I’ve got the Baboon Butt Blues
I’ve had an itchy arse over the last few days and also an itch around my crotch. I took a look in the mirror last night and found that, as suspected, I had a fungal infection around my anus. It isn’t the first time. Indeed, I have had recurrent fungal infections for over a decade. One time when it was worst, I was having the worst problems I have ever had with mood and concentration.
I’ve written elsewhere about the difficulties I have in maintaining the idea of Candida infection of the intestinal tract in my mind during considerations of diet. Due to the fact that the diet is not taken up by mainstream medical practitioners in the UK it is left to fringe quacks to take up the idea that such a fungal infection of the gut, the result of a diet of processed trash, can have a profound affect on mood and behaviour. Since I find it impossible to take these people seriously, whether they be homeopaths or Reiki therapists, aroma therapists or angel therapists, I find myself again and again dismissing Candida as part of my problem. This despite the fact that everything adds up, from the athlete’s foot and the fungal nail infections that I have had from my mid teenage years, to the painful red ringworm that seems to spread periodically from my anus, from the foods I used to crave, like sweets and milk, to those, like beer, that certainly have a deleterious effect on me and those I eschewed as a young boy, tea and potatoes, to the fact I have sometimes thought I felt better around the time I was taking a fungicide for my seriously infected toe nails. Here now seems to be a clear indicator, just when I needed one, that the problem is indeed related to Candida. Here is a flaring up of a fungal infection around my anus a couple of weeks after I came back from a trip in which I was drinking coffee and tea regularly and eating a lot of sugar, and days after I made a few days’ stock of Guiness casserole.
[18:50] [18:58] I’ve been steadily losing faith in the exclusion diet, finding that there were few foods that were giving me a clear reaction over the two or three days I was reintroducing them for. Coffee did so on an unintentional reintroduction during my stint down the woods, but really no other foods have given such a clear result, leaving me only with a few episodes of depression and anxiety which may have been linked to food but may equally have been related to other difficulties. I was starting once again to see medication for ADD as the only solution, and starting to get bogged down in the belief that my difficulties with bipolar disorder might well be more pronounced than I had recently come to believe, meaning that stimulant medications really might not be appropriate.[19:09] Dad, meanwhile, has gone and ordered this food test, which would test for antibodies to 400-odd foodstuffs, something which I have always been resistant to, thinking it not the right solution given that I don’t believe myself to have such an immune system reaction to foods. For the test to work, I would have to go back to living on a typical diet for several weeks so that the antibodies would build up, since their levels and presence may be dependant on exposure to problem foods. Though I had sometimes looked forward to eating and preparing such food as lasagne, food that is easy to cook and get right, and pretty enjoyable to eat, I had also dreaded the idea of possibly losing the respect I have felt I have built up over the last few months in which I have been pretty together by gradually slipping back to become restless, forgetful, dreamy and irritable. Six weeks in particular, the time the makers of the test recommend, seemed impossibly long, especially given that reactions to such a diet would invariably make me more impatient.
It was a timely discovery. I had an appointment with my dietitian today. I was due to have one a couple of weeks back, one that my Dad booked for me when I was unable to get round to ringing when asked to arrange my own, and indeed turned up to find that the dietician had gone home. Evidently, they had mislaid the appointment or something and had no record of it. I remember turning up back then though and being a little anxious about my lack of results. It was good to have had this confirmation of my intermittently-held theory of candida so I could raise it in today’s meeting. We talked about [19:35] my thoughts about Candida, and the fact that ringworm had broken out around my anus, and she promised to look into it. Once again, I am finding it frustrating that the professionals I go to see know less than I do about the problems I am experiencing - I had to remind her of the name of the drug usually used to tread candida infections, Nystatin - but she did at least talk about looking into it.
She is due to send me some materials on Candida. I expect that I won’t learn anything from the literature she sends me, but she did promise too, that she could send a letter to my doctor asking for a prescription.
I walked away thinking this could actually be the beginning of the end, thinking that I might soon be able to start writing seriously.
