For the last couple of days I have felt rather ill on a more or less constant basis, but not being the person who likes to concede to the weakness of the flesh, whatever that weakness may be, I have sought to tough it out and go about my business (be it work or church or whatever) without making it too obvious that I have felt rather wretched within my digestive system. Although I dislike being seen as a very fussy person when it comes to food, the truth is that for my entire life I have had to deal with difficulties in digesting foods, or wrestling with irritating and occasionally alarming food allergies on top of those difficulties. Those struggles, in matters many people take for granted, in being able to eat and drink as they please without any evil result, have not been made easier by the sort of life I have lived either.

At the age of two or three, one of the first prayer requests made on my behalf by my folks (at least I have heard it) was a prayer for divine healing to allow for successful potty training. I am not sure what awareness my family had of the matter (it is a matter of some embarrassment), but my entire life I have suffered a great deal of suffering as a result of severe sphincter damage that happened during the first three years of my life and that has never entirely gone away. Even the rather simple act of going to the restroom is fraught with unpleasant reminders of my savage early childhood, reminders of the sorts of evils that I have sworn I would not visit on anyone else, and that are suffered in this wicked world by the innocent and the vulnerable. Given the circumstances of my existence, matters that would be of extreme distaste for most people have become matters of some importance for me to understand.

On the more easily understood and less eccentric side of these matters, my difficulties in properly digesting foods and beverages has given me a cautious and analytical, almost scientific approach, to the sort of foods I eat. As may be easily understood, I tend to be rather cautious about eating foods mainly that I know will be alright, or eating foods that taste good in full knowledge that I will probably not feel very well a few hours later, but willing to accept that price because of how good the food tastes. However, I have combined this rather cautious general approach with a scientific desire to add independent variables in frequent “experiments” to test different foods or ingredients and allow my safe zone of foods to expand once those foods pass muster, or to be able to strike certain ingredients or combinations if they cause problems in an otherwise stable equilibrium. By such means I have managed to strive to preserve enough health to live a relatively healthy life in the face of what could otherwise be very serious difficulties to living a normal life.

Where this analytical approach to my life becomes a bit more eccentric, and to be fair, I suppose I am a bit of an eccentric fellow, like some relic from the age of the philosophes in this way, is where my analytical approach extends to matters that are often considered to be unworthy of investigation or thought for most people. For example, I tend to keep at least a mental record, and sometimes a more formal record, of general symptoms as I notice throughout the course of my life. I look at the color of urine, for example, to see if I am dehydrated, since I have suffered a dehydration seizure before (and that is no fun at all), which caused temporary blindness (which has also been caused a couple of times by some of my food allergies). When I suffer from nosebleeds, I examine the color of the blood to at least guess at its iron content as well as whether it contains platelets, to see how the clotting is going, as well as take note of any sort of dizziness as I feel as a result of either thirst or bleeding. Through these means I seek to at least keep aware of the conditions of my health and make sure that I am aware of any situations that would require prompt action or further investigation.

On a more serious level, I also tend to take an avid scientific interest in stools. For example, after going to the restroom I tend to take a brief note of a few important qualities of the stool, such as its frequency throughout the day, its color, its cohesion (which I have a several-letter classification chart for personal analysis), the smell (if it has too high of a protein content, for example), and the presence of any sort of undigested food particles, bile, or gas bubbles. Given my longstanding and serious issues with digestion, I figure that knowing how foods are digesting and how my body is handling them is the least I can do to modify my conduct accordingly to keep myself as healthy as possible, while also taking controlled risks in the hope of expanding the realm of what is safe and comfortable and enjoyable. Perhaps my eccentricity may be excused on such noble grounds as desiring to keep myself healthy and allow myself the freedom to safely expand my horizons in a gradual and methodical way. I find it disconcerting how my cautious approach in matters of food (which extends to other areas of life as well) relates to such painful and unpleasant aspects of my life, but I suppose it is good at least that I have the ability to cope at least somewhat with the experiences I have had to deal with over the course of my existence.