A Heart Wrenching Decision

 Tomorrow, Feb. 1st, I will be putting down one of my dogs. He was supposed to be my sister's dog. 

 K'mpec came to us as a foster from the Texas Great Pyrenees Rescue. He was 67 pounds, nearly bald and according to the intake vet, had been chained and beaten for a long time. He was terrified of everything, and it took two of us to even get him in the car when we went to pick him up. Once I got him home he did not know what he was supposed to do, as he wasn't sure if he was supposed to be inside the house. Even though he had been starved he never snatched food, always taking it very gently from our hand even from the first. The signs of abuse were obvious. He had gall marks on his neck where he'd been chained, and if you touched him when he wasn't watching, he would literally fall to the ground in terror, trying to get away. It took me about a month to show him that someone touching him wasn't to hurt him. If he saw someone walking in his direction holding anything like a broom or a garden tool, he would run in a panic and try to hide. We worked with him constantly to show him that he was safe, and that no one would hurt him ever again. 

 During this time my sister had 10 acres out in the country in North Central Texas (We're in Austin.) and just fell in love with K'mpec. We had been fostering him about 2 months when my sister decided she wanted to adopt him. So she paid the adoption fees on a Wednesday, and we prepared to drive K'mpec to her place on Saturday. 

 Friday came, and my sister called. She had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic and liver cancer. She asked me to keep K'mpec, and of course I agreed. I tried to keep her involved in his life as much as possible, I sent her daily pictures and told her about his recovery progress. He blossomed into a beautiful floofy boy, happy and with the sweetest disposition. He was protective of the property, but loved for visitors to come over and give him many pets and belly rubs. My sister died 9 months later without ever seeing K'mpec in person, but I always thought of him as hers. 

 Fast forward to 2025, and K'mpec is 10-12 now, which is the life expectancy of a Great Pyrenees. We aren't sure how old he really is as he came to us a full adult. The vet said he was probably around 3, but could have been older. Last summer he started sleeping and laying around a lot more. He also began panting heavily all the time, which we contributed to the brutal summer we were experiencing and that our central air had died and we were using window units. He hadn't been able to go on his usual morning walks, but when the weather started cooling down he did not seem to be getting any better. He still ate and drank, but wasn't enjoying life like he used to. Then he began having difficulty getting up, and we could tell he was hurting. 

 Last weekend I noticed he was having issues urinating. On Monday I found a mass the size of a grapefruit hanging next to his genitals that was bright red and soft to the touch. I called the vet and took him in, they said he was bleeding from somewhere. They ruled out trauma and poison, and after tests it was decided to treat him for prostate disease. Cancer was not ruled out, but because of his age it was agreed by all parties that treatment was not an option, so no tests were run. They sent us home with several hundred dollars worth of medication, and we hoped that would be the solution. He seemed to be getting a little better on Wednesday. 

 Thursday morning I was checking the area where the swelling had been (It was gone at this point leaving massive bruising.) when I noticed another huge blood filled mass in a different spot, and the back of one hind leg was massively swollen and hard to the touch. I called the vet, and after a discussion they said it was probably time to call the mobile vet and have him euthanized. 

 This is not the first time I have had to do this. With the previous two dogs, they had both suffered strokes and were pretty much 'gone'. K'mpec had not, and is still eating and drinking, and thanks to the meds, able to pee, but still not normally. I can tell he is in pain when the pain meds start wearing off. 

 I found a mobile vet (Ours had retired some years ago.), got the appointment set up, and I haven't stopped crying since. We are in the 'good death' period the vets talk about, after quality of life is declining, but before the really bad suffering starts.

  My son came last night to say goodbye, and K'mpec got up several times to get pettings. Today he gets the royal treatment. He got smoked pork jowl bacon, bread, a fried egg and a small bowl of coffee with cream and sugar for breakfast. Many snacks are being administered, even a little of the forbidden food, chocolate. We are making sure that he is never alone, and tell him constantly that he is the Best Boi, which he is. Tonight he will get pork roast, a can of sardines and other goodies for supper. He's having a good day, he made a patrol of the yard, which he hasn't done for a while, and scratched around a bit in his current favorite wallow, but didn't lay down. He usually wants to spend a long time outside, but he stopped wanting to do that last weekend, and now usually comes right back in to lay on his bed in the living room. 

