How Vertigo Changed My Low-Carb Lifestyle

Vertigo isn't regular dizziness

Sometimes, setbacks in your weight-loss journey are not your fault. Often things happen that are outside of your control. No matter what you want in life, and how hard you to try to get it, resistance will step up to oppose you.

A few seconds before Life sucker-punched me, I was a size 14. I was exactly where I'd eventually end up right after completing the biggest accomplishment of my life: Losing over 100 pounds.

But I couldn't DO that until Life punched me in the face and sent me flying back into the weight-loss game.

This is my story.

Looking at it now, I can see how the vertigo changed my low-carb lifestyle. I see how what happened was similar to those near-death experiences that dad used to talk about when I was growing up. Slipping into the next world was always temporary for him.

As yet, he has never moved on . . .

He has always been sent back, or chosen to come back, depending on which experience he was sharing, to live all of his challenges over again.

Today, I can see the circular pattern that I couldn't see then.

I can see the weight-loss cycle that kept repeating, the path that didn't really lead anywhere except back to the beginning. Back to where I'd already been. Back to all of the struggle, conflict, and resistance that reliving the same weight-loss challenge over and over again provides.

Each new cycle in our lives is a fresh invitation to experience life in a different way, but I never did. I can see that clearly now.

Yo-Yo Dieting is like running around in circles.
You never get anywhere.

Up until the vertigo struck, I had always responded to life in exactly the same way. If I couldn't control what was going on, I resisted what life was doing and chased after something I could control.

But this time:

This time was different.

This time, there was nothing to chase. Oh, I tried, of course. I tried really hard to find a way to control what was happening to me, to make it go away.

I tried to hang onto my weight losses. I tried to escape the helplessness that vestibular dysfunction and Meniere's Disease brings. I tried to overcome the despair with hope, but I couldn't.

When the world is spinning inside your head so fast that you can't even stand up, without assistance, let alone dress yourself, take a shower, or walk under your own power, there is very little hope.

The only choice I had was to change the rules of the game. But first, I had to realize that I was, in fact, playing a game I couldn't win.

[This is part 5 of a multi-part series about how I lost over 100 pounds tweaking the atkins diet. If you haven't read part 1 yet, you can find that post by clicking on the above link. At the first post, you'll also find links to all of the posts in the series as they become available.]

How the Vertigo Happened

It was just an ordinary Monday morning.

Hubby and I were lying in bed, talking about what each of us had planned for the day.

There was a package of boneless pork shoulder strips thawing out in the refrigerator, a nice California vegetable mix in the freezer, and I intended on making a batch of low-carb muffins out of home-ground black soybean flour when I got home from work.

There was nothing to suggest that something was about to go very wrong with my low-carb lifestyle. There was nothing that hinted at the fact that my mind had changed.

Hubby worked repairing and managing windmills nearby
when I first came down with the vertigo.

This was several days after a massive smoke inhalation I experienced as hubby was driving us to work. We lived in the super small desert community of Mojave, California and often drove into Lancaster together, a 30 minute drive.

Hubby worked for a temporary day-labor company, Labor Ready, so at the time, he was repairing and managing windmills, but we only had one car.

He would drop me off at the workshop in Lancaster, where I was a supervisor for developmentally challenged adults, and then pick me up when he got off work.

A local forest fire was out of control that morning.

The air was full of smoke, as thick as fog. You couldn't even see the car in front of you. I went into an asthma attack about halfway to work. Disturbed at the thought of what might happen if he took me to work, hubby turned the vehicle around and took me home instead.

I called work and told them I wouldn't be in until the following Monday.

Unlike day-care centers, workshops teach developmentally challenged adults how to:

• do light assembly work
• label cans
• stuff envelopes
• pack shipping pallets
• wrap the pallets in shrink wrap

And other simple jobs like measuring out nails for Home Depot or stapling small plastic bags filled with various items using a brand-name cardboard header.

For me, it wasn't a sit-down job.

I spent 7 hours out of an 8-hour shift on my feet, so I stayed home until the fire was contained and the smoke was gone. The days passed quickly, with no further asthma attacks.

I used to work as a supervisor in a workshop
for developmentally challenged adults.

On Monday morning, hubby rolled out of bed first, like he always does, and headed toward the kitchen to start the coffee brewing. We hadn't been married very long. Maybe a year.

I lay in bed for a few extra moments because I didn't drink coffee. I always started my low-carb day with diet Dr. Pepper.

As I rolled toward the other side of the bed, there was a wave of dizziness, which I immediately shook off. It was not the first time I'd experienced a sudden wave of wooziness. Normally, it was an indication that my heart had skipped a beat, so I just let it pass on by.

