On the LID Tip

This is my fifth day on the Low Iodine Diet. And my second blog with a TLC reference. (T-Boz Left-Eye and Chili.) I'm sleepy and tired and became a vegan for Lent before doing my Low Iodine Diet. So technically, I'm low iodine vegan diet. I thought my selections would be quite limited but I'm surviving and feeling quite full. I've been juicing like crazy. Smoothies each morning. Homemade bread and stew. Today I made a lovely multi-lentil dhal with quinoa. (Quinoa is both a carb and a protein. This is key since I can't eat tofu or soy anything, both sources of protein and calcium.) I feel okay but mostly tired all the time. I tried to nap earlier but couldn't. So I tried to read first which usually puts me to sleep, except I was reading "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal" by Eric Schlosser so of course I could not sleep. I read through the chapters on why the fries taste so good, slaughterhouses, cheap and illegal immigrant labour, severe workplace injuries and deaths, poor working conditions, and began to read about pathogens in the meat. Enough to make me say Grrrrrr. And I guess enough to keep me awake and not napping.

I think that this cancer experience is changing me. Today and yesterday I became more mindful, thinking about the here and now. Something I don't typically do. Usually I'm lamenting the past or obsessing over and planning the future. In fact, I had to delete my first blog entry which I wrote in 2008. It was so personal and painful to read. I was really stressing out about multiple issues and it seemed so raw, so angst-ridden.

So I think my first lesson, my most important one is to take things slowly and one at a time (both new concepts to me.) Slow and one step at a time. Meditation helps me to breathe and to focus and to take things one... breath... at... a... time.