 I have spent the last 24 hours second guessing myself. Is it too soon? Would he recover if we just gave him time? That he is still all there mentally makes the doubt even worse. 

 I am having such a hard time with this because even though she never got to see him in person, I always felt that he was my sister's dog. My sister was a mother figure, a best friend, a mentor, and a sibling soulmate. When she died half of my soul was ripped away, and K'mpec is the last living link I have of her. I think that's why this is hitting me so hard, it's like I have to let go of the last of my sister and it is breaking my heart all over again. 

 I hope I am making the right decision at the right time, I don't want him to suffer like my sister did at the end. 

 

Low Carb and Why It Didn't Work For Me Long Term

So after 18 months on keto/carnivore it is time for my thoughts about it.

  After losing my eyesight in one eye in 2019 and having my blood pressure and blood sugar skyrocket from the treatment I knew I needed to get my health back on track. After 7 doctor visits with different specialists doctors who threw a stack of prescriptions at me and refused to find out why I was having these issues I realized the medical industrial complex had zero interest in fixing me, because they would lose income. They don't want to cure patients, they want lifelong cash cows. 

 I got a new glucose monitor and spent 3 months poking myself 4 times after I ate anything to see what effect it had on my blood glucose. (30, 60, 90 and 120 minutes), started exercising again and cutting back on food in general and lost 45 pounds. I still wasn't feeling any better so I put my research training into practice and started researching lifestyle and diet more in depth. I ran across Dr. Ken Berry, a practicing medical doctor who was advocating a carb free lifestyle. This led me to other doctors who were advocating low/zero carb diets and claiming they were the panacea for modern health issues. They claimed that as a species we were supposed to be straight carnivore. Um, okay. I double majored in cultural anthropology and ancient history and double minored in biology and botany. Eating large amounts of meat did allow us to develop past the other animals, and cooking it did even more. However, biologically speaking we are designed to eat plants too. 

 Many of the carnivore docs claim that because modern plants are nothing like their original forms that we shouldn't eat plants at all. Yes, we have as a species improved the plants we like top eat through selective breeding and hybridization. It takes around a thousand years for adaptation to happen and we have been farming for ten thousands years. Even in the early days of our species we ate about 65% animal products and the rest fruits and vegetables. 

 Despite this, I decided to give it a try. I was at a point that I figured what the hell, might as well. 

In spring of 2023, I started on keto, then went carnivore after a couple of months. In the first 3 months, I felt great. Joints stopped hurting, gut issues cleared up, skin cleared up, mental health improved tremendously, depression got way better. It was easy, just cook some meat and eat it and eat LOTS of fat and salt.

A major downside, I immediately gained 20 pounds of the 45 I had lost up to this time. Okay, not thrilled about that, but I was losing body fat at a rapid weight. All the carnivore experts say weight will come off. Nope, it didn't.

Next issue was body cramps that ramped up to a nearly debilitating point. So back to the carnivore docs, asked in live chat a few times about it. The answer was always massive doses of salt and electrolyte supplementation with gallons of water. Didn't work, no matter how much I took and how much water I drank.

Then came acute pancreatitis. Twice. If you've never had it, it is like having a razor sharp knife stuck in your body that is being constantly twisted around. Would not recommend. Back to research, and too much fat looked to be the culprit. So I reduced the amount of animal fat I was eating. Which triggered massive constipation. It was so bad that it caused actual physical damage. So back to the carnivore docs who told me to eat much more fat, despite it triggering pancreatitis. Pass, thanks.

