FEBRUARY 2019

I hope you all coped well over Xmas.  I must say that although I have no trouble keeping dairy free, the festive season tempts me to much too much sugar  which I am now doing my best to rectify.  To help me on my way I got a brilliant new cook book called “A Kitchen Fairytale”by Lida van der Byl-Knoefel which is full of the most amazing Paddison Program receipes.  I would strongly recommend it to you all and you can find it on Amazon.

 

We have had an amazing winter that has been really rather like Spring and the garden is now full of daffodils and crocus and all sorts of things are beginning to sprout – though I hope we wont get caught out like last year with a really hard winter blast in March. We are getting a new rescue labrador today aged 18 months called Cyrus as a friend for our greyhound Spottie – I do hope they will get on and he will need lots of walks which will be good for me !

Pat has been busy framing pictures which he loves and I got a chance to practice something that I learned in my late teens – that of restoring/cleaning old pictures.  It came my way quite by chance when someone brought a frame in to Pat to have him replace the picture with a mirror.  The picture was an old, small and very dirty oil painting of the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo – some 200 years old.  After getting permission from the owner I set about restoring it and it came out brilliantly !

The first one shows just at the start and the other shows the finished picture.  It was hard and very delicate work, but most enjoyable and since then I have had a much larger oil painting to do.  Isn’t it amazing how these new horizons keep opening up, even in the wilds of SW Kerry !!

Anyway, here is hoping that many more of you find the Paddison Program and can restart your lives free of pain, fatigue and nasty drugs and really enjoy life again, like I am !

This is before:

Before

After

XMAS 2018 ON THE PADDISON PROGRAM

I’ve had a lot of enquiries recently about how to survive Xmas whilst on the Paddison Program so I thought I would give you the benefit of my discoveries over the last 18 months !  Being on the Program is quite like being on a vegan diet, except you can eat eggs !

DAIRY FREE:

1. This means NO MILK of any kind from either a cow, goat, buffalo or sheep and strangely enough, camels !!   I found to start with I eliminated all kinds of the above milks.  This meant having black coffee (not good for the stomach !), black tea  – which took a lot of getting used to and all sorts of herbal teas till I settled on a berry one which I love.  For cooking I use Oat Milk as I don’t like soya or almond, but this is a matter of personal taste.  You also can’t have any yoghurt made from the above animals and definitely not condensed milk or buttermilk.

2. NO BUTTER at all which means you must check all ingredients on their packaging to make sure none has  been put in.  Out of curiosity I had a look at the ingredients in margarine and, yes, there are a few types that don’t have buttermilk in them.  I have found one made by my local Supervalue and it’s made from palm oil so I use that in cooking – for example making my own pastry.  This way I can be sure of what’s in it !   Oil of any variety is 100% fat, but I make sure I use vegetable oil in small amounts if needed.

At Xmas there are loads of sauces around that contain milk/cream which  you must decline or make yourself using the above non-dairy ingredients.  Also masses of scrumptious desserts awash with cream and they really are a no-no !  If you are confronted with one, keep an eye out for fresh fruit and have some instead

3. NO CHEESE.   This means all kinds of cheese with no exceptions !  There is a vegan cheese made if you can find it, but I did not like it at all !  You will find that all processed foods/meals  are smothered with cheese and you have to give them a miss.

4. NO MEAT.  When I first went on the program I avoided all meat for the first 9 months.  I used soya mince for spaghetti bolognaise which, if you put a little gravy browning in it at the end, your husband will never notice the difference !   I now occasionally eat white meat such as chicken or pork in small amounts as I found I could tolerate them.  But don’t forget that there are loads of wonderful vegetables eaten raw or cooked and are delicious.

Of course Xmas is a very sociable time and you may be confronted with some or all of  the above.  When invited out to dinner I always immediately say to my  host/hostess  that I am Dairy Free and Vegetarian.  If they throw a wobbly, I say that I am perfectly alright with a salad though on the whole I find most people get quite excited about cooking with my restricted diet and come up with all sorts of ideas !  In restaurants I tell them firmly when we are being seated that I am dairy free and vegetarian and even down here in the wilds of SW Ireland they always manage to come up with something tasty !

