#41-LOSING MY BONES

LOSING MY BONES

Hey everyone!

This is a difficult subject, but I want to talk about it because I'm sure I'm not the only one in this situation.

It is an aspect of the illness that affects my daily life, the image of my body, my energy, and all the questions that can feed my anxiety about my recovery and the sequelae that I could keep later, and which could possibly result in new health concerns.

I am always amazed to see that there is a great lack of knowledge about nutrition and the impact it has on our health. The body is a whole. All the tissues, all the organs, everything that makes up the body we inhabit, are interconnected. They are dependent on each other to survive. And when they are confronted with a massive attack by a virus, coronavirus and/or bacteria, the whole body suffers.

When people ask me questions about my state of health, to put it simply, I generally only mention pericarditis. But there is much more than that. And I realized that very quickly.

Indeed, despite the fact that I ate a lot, I very quickly lost weight. 10 kilos (22 pounds) evaporated in a few weeks of illness. From an athletic body, I went to a skeletal body.

Muscles melted first. Very quickly, I saw the quality of my skin deteriorate. It became thin and wrinkled, it lost its elasticity and I found myself, especially in the belly, with the skin of an old woman of 80 year old. It was frightening to see myself emaciated, weakened and prematurely aged without being able to understand or react.

The classic injunctions are: "You are too thin, eat more!" and "You're too fat, eat less!" »

But this peremptory logic, if it is applicable to a healthy body, no longer worked on my body which was fighting against the disease busy attacking and destroying it.

In terms of medical gaslighting, I was entitled to:

- "It's because you're not moving anymore" (even though I've always forced myself to go out and walk every day, even in the worst pain)

- "You are not eating enough" (I have never eaten so much in my life, my own mother is still speechless)

- Suspicions of anorexia and lies (although I have no interest in lying about my state of health, my only goal being to heal, to find solutions to regain health and my previous life)

- "Yet all your analyzes are normal" (must we really say again and again that doctors, if they are great scientists whom I completely respect, do not have a total and absolute knowledge of the functioning of the human body? There is still a great deal of the unknown that remains to be discovered and conquered.)

Where has the spirit of the Enlightenments of the 18th century gone, based on rational knowledge and the search for happiness for all in a just society? These great thinkers, who sought and questioned in the name of tolerance, equality and freedom, have only to turn over in their respective graves.

They must grumble as much as I do when I hear the abdication simmering under this honest paternalism.

Isn't a society that no longer asks itself questions synonymous with a civilization in perdition?

When the oversized ego of a doctor sends the responsibility for healing back to the head of the patient, both literally and figuratively, by inventing psychiatric pathologies so as not to have to question itself, does medicine still bear its name, or should it be renamed medical gaslighting?

I had the chance to meet doctors who went a little further in the analyses. More and more nutritional deficiencies began to appear and constitute proof that my body was deteriorating despite my efforts to have an irreproachable diet.

When the bones started to be attacked, things got more serious. The test of choice to check the good health of the bones is called bone densitometry (or osteodensitometry). It is a medical test that measures bone mineral density.

The results are bad as far as I’m concerned. I have early osteoporosis and my body does not assimilate calcium well.

But it had to come to this. In other words, to damage that could well be irreparable and irreversible, to really be taken seriously.

The doctor explained to me that, on the one hand, my body is fighting against disease and needs a lot of nutrients to defend itself, and on the other hand, the nutrient assimilation mechanisms are no longer working properly and are missing of efficiency.

However, the body will seek nutrients where it finds them. If assimilation is not done efficiently through the digestion of ingested food, the body will draw on its own reserves to maintain vital functions at all costs. First muscle and fat, then skin, and finally bones.

And I clearly witnessed this scenario. I gradually saw my body degrade in that order.

Everything I put in place to heal myself allowed me to gain a little more energy and regain a little weight. The muscles reform and the skin “rejuvenates”, becomes tighter and thicker again. But for the bones, it's probably a different story. I will need a little more hindsight to be able to take stock of the recovery at the bone level.

You may now understand better why I care so much about nutrition and diet on this blog.

If you experience anormal weight loss, please, keep this in mind and do as much as you can before your bones deteriorate.

Nutritherapy is the poor member of medicine. It should however be one of its flagship disciplines. What could be more essential?!

In conclusion, it is high time for Western medicine to finally take into account the human body as a whole. Splitting medical disciplines into diverse and varied sectors that do not communicate with each other about a patient with multiple pathologies, is a system that has been showing its limits for some time now.

We are not cars, and doctors are not mechanics.

It would be a question of raising the level!

That egos can make room for more humanity and humility is certainly the wish I make for all those who face serious or chronic illnesses.

I leave you with these few words from Pierre de Ronsard who wrote in the 16th century:

I HAVE ONLY THE BONES, A SKELETON I SEEM,

EMACIATED, DENERVATED, DEMUSCLED, DEPULPED,

THAT THE DRAW OF DEATH WITHOUT FORGIVENESS HAS HIT,

I DON'T DARE TO SEE MY ARMS OF FEAR I'M SHAKING.

(Pierre de Ronsard, 1585)

Pericordially yours,

Vali

Pierre de Ronsard quote, 1585