Next was kidney stones. The Carnisphere claims it is 'oxalate detox'. Ooookkkaaayyy, I wasn't eating anything that had oxalates for nearly a year. "Oh, it will be years before you detox from oxalates!" SIX MONTHS of suffering with horrible kidney stones and the pain. I definitely was rethinking continuing the diet at this point.

The final straw was that I could not keep my blood sugar above 70. I was born with hypoglycemia, and when my sugar drops below 100 I get waves of terrible nausea, break out in a cold sweat and get very light headed. I would eat some meat and it wouldn't help at all, only carbs would bring my sugar up to low normal level.

At this point I decided to throw in the towel and start eating carbs again. Gut pain improved immediately, kidney pain took longer but finally went away. I do have to limit grains and high carb veg to keep my blood sugar down. I still haven't lost the weight I gained, but I hope it will eventually. I'm able to function again without pain.

Am I disappointed? I am, it looked to be a simple fix for a lot of problems. I was optimistic in the early days since it did seem to be doing everything that the Carnisphere said it would. I see people on interviews talking about how they have been carnivore for 5,10 and even 60+ years with no issues. I'm glad it works for them, and I would say it is worth a try, at least as an elimination diet, for most anyone. It didn't work for me, so I have returned to a lower carb omnivore diet. I am one of those weird people who like vegetables. Even as a kid I loved Brussels sprouts, they were my favorite veg. I missed those during the carnivore months.

One other thing I want to comment on is the Carnisphere itself. There is a massive amount of gatekeeping and toxic behavior. Many of the carnivore docs tout only grass fed/grass finished beef as the ONLY food a human needs. No it is not. It is a food that you can survive on for a very long time, but it is not the be all to end all food for humans.

For myself, I am cooking from scratch again and eating the way I did as a kid in the 1960s and 70s before the influx of processed plastic food like substances. We are replanting the garden we let go during the carnivore months, and I am looking forward to having good fresh produce. Meat is awesome and will always be a big part of my diet, but carnivore diet is not for me.

Why is it so much harder at 60 than it was at 30?

  Aging has its ups and down. There are good days and bad days, both physical and mental. It can be a time to slow down and reflect, or a time of non-stop social interaction. The one thing that no one told me is that being an Aspie and trying to find friends at this age sucks. Maybe it is because people are no longer accepting as they age of anyone who  is different.  Maybe it's just me.

 I have finally started to come out of a several years long depression and illness which was compounded by the Plague. I have been getting out more and trying to be social. It has not been going well. I have reached out to several people I have knows for years, and the responses have been nil. Back when I moved to Austin, new friends were everywhere, it was easy to meet people. As the years went by I realized that the majority of them were only 'party friends', people you only see when there is a social gathering. Don't expect them to stick around when the going gets rough, they aren't interested in sick sad you, or even you as a person, they are only interested in what they can get out of you, and when you longer provide those things, they are away to the next person who can.

  When my sister died, I got 'thoughts and prayers'. My world had been destroyed, and not one single person here bothered to even come by to see how I was doing. They felt like waving some thoughts and prayers my way online was enough, and then they went about their day. I get it. This wasn't their tragedy, and they had zero interest in what I was going through, so why waste the energy? Not one single 'friend' bothered to even check on me in person. 

 Then I got sick and was hospitalized. Nothing contagious, I had lost vision in one eye and I was stuck in a hospital bed being pumped full of steroids. I regained my sight mostly. It was excruciatingly painful, and pretty terrifying. My husband would come for 30 minutes or so after work, but he had the household and all the animals to deal with. I spent 3 days alone, and exactly two people came to visit me, and they were a couple, so one visit. They even drove from the next town over to do it, and I can not express how much I enjoyed their visit and the comfort that they gave me. Radio silence from everyone else I knew in town. Then the plague struck and everyone was isolated. 

 Fast forward to now, and after a year of lifestyle change, I have finally started to regain some health, both physical and mental, and wanting to return to the world of the living. So I tried reaching out to people who I thought were friends. Boy, was I wrong. People aren't even bothering to return messages. It's not like I'm asking for money or anything, all I wanted to do is say hi, maybe hang out a little and catch up on with what's been going on. 