As far as my family is concerned I haven’t found it a problem.  I will cook meat for them and I just eat the potatoes and vegetables.  I make soups from a packet of frozen vegetables with vegetable stock and water added, cooked and then liquidised.  Excellent, warming and filling !  My daughter-in-law is vegetarian so we both get on fine ! Salads in summer are wonderful, but not too many around at this time of year.  Obviously Xmas rockets up your sugar intake and it’s wise to try and limit it a bit, especially as going out for long bracing walks in the pouring rain are not much fun !  Alcohol is OK (but full of sugar !) in moderation, but since I started eating well I just love as much water as I can get down me !  I do partake of a glass of wine now and then, but I am quite happy to be the ‘designated driver’ and stick to water.  Luckily I have never liked fizzy drinks  and since watching a tooth dissolving overnight in CocaCola, have avoided it like the plague.!

In the UK & Ireland a vegan diet is now the ‘In Thing’ and supermarkets and restaurants are eager to stock vegan food and trumpet it out to their customers but do always check the labels for any of the above as their idea of vegan may not be the same as yours !!

Lastly I hear you say “IS IT WORTH IT ?” and to you doubters I can only say that the total joy of  the last 18 months on the Paddison Program and being without my RA pain of 17 years,  off all my drugs and having no fatigue at all has made me feel reborn.  Having to change what I eat is the very smallest price to pay and I don’t even miss the ‘NO’ foods any more !  Did I mention that on the Program I also lost 42 lbs without even trying ?! All I need now is a Program to cure my being 72 !!  HAPPY XMAS TO YOU ALL !

SAYING ‘GOODBYE’ TO 2017

Well, believe it or not, here I am again after not doing my Blog since October.  Maybe you thought you had got rid of me at last, but it is not to be because my NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION for 2018 is to do my Blog at least once a month !

 

Xmas Day pre-chaos!

The trouble with my Blog in particular is that I can look back and see what resolutions I made for this last year which, with Christmas over, ( Happy Christmas by the way) , is now sliding towards the New Year. OK, so how many of them did I keep ?
As with all New Year Resolutions I started well, but my entire life underwent a crucial change when I came across the Clint Paddison Program and decided to give it a go.  Ever since I started in April, my RA has been in TOTAL remission !  After 17 years of aches and pains and seemingly endless operations, I’m back to normal –  or as normal as a 71 year old granny can be! No more fatigue, no more pain killers and coming off all my drugs including the horrible Methotrexate !
I still read all the on line RA comments and wish that I could wave a magic wand and get all of you to follow the Clint Paddison Program and say goodbye to your RA, but hopefully some of you will wise-up and do just that. (www.paddisonprogram.com)
I see various comments about it being expensive (not true, especially if you don’t have to pay for any more medications or pain killers), just a diet (also not true as it is just about changing what you eat) and not lasting – well its still working just as well for me.
It’s not easy to start with, but I soon got used to being dairy-free and I now no longer eat red meat and will drink water in preference to wine – gallons of the lovely stuff !
Did I mention the weight loss ? In my case I dropped 14 lbs in about 2 weeks and then it plateaued for about another month or so. Then with nothing done on my part I dropped another 14 lbs and then plateaued again, now it’s dropping for the third time ! I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be able to get into clothes I never thought I would wear again (thank goodness I didn’t get rid of them} and with no fatigue my energy levels have soared !   I can work in the garden all day now and do all the housework and cooking. Having not been able to do it for so long, it is now still a source of pleasure to me which my dear husband Pat is hoping wont wear off any time soon !
Talking of Pat, once The Rosa (FB: The Rosa Sea Fishing & Scenic Tours) was safely back up in her barn here at the house, our son Jason began work on converting our garage into a studio for Pat as he also wants to start picture framing for those rainy days in summer when nobody wants to go fishing and through the winter.   I don’t know about any of you, but our garage never held a car.  It did become home to a large white horse one summer when our daughter Gemma went through her horse-craze days – luckily only lasting one season,  but since then it was just a storage space for all the family junk.   Jason’s idea was that we should first sort out the room at the end of Pat’s workshop always called the Black Hole as it was full of all his workshop and boat junk (probably very vital bits !!) and he would build shelves so that all the garage junk could be sorted and neatly put on these ! OMG what a performance it was rotating junk from the house to the workshop to the Council dump and having to liaise with various family members who had spent the last 30 years helping fill them all up !
But at last it is finished. All the moving that is. The new studio has a new ceiling and sink and is all wired and painted an eye dazzling white. The door isn’t done because it has to be 8 feet square and Jason is currently building an observatory in his workshop and has no room for it until he finishes !  But what eventually will be the floor has been delivered and hopefully will get fitted before too long.   In the meantime Pat has tacked a whole load of insulation to the old door to keep the draught out.
In the middle of all this chaos, our local international artist – Claudio Viscardi – turned up with a picture for Pat to frame ! Talk about starting at the top ! It couldn’t be done in the studio because it wasn’t finished, so he had to clear a space in his workshop and do it there – using all the machines for the first time and taking about 3 days of muttering and sanding to get it ready in time ! But Claudio was well pleased with the results and hopefully practice will make perfect and Pat will speed up a bit !   I should have known that having a husband who spent most of the year away drilling for gas and oil would not just retire and settle down!  He needs to be busy and thank goodness it has coincided with my total recovery.
Whilst I was busy sorting all the junk moving from a to b to c, I cam across some old writings of mine and thought I might put some of them on my blog with a brief explanation of their relevance in time, so keep an eye out for them and have a brilliant and life-changing 2018 !!

