The Zen Leaf

This weekend, I discovered something that had me crawling-out-of-my-skin livid, and simultaneously felt like a giant ah-ha moment. Actually, it felt more like a blazing, blinking light going off that I’d somehow ignored for too many years now, ignorantly blind to its rays. All this time, I’ve been searching and experimenting and confused and helpless while the answer was right under my nose. Literally.

Let’s back it up a bit, to September 3rd, 2015. My family had just moved back to Texas from our horrible year in Boston. I was personally not in a great place. From April 2014 until July/August 2015, I’d been under a constant stream of trauma and stress. The source of that trauma had only just stopped being a continuous threat. So I was not in a good place, but I was at the very beginning of the route toward healing. A normal course of things, post-trauma, involves mental and physical healing. But for me, as I mentally healed, my body grew sicker with a dozen new illnesses that made no sense, leading me to the physical mess that I am today. As I said above, I’ve spent those years fighting and searching and experimenting, with no results.

(pre-trauma 2014 vs near the end of our time in Boston, 2015: about 20 lbs separates these)

I’ve written about it before: When something is wrong inside me, my body responds with a very specific array of complex and seemingly-unrelated symptoms. Now, the first year of all the crap my body went through in 2014/2015? Yeah – trauma, two cross-country moves, binge-eating, drinking too much wine, major insomnia, medications that cause weight gain, severe agoraphobia-anxiety-depression, self-harm via food, no in-person support system beyond a lone therapist, and so much more. Those symptoms were not random – they were directly related to the trauma. Afterwards, though, I just got sicker and have never understood why. Until now.

(Right before the bed, 2015, vs one year of bed use and an increase of 50 lbs, 2016)

Again, let’s go back to September 3rd, 2015. Stores were having their Labor Day sales, and Jason and I decided to replace our old, very cheap mattress. We went down to Mattress Firm to try out some beds. We explained our needs to the saleslady: a firmer mattress, on the cheaper side, and the most importantly, it couldn’t have any memory foam. I’m allergic to memory foam, I explained. (Though since then, I’ve learned that it may not be the foam itself, but the gasses it produces and the chemicals used on it, that I’m allergic to. Still. Same difference.) The lady we worked with was helpful, and Jason and I found a bed we both liked. I double-checked that the bed had no memory foam, and the saleslady assured us that it was memory-foam-free.

You can see where this is going, yeah?

(How excited we were for this to come home!)

I’ve been complaining about how awful this mattress is for years now. It’s only 5.5 years old, but I figured that two cross-country moves must have battered it up quite a bit because it’s uncomfortable and sagging in places despite its “zoned” coils. But mattresses are expensive, and these days, many beds are part of the Foam Revolution. So I’ve put off buying a new one.

On our anniversary, Jason told me that since we couldn’t do the vacation we’d planned, he wanted to instead buy me a new mattress. It was really sweet of him, but I told him that I didn’t feel comfortable going into a mattress store while covid was surging, and I’d had a hard time finding any online manufacturer that sold non-foam beds. He dove into research (see how well-matched we are?) and found some good options. In the end, we ordered a sustainable, all-natural latex, wool, and cotton bed that the manufacturer claimed was in stock and would ship after a few days. Yay! What a great way to end Christmas, as we ordered the evening of the 25th!

(stock photo from Awara’s website)

But here’s the thing: Jason sent me his research, and something in all those pages of notes made my alarm bells go off. The morning after we ordered the new mattress, I pulled the sheets off my bed to look at the exact model of the old one. It’s a Sealy Posturepedic Plus Deveraux Cushion Firm, which has a thick layer of memory foam on top of its coils.

Rage. Yes, my friends, for 5.5 years, I’ve been sleeping on a bed that I’m allergic to, breathing in gasses I’m allergic to, getting sicker and sicker and at my wit’s end to figure out WHY. F–king hell.