 Maybe it's where I live. I'm ready to switch gears in my life, live a bit slower, quieter pace than the hectic big city noise and constant hustle.  

Or maybe it's just me. Aspies can be a lot to handle, I get that. We're very Hobbit-like, we don't like crowds and loud venues, we tend to obsess and geek out over weird things, and it is hard to find someone who has the same interests to geek out over. Knowing that doesn't make it suck any less though. 

Life, Food and Arting

 Hideyho neighborinos! 

 It's been a minute since I have posted anything here, and it has been a wild couple of years. The plague years were rough. We didn't lose any friends or family, but a lot of people did. Both myself and my partner contracted it in the early days, and mine segued into long form. Luckily our adult son escaped it, although his biofather and biofather's wife wife contracted it. Due to health and lifestyle issues they both had very severe effects, which caused my ex to have a massive stoke he will not recover from and is in steady decline, and eventually took the life of his wife after she was sick for a year.  

 2023 was a sucktacular year for me. We had been on the cusp of moving for a while, with the partner's job jerking him back and forth about it. The stress as well as other things was causing my own decade long health issues to get worse, and I started trying to go through the medical community to find out just wtf was wrong. I finally gave up on doctors when I was met with a runaround of multiple different specialists claiming I didn't have MS/thyroid issues/rheumatoid arthritis/cortisol issues/whatever their specialty was. GPs are worthless unless you have basic sniffles, a sprain or need a cut stitched up. After having one not even examine me (He rested two fingertips on the back of my forearm for less than 10 seconds, I have wondered if that was some sort of state requirement that he actually had to touch me to get paid.) stared at his computer in silence for 5 minutes then threw two pill scripts at and told me I would be taking them for the rest of my life.) and another tell me I needed a battery of expensive tests not covered by insurance, I fired them and began my own search to fix myself. 

 Putting my college training in research methods to use, I started researching. And did more research. And even more research, wading through medical papers, videos, podcasts, webpages, anything I could find related to the issues I was having. Totally by accident I stumbled across a video by a Dr. Ken Berry, and that's when I began to find some answers. From there I went to Dr. Cywes, Dr. Saladino, and a host of other medical professions who have grown sick and tired of the gaslighting and patient abuse-for-cash of their field, and embarked on their own journeys to return to actually healing people instead of creating lifelong shills for Big Pharma. 

 I started cutting carbs, then eased into keto, then finally carnivore over the course of a year. I was losing weight at first, then when I transitioned to carnivore, my weight shot up by 24 pounds (I was in the 240s when I started.) and refused to budge. All the carnivore 'experts' claimed this was normal, natural and I should just let it happen. Body fat, however, was shrinking at an exponential rate. So I continued with carnivore, eating 95% animals products, all the things the doctor influencers claimed I needed. I was seeing a huge reduction in inflammation, stomach issues, moods, lots of things. The carnivore diet was working great.....until it didn't. 

 A week before Thanksgiving I started to feel not so good. I developed a lower backache that only seemed to be getting worse by the hour. Then hours of nausea, finally throwing up while my lower insides were on fire with pain. I went to the urgent care clinic, thinking I had developed a massive kidney/bladder infection. They took a sample and sent me home with antibiotics. After 2 days they called to tell me it was not an infection, I was clear. The discolored urine said different, and then it suddenly occurred to me that I had passed a sizeable kidney stone. I had one 25 years ago, and stopped drinking sodas which the doc claimed was the cause, and never had another one until now. 

 So back into the research, as I continued to have kidney pain and pass small stones every few days. While many of the carnivore influencers claimed carnivore healed their kidney disease, I started to run across stories of people having the same issues as me. After suffering for weeks, I made the decision to add some carbs back into my diet by way of berries. The pain started to ease after just a few days, so I added organic honey to my fruit and homemade yogurt, watching my blood sugar since I had started this journey due to upwards creeping blood sugar numbers. 