SUMMER FUN !

First of all, I must apologise for taking the whole summer off from my Blog!
This was in a large part due to the last few blogs I wrote about me being on the Clint Paddison Program, combined with our launching The Rosa for sea fishing and scenic trips and in this blog I will endeavour to show you how one seriously influenced the other !

The Rosa at the Pier in Kilmakilloge

We started the boat trips on 1st June (somewhat delayed by the Captain breaking his leg!) and almost immediately got some bookings, much to our delight ! What I hadn’t realised was the part I had to play in all of this. I had to fill the five gallon hot water flasks and the iced water and milk flasks each morning and then meet up with Pat at the pier each time he came in from fishing to restock anything needed.  Herb teas, biscuits, etc.  I was also Chief Booking Agent and having to take bookings at any time of the day or evening !  Plus, I had to distribute our brochure far and wide and do all the shopping, housework, etc. whilst Pat was out on the high seas !  With a round trip of 35 miles to the shops, this was no quick fix !

Our passengers all had a great time and our local sea-eagles obliged by flying slowly overhead, whilst dolphins and whales were spotted in the bay.  We even had to order doggie lifejackets for the enterprising dogs that came out with their owners to bark at the seals basking on the rocks.  Every single passenger caught some fish – even ones as young as five ! (helped on the QT by Pat getting them hooked on the line !) and it was rewarding to hear their enthusiastic remarks on the trip.  From Kansas to China, they were a brilliant bunch of passengers !!

A passing pilot whale

 

Dolphins in a fishing frenzy !

Our local sea eagle

It occurred to me as I was rushing around each day, just how loosing weight, having absolutely no pain or fatigue any more was enabling me to do things I never could have contemplated before. 17 years of constant RA/RD, non stop pain and fatigue had all gone in just a matter of weeks! I’m now 5 months down the line and am so enjoying my new found life.  Before, I had tended to stop at home all the time, having to rest each afternoon and found entertaining friends here at home a real struggle. Now, as Pat came in from his last trip of the day I would meet him down Helen’s pub (which is on the pier) and we would talk to the locals and tourists and often eat Helen’s delicious food.

Helen’s Pub at Kilmakilloge

I made so many new friends, some of which live here all the time or have summer houses here and I would never have met them stopped at home ! Life was a lovely, sometimes chaotic rush and at the age of 71, I came through it all.  At the beginning of this month we brought the Rosa back up here so she can spend the winter in her barn and we can do any little jobs that need doing after her busy summer.
(You can find her on FaceBook at The Rosa, Sea Fishing & Scenic Tours).

Coming home for the winter

Rosa’s winter home

I managed to stick with Clint’sProgram as well. The pub soon learned that I was non-dairy and came up with some lovely crab salads and I stick to drinking tap water or an occasional black coffee. Now with time to myself again, I realise just how grateful I am to the Clint Paddison Program for giving me my life back! I may be a granny, but I am now a fit, active granny feeling on top of the world and really looking forward to the Rosa being back in the water at Kilmakilloge on the Wild Atlantic Way at Easter next year !

