A cure???

Time for some embarrassing medical issues, a few years ago, I noticed some issues with my bowels... basically, a lack of regularity, and timing issues. I went from being a normal poo in the morning person to, 2 or 3 poos at semi random times... 
Not the most unusual of things in old fat jocks with a liking for fried fast food.. But I did notice in my 50's a lot more urgency to get to the loo...and on 1 occasion some unpleasant consequences to finding the train station loo closed......oh yes, had to do the waddle of shame to get home...

Now... like most old farts I didn't really do anything about this, didn't go to the docs, even when the urgency of needing to go went from being, when you get home go to the loo, to, you're going to shit yourself in 3...2.......

Then I had a an episode where I had severe pain and felt very ill, and went to the docs, who did that palpation of my tummy trick which just about knocked me out from the pain..... I had a problem... and was hospitalized. Where they discovered I was having an episode of Diverticulitis... basically an infection in my bowl that could have turned very nasty... 

The primary cause was an undiagnosed underlying condition called Diverticulosis... you can look it up, but basically there are malformations of my bowl resulting in little thin pockets forming in my gut, and can from time to time pop or otherwise become infected, leading to the Diverticulitis.

This... explained my irregular bowel movements, my gut has issues moving things down to the colon, which means the regularity and consistency of my bowel movements is highly variable.

Ok so I got an issue, the problem is there's really no cure for it.. Other than taking drugs like Loperamide (Imodium ) to shut your bowels down, which has knock on issues and can give you constipation if you do this a few days in a row... also not nice as struggling to poo can make the diverticulosis worse.....

But for the most part I have managed this for a few years, taking Imodium when I know I have to be out and about for a few hours, and trying hard to stay at home the next day, or 2, not taking any, knowing when the Imodium wears off, and I can get access to the loo. But this is rather restrictive.

Now... there are of course contributing factors to this, my weight and my diet being the 2 biggest things I have some control over.

I'm afraid I have been very bad at managing my weight, and I'm surrounded by so much wonderful food in Thailand, but a lot of it is low fibre, when I need a high fibre diet.

I tried various granola/cereals but they have the opposite effect on me, providing loose movements, and the added random 3,2, 1 go... problem.

So to the point... I think I have discovered something, though only a few weeks into it. I tried to do a bit of a fasting diet... and don't eat now until around 5. And.... I've noticed there's a direct connection to my eating and an hour or 2 later...needing to go.

Basically if I don't eat, I don't shit...... which is a perfect, but impractical result... it sounds more obvious than it is, but there's sound reasons behind this.. my system kinda shuts down when there's nothing to digest, but when  there's  food to be processed, my digestive system kicks in, but starts with initiating the clear some space now protocol, which is causing most of my issues.

If I don't eat in the mornings, I seem to be ok for the rest of the day, after I eat however, all bets are off....But that gives me some margin of control when I can be at home/near a loo.

Lets see how it goes?

Ahthankyew

NOW its almost 6 months

I kinda miscalculated the 6 month mark, but its coming up now.. I have to do my 1st 90day report this week, which is going to be a big step... After this 1st one in person, I can do it online each time which saves a lot of waiting in line.

The house is progressing well, though there's a bit of a conflict over the window arrangement on our extended bedroom 4. I missed the plan which has 3 windows in the room, 2 narrow opening ones, and a larger square sliding one. The sliding one isn't very obvious on the plan... and yeah so we have 3 windows, 2 different types... it looks a bit silly and prevents clean walls to place beds/wardrobes etc... sadly we didn't see this till the brickies built the wall.. We hate it.. so we're having to get that changed, to just 2 windows, Jirawan favours 2 of the square ones. I'd prefer the 2 narrow ones... But am not pushing hard, Jirawan gets the final say but either way it means knocking out bits of the wall to fix it.. so that's a cost... not massive but annoying.

Other than that, the sense of scale of the house is starting to make itself felt. It's going to be a  nice cosy home, nowhere near the massive scale people said it would be, its a cosy house with a 4 good sized bedrooms. But the lounge is medium sized, the office is small, the kitchen is decent...the Thai ki...ahhh that's a point

We have had to change that.. the idea of having two kitchens at the rear of the house had to be dropped, when we realised Bed4 was just too small. Hence we extended that room into where the rear Thai kitchen was.. That made the Euro kitchen a little bigger, with an added pantry.  But had to drop the Thai Kitchen. But only for a while, we plan to build it as an extension.

We did ask the builder to draft an extension to the back of the house with a Thai Kitchen, laundry area and BBQ patio, but they wanted far too much money for it, 475K... We couldn't see a way to cost that out in our budgets even though we can trim or drop some things (like solar) so we are going to wait till the build is done and stabilize our funds, then see what options we have, 

When we do get that extension done, then the house will seem bigger with that outdoor area opening things up..

Aside from that... we're now at the costing for fixtures and fittings, aside from bathrooms, we don't get partial furnishing with this, unlike a house purchase, so its up to us to source and fit, or get fitted, all the basic furniture we need. 

We currently rent, so we have had no reason aside from TV's and computer gear to buy anything... so kitting out the whole house is expensive.. But we are going to go minimal to start with and build up. Once the big outlays are done we can make minor purchases over the coming years, like everyone else does.

It does however mean fitting 2 main bedrooms, getting basic content in 2 others. Lounge and Dining Room furniture and of course the  now main kitchen, with the Thai kitchen to follow a few months later.

Another big expense will also be Solar, we have nearly 100m2 of roof we can put panels on, and we will use as much as we can afford to power a 10Kw inverter and battery system, to help us power the house, from the sun... We won't be entirely off grid, but we should be able to count our electric bills in pennies rather than 10's or 100's of pounds 
Scheduling the pricing for that is fun, but we've got a few quotes now from 320-420k, we will be looking for one more... surprisingly the lowest may not be the best as their quote lacks detail in the type and quality of the components but it does gives us a window into how much

Life here however, continues to be calming and peaceful... I spend far too much time on the computer without being especially productive though... So we're trying to get out more as part of the Kill Brian with Exercise campaign.. Both of us need to lose weight so we're going out and about more to sightsee and walk and cough...exercise.

Ahthankyew