Dear, Jill,
It is your old Edgar, crawling out from under the floorboards to say hello. It’s been eons! How have you been? I hope you burbled, “really swell!” Do you have a husband and a baby? Such abundance! You are a dear person and it’s a pleasure to picture you with a fulfilling life.
Sorry for incommunicado. I’d been hiding my illness and not loving Wells Fargo anyway, so the timing of Raquel’s ending my contract was a mercy. Lorraine would have kept me out of love but she would have continued publicly to scold me anytime I’d drop the ball. Better to collect state benefits for a bit and try to mend, right?
Doctors were not offering anything that helped, so I mined the web. Removing almost all foods from my diet helped immensely. I was ahead of the curve (ha ha) as science has recently discovered the link between bacterial imbalance in the gut, and illnesses like colitis (look up FODMAPs). Sorry if this is too much info!
Anyway, I’m feeling mostly better and am truly grateful. But, I’ve been hovering for months in this quasi state, not well enough to live a full life but not feeling ghastly everyday, as I was for a couple years.
They’re doing this procedure on humans now that has been used on animals for years. It sounds really gross but it’s been successfully curing infections that used to kill 20,000 people a year. It has proven potential to cure a wide range of illnesses, but the FDA is under pressure from big pharma to slow down its acceptance.
It’s a poop transplant! Gosh, I hope you weren’t eating dinner. Sorry! They take the bacteria from the feces of a healthy person and administer them into the colon to the sick person. All the happy creatures from the healthy person build a new world of colon condos in the sick person and she or he gets well.
In case you’re curious, this branch of medicine is tied into discoveries at the Human Microbiome Project within the US National Institutes of Health: http://www.hmpdacc.org/ And here is some holiday reading on Fecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT) on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_bacteriotherapy
I hope to have an FMT and am trying to find a practitioner who is not overseas. I need a donor, but not the kind you think! My awesome boss has offered to pay for everything, as a Christmas bonus (for reals). But, I need a donor for the, um, organic material and I’m not sure how to go about it.
The donor criteria is pretty easy to imagine, and includes things like no STIs or giardia. It’s helpful if the donor is a cheerful person who leads a healthy life. I have lotsa gay guy friends who would help in a minute. But, pardon the stereotype, they’re mostly sluts, so I’d worry about the safety of the donation material. And, it’s funny how humans are: Even though we cannot wait to flush, it’s still “our poop” and very personal.
I guess I’m kinda asking you if we can talk about the possibility of my packaging up some of your poop in a Swarovski crystal thermos so I can take it to a clinic. Can you believe I am asking? I cannot either. But, as I said, I’m so sick of being sick and if this could truly honestly make me feel better, I would stand in the town square and announce that a candidate screening signup sheet is over by the music stage. Ha ha!
Asking is hard, because I absolutely do not want anyone to feel obliged. Of course, please don’t you feel that way. I’m confident one of my loving friends will be happy to give me their poop once they’ve finished laughing and squirming. I think of you as being open to alternative medicine, and also being very kind, so in all honesty, you are the first person I am asking.
So, that’s my message. I’m sorry it was so long and strange. I’d love to hear how you are doing and what is new. I wish you awesome holidays!