LIVING WITH CLINT PADDISON !

Good Morning to you all !   I’ve just sat down after cleaning the house, driving into town, doing all the shopping and picked up some nice fresh greens from my son’s garden – phew ! Exhausted, no sir !   I’m still fresh as a daisy, not a sign of fatigue and ready to do a little light gardening this afternoon !   I still can’t believe it – just this time at the end of May I couldn’t even have begun on that list of ‘to do’s’ and now here I am, a whole new person and, more importantly, pain free !
If you follow my Blog you will know that at the end of May I started on the Clint Paddison Program and was definitely the world’s greatest unbeliever in what you eat can change your life !  But after only a few days, I started to see results – quite amazing results !  So much so that I am still on the Program and have no intention of stopping !
Over the months as the Clint Paddison Program gets better known to all those of us who have RA, I have noticed on line there are many people, especially in the USA, who are sceptical about it, so I thought I would answer a few questions that I have seen:
–    “It’s just another fad diet”.  No it’s not.  It’s not a diet, it’s all about changing what you  eat.
–    “I’ve tried dairy-free and it doesn’t work”.  This makes me wonder just how dairy free you went.  Did you give up all kinds of milk, all kinds of yoghurt, ice cream and all kinds of cheese? And did you substitute them with greens?
–    “I can’t fit it in with my family meals”.  Why not, you can still cook as usual for the family and preparing a delicious salad for yourself can be done in a trice.  You don’t have to force them to eat what you eat, but they will definitely start wondering how and why you are loosing all that weight ! ( I’ve now lost 30 lbs !)
–    “I’m putting on so much weight on Prednisone”.  Of course you are, Prednisone is a steroid and should only be used for flares, not day in, day out.
–    “the Methotrexate hurts my stomach”. When I first got RA, the Rheumatologist put me on 30mgs a week ! Now, with the help of the Program I first went down to 25mgs, then 15mgs and am now on 7.5mgs and my Rheumatologist who could not argue with my seriously low blood results says I can come off it altogether when I see her next January ! It’s a nasty poison I can’t wait to get rid of !
–    “It’s hard giving up sugar and swapping sugary drinks for water”. Did you expect it to be easy…. ? You just have to train your body not to expect sugar and check every product you buy to see what it contains.   I have found some very surprising ingredients in things I had always assumed to be healthy !  Your Mantra should be, if I don’t know what it consists of, I won’t eat it.
Being grandparents with our offspring in various parts of the world, Pat and I like to entertain with informal suppers for our friends from time to time.  Does this present a problem ?  No not at all.  I make what I would normally make for guests, cook with oil and butters and just generally do as I always had done !  I make a salad in advance for myself and just tell them that I am now dairy free.  For deserts they don’t escape so lightly in that I might give them melon and raspberries or home made fruit salad – what could be nicer ?!   If we go out to friends, I just eat the vegetables, although several of them will have prepared something dairy free for me and they enjoy cooking it for a change !  A bit of fresh baked cod goes down a treat !
I have also found that our local restaurants in Kenmare react extremely well to being told that I am dairy free and will happily remove the feta from the salad or the cheese from the top of something.  My lovely husband. when he gets back from taking people out fishing on the boat, now really notices my weight loss and wants to loose weight himself.  I don’t tell him that he has been practically dairy free/sugar free for weeks – though stopping him having a glass or two of wine is a totally different matter !!
It all comes down to whether you think loosing all your pain is worth it ? In 17 years of RA, I’ve had about 3 pain free days.  Now, since starting the Program I am pain free.  I haven’t taken a pain killer of any sort since I began – which has got to be good for my body.  Sure I get yearnings for sweet things sometimes, but I just balance it up with what I’ve gained and whether or not I want to go back to how I was.  Surprisingly I don’t ! Living with Clint Paddison has to be the greatest game changer of my life !

My Podcast with Clint Paddison !

