Woooo! My first post :)
aaand I am writing it while on a 3 day juice detox..I can't think of a more appropriate time :) Hi! My name is Nicki, I am 32 years old and currently living in my hometown of London, UK and I also spend heaps of time in the beautiful city of Stockholm, Sweden where my gorgeous and wonderfully talented and supportive boyfriend, Fredrik, is from <3
Ok, so, where do I begin? Well, I suppose anywhere would be a good start really hehe :) So many of my close friends have said to me that I must start a blog and share my experience of healing and love for food with the world and so it seems I have finally found the courage to do just that and here I am :)
I would like to take this moment to thank each and everyone of you who is taking the time to read this. I'll try and keep it short if I can (not likely though ;) hehe). If there is anything that can be taken away from my story I hope it is a message, or feelings even, of hope, love and gratitude. I wish you all an abundance of love and light, good health and healthy food in your lives :D
So, what is this experience I speak of? Well, it is a journey that I am still on and one that I am so grateful for :) From a very young age I suffered with various illnesses. At the age of one, the doctors found a tumor behind my right eye and I was diagnosed with a childhood cancer known as Retinoblastoma. I had my right eye removed and have lived with a prosthetic eye ever since. At times this can prove challenging but also humorous (dropping it in peoples drinks and then telling them 'I have my eye on you' that sort of thing hehe). I am very lucky to have survived :) A few years after that, from what I remember, came my 'toilet issues'. Hah, toilet issues, sounds funny but it really wasn't. To put it simply, I could have anywhere from 5-20 very painful bowel movements a day! I remember, when I was around 8 or 9, when I'd be in a cold room or stressed out or even after I ate, bam that'd be it straight to the toilet I ran and the pain would have me in tears. This went on for many years. I didn't really see a doctor about it apart from a family friend who told us maybe it was IBS and that I should stay away from tomatoes amongst other things. But the pains would come and go so we just thought 'oh this is just Nicki, this is what is normal for her'. Oh how wrong that was. In my early 20's, I tried to investigate it more and went to my local hospital for a colonoscopy. When we got the results the doctor said 'oh well it looks like mild colitis, we're not entirely sure but here take these (antibiotics) for 3 months and let me know how you get on'. Well, I wasn't entirely happy with that but I tried them, for one night only and I felt extremely weird after taking the first two, so I decided not to take anymore. My sister recommended a homeopath to me and I decided to take a different approach. After a few appointments with the homeopath he came to the conclusion that I should avoid certain foods and presented me with a list of what to eat and what to avoid. I should add here that my diet up to that the time had been pretty terrible, especially since for the year and a half before that I had been working at McDonalds and eating a 'meal' there almost everyday :/ I followed his advice and I guess life went on. I tried to deal with it as best as I could. Sometimes the symptoms would be really bad other times more manageable. I just thought well this is me.
In 2006, I moved to Athens, Greece. It was an emotionally difficult time for me and I was working anywhere from 2-4 different jobs at the same time. My diet wasn't the best either. Then in 2009, my health started to take a turn for the worse in so many ways. I went in to hospital for a week had loads of invasive and horrible tests and was eventually diagnosed with Crohn's disease. The inflammation had created a 30cm stricture in my small bowel (something I would find out later) and a perianal fistula. It was so painful to eat or sit because I was in constant pain. But I kept working for 6 months after that. I say working but I truth is I could barely do it. When the symptoms got even worse and they told me about the stricture and that I would need surgery I had no choice but to leave my life in Greece and return to London to live with my mother and have the operations I needed. And here I am today 3 major operations later. I was on and off a liquid diet for about 2 and half years (I would eat, things like mashed potato and hummus even though it was dangerous and put me in so much pain). I couldn't stomach the liquid food the doctors were giving me. The pains were so bad I spent most of the time laying down and the days I pushed myself to do something I liked, would leave me wiped out for days or even weeks. So, after my first 2 surgeries, which included a resection of my small intestine and a seton fitted to the fistula, I thought yeaaay I can start slowly eating and I could for about 2 months...then the pains started again. And life had other obstacles that it wanted me to over come at the same time too so major stress was back in my life. The doctors put me on some hardcore immunosupressants. The side effects of which were shocking to say the least! And so was the reaction I was having to them just minutes after taking the first pills. So, they switched me to different ones. And again the same thing. Then more tests. At this point, I was thinking maybe my body is trying to tell me something. It was. It was SCREAMING 'DON'T TAKE THESE MEDS!!!' But I didn't know what else to do. So when they offered me the last medication out there for what they thought might help my sypmptoms I took it..reluctantly. I went for weekely infusions for about 5 months unitl I said NO MORE! The effect they were having on me was making the pains as well as a host of other sypmtoms a million times worse. At this point they told me I was suffering from abdominal adhesions caused from the surgery the only reason I was still doing the infusions was in the hope they might help the fistula.. which of course they didn't. The adhesions meant that my intestines had gone and gotten themselves all twisted after surgery and was causing another blockage that's why I still had pains and couldn't eat. So it was time for another surgery, less than a year after the first one, to try and 'unstick/unpick' the adhesions. I was advised that the surgery guaranteed nothing and that it could make it even worse. I did it though, because I thought well I don't know what else to do. Did things get better? Nope. Worse, much worse.
A few months after that, the surgeons and consultants were at a loss and could offer me nothing else to help the pain or my eating situation. Well apart from more surgery, surgery which wouldn't guarantee anything and which of course I didn't want. When I asked them what do I do about my food situation (I already had my amazing Vitamix blender at this time) well they said 'we maybe should look at tube feeding you' To which I replied 'forever?' and they said 'Yes'. At that moment, I knew this was not going to be my life. I knew that I would never ever be tube fed. I knew this with every fiber of my being. There was another way out of this. A close friend of mine had introduced me to the world of juices and healing the body through cleanisng. He introduced me to wheatgrass and it's healing powers and here my journey began. The journey where through the love and guidance of some amazing people and wonderful food I began to heal myself :)
