Detox

This week will be the second time in my life I’ve done some kind of a body cleansing/detox program.

The first time was a few weeks after my D&C, because the pregnancy hormones in my body had thrown my whole chemical balance off, and I was getting stomach aches daily.  My mom’s chiropractor recommended a seven-day program that he was familiar with, and I signed up.  Besides my body needing a restart, I think I wanted some sort of emotional closure, some sort of way to regain control.  So I followed the program explicitly.

For seven days, I drank this disgusting cleanse formula that tasted like apple-walnut-licorice juice, and peach-flavored protein shakes that tasted like chalky soy milk.  With the exception of a small meal on days three, four, and five, the only food I was allowed to have was a salad made up of celery, cucumber, and green bell pepper (dressed in lemon juice and chili powder, if I wanted more flavor) – I could eat as much of this as I liked throughout the course of the week – and a small handful of raw almonds each day.

Now let me tell you.  I do not like raw nuts, but when you’re denying yourself almost everything else…  That handful of almonds was the best thing ever.

As much as I hated the two drinks, and as much as my stomach aches got worse before they got better, the detox worked.  By the end of the week, I was no longer in any physical pain, and was therefore allowed to focus on my emotional pain instead.  Actually, I could focus on my healing journey, which I believe was beginning even then – it was just such a long and drawn-out process that I couldn’t see it taking shape.

Anyway, back in January, when I realized and/or decided that my IUD was giving me similar stomach aches to the ones I had during and after my pregnancy, my plan of action was two-fold: first, I would have the IUD removed.  Then, I would do another detox to reset my body’s chemical balance.

This time, I got a different seven-day program, from the doctor’s office where Amanda works.  It only has one required drink – a shake powder that, when mixed with water or non-dairy-beverage, assumes the consistency of cake batter – and eating is totally allowed.  The idea is to eat “clean” (like my gym-crazy brother does when he’s “shredding”): fruits, veggies, nuts, lean proteins.  No gluten or dairy.  No caffeine, alcohol, sugar, or processed foods.  Lots and lots of water.

Compared to the last detox, this one sounded like a cakewalk.  So Doug decided to do it with me.  The problem was that we had a lot of football to watch in January – and you can’t watch football without beer.  And then it was Valentine’s Day.  And then we had bikes to ride or something.  I dunno.  There was always an excuse.  And my stomach aches had stopped pretty much immediately after I got rid of Mirena.

So we finally decided to do it this week.  Because this week seemed less inconvenient than next week, or the week after that.  We started today, and let me tell you…  When you can’t eat the chocolate maltballs being sampled at your work, black beans and brown rice start to taste like the best thing ever.

Actually, I think it’s appropriate that I’ll be in the middle of cleansing and resetting my body on Sunday, the last day of this blog.  It’s time for a fresh start, time for something new.  The same things are, and probably always will be, going on in my world and in my mind – people are getting pregnant, I’m jealous – and I wonder if I can’t apply the same comparison to this situation as I can to eating while detoxing.

When you spend your days knowing you can’t (yet) have the baby you want, but somehow resisting the urge to whine about it, maybe you can make the things you do have – the relationship, the friends, the moments of joy and peaceful solitude – seem like the best things ever.