 As I continued to improve, I delved into deeper research on proper diet for our species. We are developed biologically to eat and thrive on a range of materials, plant and animal. For me personally I seem to do the best on animal products, low oxalate veg and fruit. ('Fruit' includes anything with seeds, like squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.) We've been on this way of eating for a few weeks, and I am seeing weight finally dropping, kidney finally healing, and I'm no longer constantly tired.  

 Now, to the arting section. I did get a third book published in the Salvage series, a collaboration with my partner. I have been working on the house again since we are staying, adding artistic touches here and there as we remodel, as well as working on some sculptures and other things. I am also in the process of editing and doing the cover art for my partner's latest novel in his supernatural series. While I am not at a point to write another book, I decided to return to blogging for a bit to scratch the writing itch.

Things are slowly getting better from the clusterfuck it has been the last few years, and I can only hope it will continue. 

Turning Breakfast on its Head

 With the slight chill this morning I am sitting here having a big bowl of soup with a piece of homemade bread crumbed into it. During the unrelenting heat of this past summer (52 days of 100 plus heat.) cooking became a dirty word. Our kitchen faces west with zero shade and even with the air blasting the house would still be in the mid-eighties, the kitchen being in the nineties due to the sun beating on the wall. The food I was buying was sitting uneaten because it was too miserable to add any heat to the house. Breakfast was the only meal I really cooked so I started cooking the evening meal in the early mornings and eating it later. After several weeks of this I was making stir fry one morning, and it looked so appealing I had a bit.  At that moment it occurred to me that I am a grown ass adult and if I wanted to cook and eat 'supper' foods first thing in the morning I could. So I started cooking and eating whatever I wanted for first meal. Even with cooler weather I am still eating 'supper' foods for breakfast, and it is glorious. 

 Overturning family traditions has always been something I have done. Some things I still do because they invoke pleasant memories, like making pancakes for supper on Shrove Tuesday even though I was never a Catholic. (My mother was but no longer practicing by the time I was born.) Other than Shrove Tuesday, pancakes were strictly a weekend thing because my mother worked full time and was heavily involved in the American Legion and VFW and weekend mornings were her only free time. I was in my 20s when I decided to make pancakes on a weekday, and I still remember how decadent I felt, like I was on vacation or something. Next up was cooking holiday foods on non holidays, like turkey in June. One reason foods were eaten at certain times of the year is because back when I was young food was still mostly seasonal, so you ate what was available locally. October became pork month because fall is when pigs were slaughtered and processed. Produce was only in the stores at the time of their harvests. We got oranges in our Xmas stockings and were excited, oranges were very expensive in the winter. 

 Now that we have been eating non traditional breakfast foods for several years, we have decided we like it and will be continuing. Sometimes I want a plate of eggs and bacon, but that might be in the evening after we had pasta for breakfast. Eating what we want when we want it is awesome and I don't think I will return to adhering to societal tradition dictating my mealtimes. 

Finally some cool weather!

  The first real cold front of the year has finally come to Texas. We had a bit of rain, not near enough to really ease the years long drought, but a nice change from baking heat. That will make working around the place a little more pleasant. 

 Things are usually in flux around the Collective, we try to go with the flow of things as much as we can. Something that has been a major issue for me since the easing of Covid restrictions has been the massive increase in noise in our area. We are situated between two major north-south freeways and two railroads. Up until just a few years ago the noise was much less. There was some from rush hours, and the occasional train going by. Then the city blew up with West Coast transplants, and suddenly now we have light rail blaring horns every 30 minutes, traffic noise 24/7, massive multi floor apartment buildings going up blocks from our house, and oh yes, let's not forget the new entertainment district the city is busily developing a couple of miles away that includes a new stadium for the newly hatched Austin soccer team. Back up beepers from construction trucks start going off at 5 a.m. and don't stop until mid-evening.