This Podcast takes about 35 minutes, so put your feet up, have a glass of water or whatever and listen to my tale…………

Sally Lowers Methotrexate with the Paddison Program

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We discuss how:
– Her Doctor can’t believe it that her CRP is now .05
– Sally has suffered pain for 17 years but now says she can’t describe how brilliant she is
– After being in and out of a wheelchair for more than three years she can now walk a mile, and she walks further every day
– She went from 30 to 15 to 7.5 mil of Methotrexate after starting the Paddison Program
– She went from three painkillers a day to no painkillers after starting the Paddison Program
– She took Humira for 17 years and its effects started to wear off
– She has suffered many breakages and underwent many operations in these 17 years
– Sally has lost 21 pounds with the Program without ever needing to be hungry

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• Sally Lowers Methotrexate with the Paddison Program

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WHAT THE CLINT PADDISON PROGRAM HAS DONE FOR ME !

First of all, sorry for being late with my Blog, but our new fishing boat venture has kept me on my toes, so to speak ! Lots of lovely people been taken out by Pat seeing Pilot Whales, Dolphins, Seals and even the Sea Eagle has obliged by flying low over the boat ! Also endless mackerel being caught, so busy times !
Alongside all this, some of you know that I started on the Clint Paddison Program some eight week’s ago and I thought that on this Blog I would update you as to my progress, bearing in mind that in the weeks before I started I was taking 3 Neurofen Plus a day, plus 15mg of Methotrexate and my Humira + folic acid +++ ! After 17 years of non-stop pain, I was ready, willing and able to try anything.
After watching Clint Paddison’s TED Talk I decided to take him on and see if this ridiculous idea that by changing your diet you could eliminate the symptoms of RA ! As the advice on what to do was FREE I signed up to receive his emails every day, though I will say right now, I didn’t believe a word of it !  I also weighed myself which really depressed me!  Sitting down for the last 5 years hadn’t exactly done much for my waist line !!
Day One was give up milk and dairy. Easy peasy – after all, I didn’t drink much milk – so why was there so much left in the fridge after 24 hours ?? Also I just had to eat salads, which I love ! In addition I also had to juice together celery and cucumber which made a bright green drink, but tasted absolutely delicious !
DAY 2 was spent going to see my GP to ask him if it was OK for me to follow this plan and go and stock up with celery and cucumber. Only that evening did I realise that I hadn’t taken any pain killers for the last couple of days. Strange…. but maybe it was due to this detox he was talking about ?!
DAY 3 he teaches you on a video how to make a 2-sudo grain mix – so back to town to buy the ingredients to which you add dried seaweed – it tasted terrible !  So I consoled myself with munching on some fresh pac choi and even more salad.  But I did find that the lovely green drink took away any hunger pangs.  It was at this stage that I realised slowly my RA pain was going and, best of all, my fatigue had diminished almost completely – after only 3 days !
DAY 4, 5 & 6 you gradually start reintroducing sweet potatoes which I love (which was a good thing as I still didn’t like the grain mixture !) and steamed vegetables. I also went and stood on the weighing scales and discovered I had lost 7 lbs in six days !!
I wont bore you with all the remaining 8 days, but I drank gallons of water, got used to black tea and point blank refused to give up my morning coffee hit, but do drink it black! Yes, you have to give up Alcohol, but that wasn’t a problem for me as wine, etc. had long given me a terrible headache since starting Humira.  Sugar was a bit more difficult and it means reading the labels on everything to find out what’s in them. But hey, if I found myself craving I just reached for the cucumber and celery drink and hey presto craving gone !
I’m now in my 8th week. I have lost 2 stone (28lbs) in weight and am no longer hungry at all. I also have lost all my Fatigue and Pat says I’m a totally different woman !!  Also I can fit into loads of clothes I thought I would never wear again and yes, I’m delighted with myself  !   I should add that this is definitely not a diet as I would define one.  It’s just a question of changing what you eat to stay healthy and pain free.
I did a Podcast with Clint Paddison the other day and definitely talked too much because in the meantime I had been to my Rheumatologist who was amazed by the change in my blood levels (my CRP was down to 0.5 !) and by my weight loss. So much so that she reduced my Mtx down to 7.5mgs and says if I am still improving when I next see her in January, I can come off it altogether!  I am just so delighted by it all.  I know I’m not cured, but living without any pain is amazing.  I can walk further than ever before (until my little used muscles protest !) and at 71 feel reborn !
Clint continues to email me great hints and tips each week and I have bought his on line book which is full of advice and recipes, but you don’t have to if you can’t afford it. It’s up to you.
I’ve just received an email from him saying that they have now reached over 1 million people in Australia and he says:

