turtles enjoying the beautiful weather Thursday while we were hiking
Today I had planned on just talking about how I fudged a little to make sure I fueled properly for my race. But when I got sick, I had to do some other things that aren't GAPS legal, so I need to talk about those as well.
But first, how I successfully fueled for a 5k race while doing GAPS so that I also got a PR (personal record).
I had a large handful of gluten free pretzels on Thursday and a few more on Friday. I'm not supposed to be eating complex carbs or starches, but I figured the starch content of the pretzels was my best bet in making sure my body had the energy reserves it needed for the race. This brand of pretzels has corn starch, tapioca starch, and arrowroot starch as the main ingredients, so I guess you could maybe say they're grain free if you're interpreting corn starch as a starch rather than a grain.
I made muffins Friday afternoon for the kids to eat the next morning so the babysitter didn't have to cook anything for them. This particular recipe is made with cassava flour (a starch from the cassava root, processed in a slightly different way than tapioca starch, which also comes from cassava root), as well as a bunch of dried fruits and nuts. I had one muffin Friday evening and another Saturday as I got ready for the race. I didn't have any intestinal issues (which is always a concern before a race), and I had a lot more energy than I thought I'd have.
I'm super excited that my fueling worked as well as it did and will probably do the same thing before my next race (not yet sure when that will be though- I need to plan out my race calendar still).
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As I've mentioned before, we've been fighting some crud the last couple weeks. I feel like I had a lighter case of it at first, probably because of strengthening my immune system with GAPS. However, the boys were determined to share all their plague germs with me, and in the end I succumbed. I started running a fever Friday afternoon, so I took some ibuprofen then and again in the morning.
That seemed to take care of the worst of the symptoms at the time, so I went ahead and ran the race. I think that running while congested, in the cold air, was just more than my body could handle, and my eustachian tubes got blocked. This led to a middle ear infection (rare in adults, according to my doc), renewed fever and chills, sore throat, and massive ear pain.
I took Aleve Saturday and Sunday to try to knock out the pain and fever, but only with minimal success. I didn't even attempt going to sleep Sunday night because the ear pain was so bad. I just lay in bed with a hot rice pack on my ear and around one in the morning the pain finally started to let up. I thought the pain killers had finally kicked in, except that inside my ear felt very moist. With the pain level a lot lower I was able to sleep.
The next morning my ear felt odd and my hearing was off- everything was echoing. I was able to get an appointment to get it looked at and the doctor confirmed that my eardrum had indeed ruptured, as I'd suspected, but that it was just a small hole and should heal without any issues. If the rupture had been due to trauma, the healing process would have been more involved. He was concerned about the wide variety of bacteria being brought in by the kiddos (who are determined to share everything with me), so he prescribed an antibiotic to clear things up. No strep throat though, which I was concerned about, so I'm happy.
I also took River to the doctor to get his ears and throat looked at. Turns out his eardrum had ruptured almost a week earlier (I recognized the signs after the fact), but it most have happened while he was sleeping since he never exhibited the amount of pain I was in. His ears are healing fine on their own, so no antibiotics for him.
Pain killers and antibiotics are not GAPS approved. But given the circumstances, I wasn't willing to suffer more than I already was. Luckily I've been taking probiotics for some time, though I will increase the amount that I take, as well as eat more yogurt in an effort to keep my intestines as healthy as possible. I will be staying on GAPS intro for longer to make up for whatever the painkillers and antibiotics are doing to me.
Being on GAPS for two months has probably put me in as good a place as possible for doing a round of antibiotics.
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