Oh where to begin... So some of you may have wondered why I disappeared about a year ago. It all started about a week before July 4th, 2016.
(TL;DR Wife got sick, got depressed, she is getting better, motivation returned, I’m taking pictures and traveling again! Selling some limited edition photos soon!)
A little history is in order to set the stage.
My wife, Stephanie had been having stomachache problems and back pain for a year or more. We thought we had figured out the cause of the back pain but the stomachache from bloating would not go away. After a recommendation from a friend, she went to a doctor and had some tests done. Turns out she has a rare auto immune disease called Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. It's not life threatening per say, and is (possibly) reversible.
Hashimoto’s is an auto immune disease that develops from a large variety of causes from stress, to a vitamin D deficiency, and poor diet. Someone suffering from Hashimoto’s can develop a sensitivity/allergy to different foods. The most common are gluten, dairy, and soy. The immune system views these foods as a threat and attacks them, and the thyroid. Hashimoto’s has the potential to cause the body to destroy the thyroid completely, increases the risk of thyroid cancer, causes fertility problems, and can lead to the development of other auto immune diseases.
So rewind back to 4th of July weekend when she found this all out. At that time we where only aware that we needed to avoid wheat and dairy. So we planned our trip to Big Bend accordingly. The trip was relatively successful, however, I never posted any photos or video of it because I became very discouraged. See, before we left this was one of many trips planned. Thailand was next on the list in fact. However, have you ever tried to avoid both wheat and dairy? It's ridiculously hard (never have I felt so much sympathy for sufferers of celiacs or dairy intolerant people). Now, try to imagine doing that in a foreign country in a language you don't speak. It really put both of us down, and I'm a firm believer in pushing forward in hard times but it really felt overwhelming. We shifted our focus to researching Hashimoto’s and adjusting to the new diet. Our hope was to get the disease into remission within 6 months.
Normal thyroid antibodies are zero, she had over 550, and after 6 months there was no change. The doctor suggested she take a food allergy sensitivity test. The results came back with even more food allergies. She could not longer eat pork, beef, rice, corn, broccoli, or bakers yeast in addition to the gluten and dairy. So, beginning in December she eliminated all of those from her diet as well. This paid off in April when her blood test came back and antibodies where down to 219. This has been great news and has revitalized our motivation.
We do have some more travel plans later in the year so I should be back with more new photos soon. I also plan on releasing some of my work in limited edition paper prints. So if interested, stay tuned!
In the mean time, please enjoy one of the photos taken back in July of last year at Big Bend.