Thrown for a loop

I've been remiss in blogging for a bit, so in case you've written me off as a lazy slob, let me try and explain what's going on over here...

Basically, I had some bad health news last week. Not terrible, really, but still unexpected enough to pull the rug out from under my feet for a few days. Turns out I have a stage 3 endometrial cyst and need surgery to remove it. I'll spare you the details of the cyst's location, suffice it to say it's in a part that's mostly considered private. The surgery involves general anesthesia, not something I have a fun time imagining, and the insertion of a camera through a hole near the belly button, which doesn't sound like a picnic either, but apparently using a camera is a good thing and better than the alternative.

So life's a little ho hum right now. Not that I don't have plenty of reasons to be grateful - at least it's very unlikely that it's cancer, as I was assured. Also, like a good Californian, I went pretty much straight from the doctor's office to my acupuncturist/Chinese herbalist and am now on an intense alternative regimen to hopefully shrink that cyst a little bit (as well as all the other smaller ones that were not visible on the ultrasound but are very likely to be there, according to the doctor). Of course, my Chinese practitioner had diagnosed "blood stagnation" months ago, and put me on a dairy free diet, as you may remember - well, I should have stuck with it then as she was certainly right in her diagnosis. So now I'm off dairy again, as well as off meat, wheat, sugar, alcohol, processed foods, fried foods, fun foods, and pretty much everything else I've been splurging on over the last few months. So if nothing else, I'll be super healthy by the time the surgery rolls around.

On top of Chinese herbs and acupuncture, part of my alternative regimen is also exercise and yoga, which I've been neglecting due in part to the hours that I spend blogging every week (I'm not exaggerating, ask Ritesh). Sitting at a desk for 8-9 hours a day at work, and then going home to sit at the computer some more is apparently not the best thing for one's health. So I'll have to figure out what to do... I'll keep blogging one way or another, but need to find some balance, and get that blood moving again...

I do have one pretty food picture for you, though! This is a roasted red bell pepper and peanut soup with some sautéed bok choy tossed in (I didn't have space for an extra bowl on my buffet tray) at the Hare Krishna temple some time last week:


Ritesh has also been cooking up a storm - Thank God for Indian food - don't know what else I'd eat on this diet...:-) Thanks, love!