Pancreatitis and an ovarian cyst

When I went on the 21 day sugar detox I ate a lot of cooked vegetables and meat.  Poultry, pork, beef, seafood in various types. And I cooked my food in ghee, bacon fat, and coconut oil.  I ate no sugar or grains of any kind.  Three meals a day of meat and cooked veggies. My dizzy spells and headaches disappeared, I had increased attention, slept better, I lost 8 pounds, my fingernails grew strong and little baby hairs sprouted all over my head and I felt strong and had good endurance.

About a week after I started incorporating grains and fruit back in my diet and trying to ease off the meat, I got sick again.  My belly bloated, even though I wasn't constipated I had intense rectal pressure, and I had a lot gas. I went through three painful days of gas pressure and abdominal pain before I went to the doctor, knowing something was wrong, because I wasn't eating anything that used to cause me bloating yet I was bloated, and it was at the wrong time of the month for it to be cause by my menstrual cycle. The doctor did an x-ray and found no obstruction, so he took my blood, and I went home angry because my labs always come back at "normal levels." I was left for the next 24 hours wondering what I ate or did that would cause this pain. The doctor called the next morning and said my pancreatic enzymes were high, which means I have pancreatitis, caused by gall stones or alcohol use.  Pancreatitis? I had to look it up: a disease in which the pancreas becomes inflamed, pancreatic damage occurs when the digestive enzymes are activated before they are secreted into the duodeunum (small intestines) and begin attacking the pancreas; symptoms include pain in the abdomen and weight loss caused by poor absorption (malabsorption) of food because the gland is not secreting enough enzymes to break down the food normally.  Since I have no gall bladder and I haven't had a drop of alcohol, the Dr. didn't know what the cause was and told me to eat an all liquid diet (in fact he suggested sprite of all things) for three days and don't eat anything with fat in it.

I was in a conundrum. I can't eat sugar and I can't eat fat? Despite all my efforts my body seemed to be falling apart. I felt like I had somehow damaged my pancreas with the 21 sugar detox and high meat/fat intake, and it discouraged me.  No matter how I tried to pick up a positive consequence for my body, my choices seem to pick up a negative one.  "Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die" became tempting to believe since fasting, being sober and disciplined wasn't keeping me alive.  It was frustrating. My mother empathized with me, and informed me that my grandfather had pancreatitis so she feels the cause was hereditary, and she encouraged me to find balance. "I'm not a doctor, but my brain is telling me you can have a little fat and a little sugar and you will get back in balance."  It gave me hope. My brother Jesse told me that sometimes people with no gall bladder sometimes get pancreatitis because the sphincter of oddi which controls the flow out of the pancreas and the gall bladder sometimes malfunctions.  I don't know the cause of the pancreatitis, but I do feel that my pancreas is damaged and this is probably in part why I've had a "hypoglycemic complex" and why I've had so many digestive issues. But I didn't damage it by eating fat!

I did some research on chronic and acute pancreatitis, and my symptoms were more in line with chronic type.  Acute causes intense pain and inflammation (I was inflamed, I felt my gut was a flame of fire, but the pain they described didn't really match the pain I'd experienced), chronic pancreatitis causes weight loss, malabsorbtion of food, dehydration, and oily stools (me, me, me).  What a bummer, apparently this has been going on for a long time, it wasn't just an isolated instance. What to do? If I go to a specialist or the Mayo clinic and find out exactly what my GI track is doing, what are they going to do?  Take out my pancreas?  The complications are somewhat severe (scar tissue in the pancreas that can cause cysts, diabetes or cancer), but I haven't experienced them yet, so I started taking pancreatic enzymes and Beta Pluce to manage the problem of malabsorbtion.

A month later the "flare up" pain returned, exactly on the first day of my period like it did the first time. It was so painful I couldn't ignore it, even though the doctor had already diagnosed me and given me a solution (juice fast).  In my heart, I knew it wasn't due to pancreatits, it had something to do with my menstruation. I went back to the doctor, he scheduled a pelvic ultra sound for me. The pain was being caused by a complex ovarian cyst, which wasn't big enough to be removed surgically and the only solution was to wait for it to burst or go away, awesome! but at least we knew what it was. My pain was not being caused by pancreatitis and healthy fat intake, it stopped when my menstrual cramps stopped three days later, and it came back the next month. Fun times!

I have hopes that the chronic pancreatitis and the ovarian cyst are just more problems from a lifetime of sugar/gluten abuse and that with time on a healthy diet they will resolve themselves. Not everything can be healed immediately. The headaches and dizzy spells resolved immediately, but these two issues are going to take a little longer to resolve. Some miracles take time.