.

In the last month, for the first time, I  had an alarming  sense that if nothing changed, I would not keep up the family tradition of living a long time.

In late summer, my friend and neighbor Simone said, “You are always sick!” She was right. I cycled through illnesses and in early October came down with a nasty sore throat and what felt like laryngitis. Soon, the sore throat descended into my lungs and turned deep and liquid.

Unfortunately, we needed to travel, and traveling and sickness go together for me like moving to a different house and having a baby always happened at the same time when I was a young mom. I get sick every time I fly. Or if I'm already sick, it gets a lot worse.

I wore a mask to avoid spraying pneumonia particles on my seatmates.
I was comforted in this ordeal by having a mask that matched my jacket, only a few shades lighter.

Not only was the cough beyond horrible, but I was so tired that I had to gather my courage to climb a flight of stairs. But I didn't pursue seeing a dr. on our week-long trip because we were away from home, I didn't have a fever, and I figured if I found a doctor he or she would dismiss it as just a virus:  get lots of rest and push fluids, goodbye.

We came home. I felt terrible, like a python was squeezing my chest, and like I just wanted to sleep if I could muster the strength to walk to bed.  I began to question whether I'd survive to 65, let alone 100. The doctor told me it’s “walking pneumonia exacerbated by asthma” and put me on antibiotics and oral steroids. It took me the rest of October to sort of recover.

This is the thing with modern American medicine: It’s amazing when your husband shatters his wrists and lots of other bones, and they piece him back together and help him survive. It’s frustratingly insufficient with anything vague and chronic.

Asthma is technically not an autoimmune disease, but it’s in the same neighborhood. It’s connected to inflammation and to the body going a little crazy overreacting to irritants.

No one could ever tell me why this was happening.

If you Google causes and treatment of asthma, every major medical site says, “Avoid irritants such as mold,” and “Increase your dose of inhaled steroids.” That’s all my doctor could offer me as well.

So there you are, coughing wretchedly and knowing you need steroids to keep breathing, but also knowing that something is completely and deeply wrong with this picture. The medical world offers zero help for getting to the root causes of your breathing difficulties, so you go wandering among YouTube and Instagram “natural” practitioners who might or might not have the credentials they say they do.

A recurring theme in my research was food sensitivities causing inflammation which then causes asthma and lots of other ills. It mostly made sense.

Dr. Josh Redd, whose qualifications I had no way of checking, offered a free printable guide to an elimination diet to test which foods I might be reacting to. The simplest one, cutting out dairy products, sugar, and wheat, seemed the most logical for my situation. Impulsively, I decided to go for it on a random Friday morning, of course right after I’d bought lots of ravioli and bread sticks at Costco and a big bag of string cheese at Grocery Depot.

That was one week ago. I eat oatmeal in various iterations, cook enough rice at one time for three dinners, and fry eggs and vegetables and meat to go with the rice. I made apple crisp when we had guests for supper, and I didn’t eat any of it.

I am going to get tired of this menu very soon.

However. I am coughing noticeably less. I can hardly believe it. For the last month, I’d been taking cough syrup at night so I could get a few hours of sleep. I quit doing that and slept without waking up in paroxysms of wheezing and gagging. I haven’t used a rescue inhaler in a week.

Today I spoke at a women’s event at a church and embarrassingly coughed a lot, again, and right before I left I suddenly realized there were candles, probably scented, burning on every table. No wonder.

I would say, over all, I’m coughing 65% less than before. It is astonishing. I wonder who I am now. I’m not sure I recognize this person, ha.

The big question is: how will this affect my immune system? Will I keep getting sick? Will I still have to wear a medical mask when I fly or mingle in crowds so I don’t cough on everyone around me or get knocked flat with Covid or bronchitis three days later?

We will see. 

I was talking with my sister Rebecca, whose asthma has always been two levels worse than mine.  If I need a dose of Albuterol, she needs to be on a nebulizer.

Rebecca said she does best if she strictly follows the exact diet I’m on, which probably means that I’m stuck with this way of eating, because we are very much alike.

I said I don’t understand it. Here we are, needing to avoid the same foods, and we have no family history or anything of food allergies.

She said, “Well! Think about it! All those cakes and pies the Yoder relatives always served. Maybe they actually were sensitive to sugar and gluten, and that’s what was causing the Yoder cough, and no one put it together!”

What a brilliant connection.

I think diet and inflammation and family history are what the medical researchers at Johns Hopkins and WebMD ought to be looking into and testing and sharing. Instead, it’s those of us dealing with asthma every day who are doing the nitty-gritty testing and research, trying dozens of remedies because while we’d really like to follow the family tradition and live to 100, sometimes we just want to survive to see another day.

Before I end this lengthy circle letter, ha, I will put out a call for help from anyone who’s followed this diet. What are some things I can eat? Again, I’m avoiding gluten/wheat, dairy products, and sugar. Please comment your creative menu ideas, if you don't mind.

That would be terrible to decide it’s not worth living longer if it means another meal of oatmeal or rice.

And, as Dad closed every letter from love letters to Mom to Yoder circle letters:

Sincerely,

Dorcas