But as I started to stand up, the spinning hit me with such force that I instantly fell over sideways, and back onto the bed.

It felt like someone had taken a 2 x 4 and firmly knocked me up the side of the head, but this was worse than a Gibb's head slap. Way worse.

Feeling dazed, I shook my head, trying to get the spinning sensation to stop, but it wouldn't. It was like my brain was rotating inside my head.

I tried a second time to stand up, but it didn't work any better than it had the first time.

The spinning was so hard and coming so fast that I couldn't stay balanced. This was more than just feeling dizzy. It was like my head had suddenly disconnected from the world, and it was spinning on its own axis.

Too early to get in touch with a doctor, hubby talked to their phone exchange, who had a nurse call us back within a few minutes. She told hubby it sounded like I just had a little vertigo, so she set me up with a regular doctor's appointment for later that morning.

The nurse didn't think it was anything serious. We didn't need to rush off to the emergency room.

Why Am I Talking About the Vertigo?

I thought about giving this part of my life a single brief section, more like a passing mention, but then, I realized that the vertigo and the lessons I learned while traveling the obnoxious path of non-diagnosis, the determination to regain society on my own terms, is what sets me apart from other dieters who have also lost over 100 pounds of body fat.

What I did isn't miraculous or noteworthy.

Losing weight is the easiest part of managing your weight.

But, I want to show you that regaining the weight you lost on Atkins or Keto, if that happens to be your situation, isn't always your fault.

Yes, many people make excuses for eating off plan, but sometimes, circumstances are beyond your control.

Sometimes, you just have to go with whatever arises in your way today, and then respond appropriately after you have time to evaluate what's going on and make a firm decision to act.

This post details how and why I arrived at that decision because it's the decision to act that made the difference in the outcome.

What is it Like to Have Vertigo?

After checking out my ears and seeing no ear infection, the Primary Care Physician put me on antibiotics, “just in case.” He didn't prescribe Meclizine to help slow down the spinning until after I'd been on antibiotics for a full three weeks and he was willing to accept the fact that I didn't have an ear infection.

To understand why I gained 80 pounds during the months that followed, I'm going to take a moment, and share with you what living with vertigo 24/7 was like in those days.

I literally spent 99-percent of my time in bed. There was nothing I could do for myself. Nothing.

I couldn't:

• stand up
• walk by myself
• go to the bathroom alone
• take a shower
• dress myself

Obviously, I couldn't cook either. I was totally dependent on other people to take care of me.

Hubby:

• fed me
• dressed me
• carried me to the bathroom
• showered me

I couldn't do any of those things for myself. My basic metabolic rate (BMR) didn't change because it's based on how many calories you'd burn if you stayed in bed all day. But all of the other figures you add to your BMR did change.

The thermic effect of activity went down because I was no longer on my feet all day.

The fidgeting might have stayed where it was, due to all of that spinning, but it wasn't enough to stop the weight from coming back because overall, my calorie needs dropped by several hundred calories per day.

Hubby would dress me before he went to work.

His father, who lived with us at the time, made me breakfast and lunch.

After a few days, I asked dad to stop bringing me toast in the morning and just fry me up a couple of eggs. Lunch was almost always some sort of sandwich. Hubby would cook dinner when he got home (meat plus one side dish) and help me take a shower.

The dependency was difficult, but not the worst part of it all. The worst part was the nausea from the constant spinning, and the inability to make the spinning go away, even for a few minutes.

The spinning inside my head never stopped. Ever.

To put this in perspective:

If you sat in one of those computer chairs that spin around, and had someone spin you very fast, and then suddenly stop you, what you would see and experience when you tried to stand up would be very close to what I was experiencing.

Remember playing
on one of these?
What did it feel like
when you got off?

Some people have described it as how you feel when you first get off of those merry-go-round things at the park. The world continues to spin, even though you are standing still.

However, for you, the brain would figure out the illusion within a minute or two and stop doing it.

For me, it took several years before the body adjusted to the illusion and the mind stopped spinning.

As the days turned into weeks, I somehow found the strength to crawl on my hands and knees to the bathroom at the first sign of nausea, so I didn't have to wake hubby up if it was in the middle of the night. I could make it to the bathroom on my own before I threw up.

I would sit there hugging the toilet for an hour or so on the cold linoleum floor, pausing to make sure I was done, pleading with the powers-that-be to lessen the nausea enough that I could sleep, and then crawl back into bed.

It was a nightmare.