 As an Aspie noise is an issue for me. Ie simply cannot deal with too much noise. I would love to move to the country, however we are tied to living in a major city due to the Husband's job, he's in IT and high speed Internet is a must have. We have looked into options, and there are none for the speeds we need, so please do not blow up the comment section trying to tout Starlink or whatever satellite system/mobile phone hotspot you have. It simply will not work for us. We also have a set of criteria, such as specialized medical services no more than 30 minutes away, access to decent grocery shopping, preferably mobile veterinarians for the animals, auto mechanics, you get the idea. 

 We are also interested in heading into retirement debt free or as close as we can get. We are unwilling to pay the redonculous amount of money it takes to get an edge of town place with acreage. The actual move would cost thousands of dollars not to mention the hassle of packing and transporting three people, four dogs (Two of which are well over a hundred pounds.) a cat and all our stuff . Our options now are to turn to noise deflecting landscaping and remodeling. Being trapped here in the house for the last two plus years has really taken a toll on my mental health as well. In a perfect world we would have a vacation house out of town. Too bad this isn't a perfect world. 

 Continuing to develop the Haven Collective is the upside to living inner city. Senior support is sparse in rural areas, and specialists non-existent. There are many adult orphans here (People with no family to help them in their later years.) and banding together Golden Girls style is the way for our group to have a better quality of life. For now the pros of staying outweigh the cons. Time for me to invest in some noise cancelling ear wear. 

Time For A Change

 I have enjoyed writing fiction, the worldbuilding is the most fun. You get to make up an entire universe just the way you want it. I will definitely finish out the Salvage series, I have put way too much work into that storyline to let it just fizzle off. But my true loves are and always have been history, anthropology, and food. 

 When I was young, there wasn't much on TV. We had a whole three stations, and a snowy PBS station that came in a bit more clear early mornings and late night when the local stations powered off for the night. I have always been an early riser, and my parents were not. So by the time I was 6, I was getting up and feeding myself in the mornings. I discovered on the snowy PBS station The French Chef followed by The Galloping Gourmet. These two shows plus the food traditions of my own family and culture cemented my interest in where food came from and why, at the ripe of age of 6 years old. 

 Since cable wasn't a thing at that time, I read everything I could get my hands on from the two local public libraries. Some of the books made such an impression on me I later bought copies for myself. Some of my favorite fiction works have food integrated into the storyline, both fantasy and historical fiction. It was these interests that nudged me towards a degree in anthropology. It wasn't until I moved to Austin and went to work at a museum that it hit me that food anthropology/archeology was such a huge part of human culture.  

 I have worked over the years at various food jobs, working as a private chef helped support me financially in other endeavors such as my foray into the music industry. When I would move to those things full time, I would find I was bored to tears, and I would invariably return to food and my interest in its history. As I have aged, my immune disorder I have had most of my life has rendered me unable to work in the food industry any more, which is why closed my bakery and tried my hand at writing. 

 In a review of my first novel Salvage, the reviewer commented on my detail to food and eating, almost as if it were a bad thing. We spend a good chunk of our time getting food and eating it, and I feel that it should be a pretty substantial part of the story, and not just in times of crisis. (As in 'Oh look, we've crashed on a desert island/the world has ended and we're starving' kind of way.) Food is entwined with history and culture and there would not be either history or culture without food. 

 Food is my passion. It always has been from an early age. I started cooking at 6, thanks to my grandmother. She gave the the basics, and my mother (who was a good plain cook0 and other people I met along my life journey continued my education. I still love learning about new foods and how they are worked into the culture of the region they come from. Writing, while not my passion, is something I am good at. 

 I am ready to put my college and lifelong education to work again but this time instead of trying to be a museum curator, which I had zero passion for, I am going to blend my loves of history, food and anthropology and see where the road takes me. I am considering videos as well as blog and Meta/FB posts as I wind my way through the world of food, history and culture. Come along for the ride, it should be fun as well as interesting, and you may learn something new. I'm sure hoping to!

 Cruise on over to the new blog, The Why of What We Eat.