“With the growing uptake of my program worldwide, I’m now working with some predominant doctors in the US to have the Paddison Program results included in a scientific paper to change the way this disease should be treated by the medical community. It’s great that a movement is in place which has a patient’s health as a top priority, not the profits of drug companies.”

How great is that ?!  So now I will end by saying why not give it a try and rid yourself of that pain, those flares and that dreadful fatigue !  Well done and thank you so much Clint Paddison !

 

FOOTLOOSE !

I think at one stage I was the Imelda Marcos of Kerry ! Shoes of all differing sizes and shapes littered our floor and all because of my RA/RD. Some of you will already know that I had to have both feet operated on and titanium implants inserted.
My trouble began when my increasingly sore left foot suddenly brought me to an abrupt halt with so much pain that I couldn’t walk on it. An Xray revealed that I had a broken metatarsel, but none of the doctors in Cork or Kerry would do anything about it and kept referring me back to my GP.   18 months passed and I still had the broken foot but had learned that it was as a result of my left knee replacement being botched the year before. In desperation my husband bought me some walking boots so I could at least hobble around and I decided to change my rheumatologist who didn’t seem to care in the slightest that I had a broken foot and so I picked the top rheumatologist in Dublin and she put me on to the top foot surgeon there. In fact she refused to treat me until I had seen him !  Progress at long last!
So it was first the left foot and this followed a year later by the right with my feet bolstered with wire and pins and titanium, some of which still remain in there ! But the outcome is brilliant – some two years later I can walk without pain and, more to the point, the swelling in my feet has gone down at long last !
During this three and a half years I had the problem (when not in a wheelchair) of what to put on my feet, or rather ‘foot’.  I had one two sizes larger than the other due to swelling and my foot surgeon saying that I should wear supportive shoes, preferably boots !  This meant me first of all wearing my husband’s boot on one foot and a completely different boot on the other and hoping that nobody would notice ! OK in winter, but as summer came on I was buying two pairs of identical runners, one for one foot and one for the other ! As the left foot got slowly better, the right one was going downhill and swelling ! So now I had another problem. I had the alternative boot/shoe to change them around, but the left foot was still a size larger than I had started off with………..so what to do but buy some shoes in the intermediate size. My shoe collection was expanding and in exasperation I confronted my lovely foot surgeon with my dilemma.
He said the answer for me was FITFLOPS (not flip-flops) sandals with rollerball technology and they are just about the most comfortable shoes I have ever worn.  Being sandals they took care of the difference in foot size and I was delighted to find that they had a huge selection, even glittery ones !  I’m not sure if you can get them in Australia but you certainly can in Europe and the USA and I have bought all mine on line, so its definitely worth a try ! Now some two years after my right foot operation I am walking along totally pain free.  My muscles are a touch sore after having to sit down for so long in a wheelchair, but I am walking a bit further every day and what is even better – both feet are at last the same size !!
The moral of this story is, if your feet are hurting you, go get something done about them. The answer is out there !

http://www.fitflop.com/en/womens/ for the USA

http://www.fitflop.eu/ for Europe

HAPPY PAIN-FREE WALKING TO YOU ALL !

CHAOTIC TIMES !

