I didn't exactly lose all hope of recovering over the last few months. I did withdraw a little, but more to try and hoard all my energy so I could laser focus my eyes on "the prize". When I hit pause on all the extraneous noise, blogging was sort of blinked out with it.

But I've come back again. (Hello.)

So, for a health status update: around the year mark of treatment with my current doctor, it was hard not to feel like the progress I've made is pretty unremarkable. Sure, my digestion is somewhat less problematic and I am back to maybe 70% brain capacity on some days (admittedly, that's a huge improvement over the rock-bottom 20-30%), but those are the only consistent and identifiable gains. Otherwise, things fluctuate constantly, and a whole new batch of symptoms has cropped up.

Having treated my major issues like chronic gut infection, the doctor felt it was time to start hammering away at the details. I've just started seeing two new specialists, one for my thyroid and one an allergy specialist. The inflammation in my gut is not sufficiently improved or I would be absorbing at least some nutrients again. (My blood work shows not even a twitch in—for one—my magnesium levels, in spite of taking over 1200 mg of the stuff every day.) Common in the more complex autoimmune situations is apparently to develop very widespread food intolerances as the immune system spirals out. It becomes impossible to diagnose without skin testing for reactions. The way the specialist explained it to me, if each of the 50 foods I eat is responsible for 2% of my symptoms, removing 1 or 2 of them (or even 10) will not make enough perceptible improvement. So there would be no way, short of not eating at all, to discover the offenders with a standard elimination diet. And if I truly am sensitive to a whole bunch of foods, I will not be able to avoid eating them all. Enter the desensitization treatment on which I am about to embark. If I do test positive for a batch of foods, I will be injecting myself daily with a cocktail of personally calibrated strengths of allergens designed to turn off my body's immune response to the offending foods. Challenging, maybe, at first, but certainly manageable. Especially when faced with the alternative. (Continuing to feel like this.)

Next, the endocrinologist noted that most of my thyroid hormones are in the low normal range. He prefers to get them into the upper normal range, where most healthy people's levels exist. Additionally, he noted that one of the hormones is frequently a little sub-normal. A genetic test has now shown that I actually am unable to convert the hormone in regular thyroid medication into the compound needed by the body. Here I have been taking T4 medication for a year, and I might as well have been flushing it down the toilet. I suppose I literally was. Additionally, the doctor suspected other genetic deficiencies. Turns out, I am genetically compromised on a lot of pathways required to flush cellular byproducts and toxins from the body, repair DNA, create energy (duh), maintain healthy immune function (I repeat, duh), and generate adequate neurotransmitters (!) and balanced hormones. Oh joy. What a robust specimen I've turned out to be. At least this part should be fairly easily addressed with a (slightly modified) complex supplementation program. Complex, because if you do it in the wrong order things can be made worse—but still, feasible. I draw your attention to the conclusion of the previous paragraph: at least there is an alternative.

So, I will be undergoing the skin tests this week and beginning the injections immediately thereafter. Two weeks later, I will start the new supplementation program. Finally, 4-6 weeks after that I will hit up a prescription for the T3 hormone my body can't produce effectively on its own. I'm hopeful one or all of these things will be a turning point, but I've learned this disease state (and many, many others out there on the autoimmune spectrum) has no clear cut answers. It's a multi-headed snake.

Treating the infections was Phase 1. I'm considering this to be Phase 2. I have no idea if there is a Phase 3, but I'm hoping the/a big win happens soon. So I'm just waiting (mostly) patiently with my fingers crossed. Still.

But I'm very grateful there is a new plan.

Update to the Update: See May 5, 2018 post "Still Tired" — nothing of the above worked, and I lost my prior mental / neurological gains. Hello, Square One. Again.