Needless to say, I started to regain all of the weight I lost. Since I spent most of the day sleeping or just laying there watching the ceiling spin in circles, I didn't need anywhere near as many calories as I was eating. 

My energy needs had dropped from about 2100 to a mere 1400 or even less.

Initial Testing Results

At the end of the first three weeks, the Primary Care Physician ran a few tests that showed:

• an abnormal EKG
• extremely elevated CRP
• elevated liver enzymes
• normal blood glucose level
• total cholesterol was 217

The doctor insisted that the EKG abnormality was not connected to the vertigo, but he wouldn't tell me what it was.

The elevated CRP is a marker of inflammation. At the time, scientific research was suggesting that inflamed blood vessels were a heart attack risk.

Despite the fact that I already had elevated liver enzymes, the doctor prescribed statins and told me I had to take a class on diabetes to teach me how to eat right.

Today, the elevated CRP makes sense. It happens if you have:

• celiac disease
• colitis
• Behcet's disease
• Gilbert syndrome
• allergies and food sensitivities
• and other inflammatory or autoimmune conditions

It is not always a sign of heart disease, although it can be.

Behcet's disease is an autoimmune condition that inflames the bloodstream, and in particular the red blood cells.

It is hereditary and runs in my family.

It can damage any part of your body. There is no specific region that the immune system is prone to attack, since the bloodstream feeds everything, but it can easily cause gluten issues.

Behcet's disease is extremely difficult to diagnose in Americans, though. It is considered to be rare, but might not be as rare as the medical profession supposes.

Celiac disease was also thought to be non-existent here in the States, until Dr. Fasano came to the States and made it his life's purpose to prove otherwise.

Gilbert's syndrome is a liver issue.

For some reason, currently unknown, the body can't break down bilirubin when you're under stress. You get jaundice, even though you don't have hepatitis.

Gilbert is also hereditary. My oldest son was diagnosed with it when he was in the Marines.

While I've never been officially diagnosed, I do get jaundice when under extreme stress and have issues with dietary fat and other symptoms. From my research, you can't "get it" unless both of your parents either have it or are carriers.

This is the same thing my son told me.

I did check into the health classes that the doctor recommended for those with high cholesterol levels, just to see what they were teaching those with potential heart disease. Even though I had been eating low carb for months before this happened, by the time blood tests were taken, my:

• triglycerides were 156
• HDL cholesterol was 40
• LDL cholesterol was 146
• VLDL was 31
• and my fasting blood glucose level was 97

I also had slightly elevated HCT (hematocrit; high red blood cell count compared to total blood volume), but that was most likely due to the dehydration from throwing up all the time.

Sample menus for lowering cholesterol were similar to the Sugar Busters Diet that I followed when going through the divorce, so I threw the pamphlet away.

I already knew how to eat that way.

Against my gut instinct, I started taking the statins the doctor gave me, but within three days, my ankles swelled up as large as pink grapefruits, and got super, super cold, so I stopped taking them.

The swelling instantly corrected itself. Within three days, my ankles were back to normal size.

Needless to say, I tossed those statins into the trash.

The Shuffle Begins With a Neurologist

There were three specialists that I got sent to:

• neurologist
• audiologist
• ear, nose, and throat specialist (ENT)

The Primary Care Physician had to approve each of those visits and authorize them, so he could justify those visits to the insurance company.

The neurologist originally thought I had BPPV. She gave me a photocopy of some exercises to do that were supposed to cure me, but they just made the vertigo worse.

I went back to see her, without authorization from the Primary, because she told me to come back in a week if I didn't get better. So, I did.

I had no clue how the medical system worked.

After getting yelled at by the doctor and having it made clear to me that he would only authorize one visit for each specialist, unless he told me otherwise, I realized that this was going to be a long ugly road.

The cure wasn't going to pop up as quickly as I had hoped.

Once the neurologist realized that I didn't have BPPV, she wanted me to have a hearing test, but it took her over an hour on the phone with my Primary Care Physician before he would agree to have my ears tested.

She told me that she wanted me to come back after she got the test results, but the Primary Care Physician refused to authorize another visit.

I wouldn't discover why until much later.

What the Audio Test Results Found Out

The audiologist ran an ENG test on me, which determined that the balance mechanism in my left ear wasn't working.

It's dead.

This is why I don't have BPPV.

The vertigo isn't a result of broken off crystals in the inner ears. For some reason, the balance mechanism stopped working.

The balance mechanism in the right ear was working only slightly at that time. However, the audiologist believed that even a whisper of dizziness during testing meant the balance center was fine.

It either worked or it didn't.