I cannot even begin to describe the depths of my anger here. All this time, the answer was literally right under me. All. This. Time. No wonder I always felt better and had more energy when I vacationed away from home for several weeks. No wonder my brief periods on steroid medications made me feel like I was alive again. No wonder so many of my symptoms involve a hyper-vigilant immune system: eczema, hives, chronic fatigue, inflammation, new food allergies, anosmia, headaches, joint pain, autoimmune antibodies that don’t match any known patterns, IgE markers that can’t be matched to any of the tested allergens, swollen glands, skin issues especially on the parts of my body that come into more contact with the mattress…

Now imagine all this, and imagine you have to keep sleeping on the damn thing until the new mattress arrives, knowing that you’re essentially breathing in poisonous-to-you gas and that your bed is trying to slowly kill you. It is not fun. I, um, didn’t make it a single night before I went out to get a new air mattress. I’d rather sleep on air for a few weeks – or longer, if necessary – than to keep sleeping on what shall now be known as the Devil-Bed. And you know what? The first night on the air mattress, I slept 10.5 hours straight through without any sleeping meds. Second night? Another 10 hours. Third night? Eight hours and would’ve been more if my alarm hadn’t woken me for a hike.

Now, my insomnia pre-dates the Devil-Bed by four years, so I know it won’t just disappear, but I’ll take the reprieve as long as I can! And hopefully, when my new bed arrives (shipping says TOMORROW!!!), I’ll have comfort, sleep, a far-less-inflamed body, and the true beginnings of physical healing. There’s also relief in finally understanding WHY I’ve been so sick, to have found the root of the problem at last. No, I don’t know if this will fix All The Things – it’s hard to tell what kind of permanent damage that 5+ years of poisoning yourself night after night will do – but already I feel so much better. I’ll take it!

Last week, I had an Experience.

Let me start by making a confession. After doing really good in November to cut back to only a single cup of coffee almost every single day that month, the stress and worry of my family’s current covid situation caused a sharp increase in consumption. I began drinking 2-3 cups a day again, which I know is really Not Good for my body. I also made the mistake of buying iced coffee for our isolation period, which is dangerous for me! So about a week ago, I started working to cut back again, first from three to two cups. After a few days of this, I had the Experience.

Last Wednesday: I only drank one cup of coffee in the morning, so after lunch, I allowed myself a tumbler of iced coffee. I drank it slowly over about an hour. By the end of it, I started feeling odd, and I knew I was about to have a major hypoglycemia attack. I quickly made myself a protein-and-fat-heavy snack with some quick carbs to stabilize. By the time I finished making it and sat down at the table, I was dizzy, weak, and shaking, in full-on hypoglycemia.

There is no reason I should have had an attack. I literally had lunch right before drinking this cup of coffee, and it was only an hour between lunch and this hasty snack. But it’s also not the first time I’ve had hypoglycemia attacks after drinking coffee. It’s actually quite common if I drink it when it’s been a few hours since I’ve eaten, for instance. Doesn’t matter if I drink it black, with half & half (like that day), or with sugar/flavorings – actually, happens less if there is sugar in the coffee. This is why I’ve taken to drinking coffee only right after meals.

Anyway, that was only the first half of the Experience. The next half came the following morning. I had breakfast (full fat Greek yogurt with blueberries, wheat germ, cocoa, and honey) and decided to have my iced coffee for the day at the same time. I didn’t want to risk it in the afternoon again. I finished about half the coffee during breakfast, and took the rest back to my room to drink slowly as I read a bit. Roughly 15-20 mins later, just a few more sips in, I noticed that my stomach felt weird after taking a drink. It settled out, but the weird feeling returned after the next drink. By the third, I realized that the weird feeling was the same that I get preceding a hypoglycemia attack. Only it was happening while my stomach was still full from breakfast. I knew that if I kept drinking, I would make myself really sick. Again. Because I was paying attention, I was able to catch myself in time. I dumped out the rest of the coffee, and then didn’t end up having a hypoglycemia attack.

I’m not sure why coffee affects me like this. It’s not the caffeine, because other caffeine sources don’t (and decaf coffee DOES). But it’s just another sign that I need to double down to remove this altogether.