The last few weeks have been really busy here in SW Ireland. Pat has been away a lot doing courses in First Aid, Radio use, Survival and becoming a fully fledged boat Skipper – so as a result I have been holding the fort at home by myself.   After so many years of having Pat away for months at a time, I have come to appreciate these times spent on my own and had really forgotten what it’s like to do things at my own pace.   I eat when I want, sleep when I want (and when I don’t want due to sore limbs !) and can generally relax and de-stress.
When he got back armed with all his certificates, we then had a week of Total Panic Mode to get the boat ready for her final inspection by The Department of the Marine. Even though the Rosa is only 30 feet long, she has to pass all the surveillance of much larger passenger boats in order to get her licence. My son Jason (who built the Rosa) came over whilst Pat was away studying and carried out the many things we had to do to qualify – what a guy , thanks Jason!   Pat only got back the night before the inspection and thank goodness, we passed !!   So now we have the licence and have got the insurance for the passengers – all 3 of them !
This last week has been spent getting all the bits and pieces on board for our Fishing and Scenic Trips down to the last detail of sick bags for those who find the ups and downs a bit much to handle !   I went into Kenmare by myself and visited all the major hotels giving them our brochure and to friends who promised to put one up anyway!   I was absolutely shattered by the evening, but we wanted to be ready for the Holiday Weekend and so far, after all our efforts, we haven’t got one booking !  But its early days and I need to contact all the B&B’s and holiday cottages with a flyer, so times are busy!
What I should also mention also is that 2 week’s ago I started the Clint Paddison Program and I cannot stress enough that it is AMAZING !   I have lost 10 lbs in just 13 days by giving up all dairy and red meat and my pain and fatigue has gone from really bad to bearably sore.   The difference is very noticeable. AND I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER in myself and full of energy and good cheer that hasn’t been around for some time.    AND I’m out walking and enjoying the Spring sunshine !   So I am going to press on with the Program and will keep you updated.   I don’t suppose, in my 71st year, that I will ever get totally cured, but my scepticism is cast aside and I’m convinced now that a radical rethink of my diet is the answer to many of my symptoms.   AND I just love that cucumber and celery juice Clint !
I have to dash as we have friends coming to stay for a couple of days today, so I thought I would let you see our lovely Newfoundland Dory again – just in case you come visit South West Ireland anytime !

 

The Rosa

 

 

RA/RD IN ALL SHAPES & SIZES !

I’m quite amazed by the discussion forum’s on internet websites such as rheumatoidarhritis.net and the size and complexity of the replies they get.  The advice and good-humoured response is well worth reading and questions come in from all parts of the world.  People with just RA/RD and those others who have multiple other diseases to cope with as well.  It makes me feel lucky, yes lucky to just have RA.
The one most interesting points I have gathered from reading these is that EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT.  Drugs that work for one person don’t work for another.  Rheumatologists come in excellent – good – poor and simply terrible!  I seem to spend lots of time saying ‘if you can’t get on or don’t get good results from your Rheumatologist’s advice – then CHANGE THEM ‘!  It took me several years and four changes to find the excellent one I have now and you should always bear in mind that you need to confide in them for the rest of your life so don’t put up with second best !
The next interesting point is the large variety of drugs that are out there and everybody seems to use a different combination from Biologics to NSAIDS to pain patches, thus emphasising my point that what works for one does not necessarily work for another. There is no set guarantee for any of them, but if you feel you are getting worse, then that is the time to insist on a change of medication from your Rheumatologist or to take an alternative route.  I find it very helpful to write down a list of symptoms over the six month period between visits to mine as a touch of ‘brain fog’ usually renders me totally speechless when I actually get to see her !
There are also the useless ‘cures’ that some joker puts in.  Delete them, they are not worth the trouble.  However recently I have noticed a few people mentioning the really good results they are getting by altering their diet.  Amongst others, I decided to have a go at the Clint Paddison Program.  He lives in Australia and had severe RA.  Seven years down the line he is now free of the symptoms and off all the drugs and has started a family!!  I decided it had to be worth a try and it can all be done on line.  So far no money has changed hands, but I expect it will further along.  I am getting an email from him every couple of days with how to start, which basically means giving up first milk and then all dairy products.  I’ve only been on it six days and already my sharp pains have reduced to aches which is great incentive for continuing.  I always thought I never drank much milk, but I had it on my muesli, in my tea and coffee and goodness knows what else !  I find it hard to credit, but it seems to work !  Quite frankly I am amazed how one’s diet can bring about such changes.  I appreciate its not going to be a quick fix, but any, and I mean any reduction in my pain level is worth the effort. If it can work on me aged 70, then all you young things should have no problem !!
I will give you an update in a few months along the line as to my progress.  In the meantime keep up with all the excellent information being discussed on line and why not put it a question, or an answer yourselves ?