Who I am...

I am a wife, a daughter, a sister, friend, and mother of two.  I have always been a yo-yo dieter.  My weight has gone up and down my entire life.  It never effected my health however, until 2011 at age 33.

In June of 2011, I was overweight...technically obese, yet otherwise healthy.  In these two pictures here, I will publicly admit, I weighed 215lbs. The pictures here are from last summer, when I visited northern California with my husband.  We went to Muir Woods, and of course took pictures with the enormous red woods.  These pictures were never shared on facebook with my friends.  I felt horrible.

This was the last bit of medication free life I have had.  When I returned to Colorado after my brief visit, I got sick shortly afterward.  Initially it was a sinus infection. I was sick for a few days, put on allergy medicine and antibiotics and rested.  When the infection cleared up though, a strange headache remained.

Weeks went by, and the headache got worse.  My vision began to do strange things.  My field of vision changed, my depth perception.  I couldn't focus on things, and my peripheral vision was better than what I was trying to focus on.  

After weeks of hoping it would go away, I finally admitted I needed to go to another doctor.  First, I went to an optometrist, since I felt my eyes were my biggest symptom.  After having a check up, my doctor cried...yes, she cried.  She showed me pictures of my optic nerves, and they were swollen.  Her tears terrified me, I asked her if I was dying.  She said she didn't know, and referred me to her primary care physician.  Up to that point, I didn't have one.  He saw me immediately, and scheduled an MRI.  Turns out, there's really only two reasons you can have papilledema.  It could be a brain tumor, a large tumor taking up space in my brain pushing against my optic nerves making them swell.  A diagnosis that would put me on death's door.  The second thing was a rare disease called Intracranial Hypertension, also known as Pseudotumor Cerebri. Luckily for me, it was the latter, and it was not life threatening.

Intracranial Hypertension is when your body creates too much spinal fluid that it can drain properly.  Sometimes they know why people get it, sometimes they don't.  It's a rare, mysterious disease that hasn't had much research.  What people do know, is that it effects women more than men.  Most women who get the disease are also overweight.

I struggled with the medication, it's harsh on your body and it has long term side effects.  I was taking 1000mg of Diamox every day just to keep my head pain under control.  So, I made a goal that I would do what I could to get off the medication.  I dieted, starved myself and had little success.  By December, 2011 I had only lost about 20lbs, 10 of it mostly water.  I was very frustrated.

My best friend Jessica then introduced me to the Primal Diet.  Within two weeks of starting, I lost 10lbs and cut my medication in half.  By cutting out two main systemic inflammatories (grains, and sugars) I was able to maintain my cranial pressure on just 500mg.  Thrilled, I kept at it...and lost 20 more pounds at the time of writing this.  It is now May, 2012 and the words remission have been spoken by my neurologist.  I'm currently working to wean myself off the medication entirely.

This is a photo of me from April, 2012.  Fifty solid pounds lighter than the pictures at the top of my page. I haven't met my goals yet, but 50lbs is awesome.  Here's where I will stop my story, and post updates as changes occur.  I'm getting ready to move from beautiful Colorado to Maryland in the next week.  My husband and I together will be doing the 21 day challenge.  I will be posting meal plans, recipes and both of our successes.  My goal is to loose only another 20lbs, the hubs though, inspired through my success has much bigger goals.

Update: As of August, 2012 I have been off all medications entirely and have managed my disease solely on diet alone!  I still haven't lost those extra 20 pounds, but I'm working on it!