This test result is known as vestibular dysfunction and coincided with what the neurologist had told me:

If you fall to the right when trying to walk, it's your left ear that's bad.

If you fall to the left when trying to walk, then your right ear is bad.

[This information was extremely useful. It helped me to determine what was really going on during my last, massive vertigo attack I had about 8 months ago. Today, I'm going bilateral because I keep falling to the left far more often than I fall to the right, which means that today, both balance mechanisms in my inner ears are probably now dead. This is extremely common phenomenon in those who have Meniere's Disease. For most people, Meniere's is progressive.]

What I didn't learn about the neurologist until later on:

To qualify for disability insurance through work, I had to submit photocopies of all doctors' notes. At the time, I didn't realize that their payment was comparable to what the state gives you and they also subtract their payment amount from what the state gives you. I thought it was like supplementary insurance.

Since it wasn't, having the insurance and filing a claim, which required me to chase after a good deal of paperwork, actually cost me money in the long run. I received something like two bucks. It didn't cover the gas for chasing down what they wanted, nor the cost of getting photocopies of all the doctors' notes.

However, it turned out to be valuable.

After I paid the medical center to give me a copy of the neurologist's notes, I learned that the neurologist thought I had Meniere's Disease or an ear infection. Since an ear infection had already been ruled out, those notes encouraged me to look up Meniere's Disease on the Internet.

I still had vertigo 24/7 and needed assistance to get from the bed to the computer chair, but if the print was large enough, I could read for 5 to 10 minutes at a stretch before the dizziness overwhelmed me, and I had to go back to bed and sleep it off.

The audiologist told me that the reason why I was having problems hearing certain tones was due to my age, and not the vertigo, even though I had absolutely no hearing problems before the vertigo started.

He said it was just a coincidence that I could no longer hear most of what people were saying to me.

When people talked to me, I could only hear certain words and parts of words. I had to learn how to read lips and discern the meaning of what was being said due to the context of the words and parts of words that I could hear.

I also struggled with comprehension.

The brain fog was intensely thick back then, and I couldn't always correctly interpret what people were saying to me.

In addition, when I spoke, sometimes the words in my mind were not always the words that came out. I would also have spaces of time when my mind went totally blank, and I could not recall even simple things.

Often, I was paralyzed to move.

I don't know how else to describe it. There was some type of weird disconnection going on.

My mind would tell my leg to lift up, so hubby could help me put on my jeans, but my leg would not move. Hubby would patiently and calmly repeat over and over again, “Pick up your leg,” but it would be several minutes before the leg would obey the mind.

I had lost 24 percent of my hearing in my non-functioning ear, but the audiologist had no explanation for why I had lost 15 percent in the other one. He was confused because I didn't fit his textbook model.

Three Strikes: Going For a Third Opinion

After seeing the neurologist and audiologist, the Primary Care Physician sent me to an ENT for a third opinion.

The doctor had a very rough bedside manner.

He shut the door, so his office personnel could not hear what he was going to say to us and spoke in a whisper.

Apparently, his brother had the same problem I did, but the ENT didn't know anything about it. Since his brother's vertigo was episodic, his recommendation to me was to:

“Stop being lazy. Go back to work, and learn to live with the condition.”

I was on Meclizine, 25 mg three times a day, and since that was taking the edge off the vertigo spins, slowing them down enough that I could walk as long as hubby physically supported me underneath his arm, the ENT refused to prescribe Valium, the traditional treatment for vertigo at that time.

I have no idea what the typical treatment is today, but information online says it's safe to take Meclizine up to six times a day now instead of just three.

I had a pharmacist tell me once that you can't overdose on the stuff because if you take too much, it will make you dizzy. And being dizzy is what you're trying to get rid of.

What Meclizine actually does is deaden the nerves in your ear, so they cannot send false messages to the brain. This allows the eyes to do most of the work in helping you balance, but for some reason, my eyes were not stepping up to the plate.

The advantage of using Meclizine over killing the nerve permanently is because when the nerve dies, you lose 100 percent of your hearing.

At the time, I had a court summons for jury duty.

Since I couldn't walk on my own power, let alone drive a car, I asked the ENT to give me a permanent excuse for the courts. After hubby helped me make my way to the waiting room, the receptionist gave me a 30-day excuse from jury duty.

Only 30 days?

After all I'd gone through in that doctor's office, him calling me lazy and refusing to do anything for me, the snide remarks he gave me when I told him how depressed I was -- I blew up.

There was no way I was going to be my old self again in 30 days. And he knew that.

I reacted by yelling and screaming and really pitching a fit in front of those who were in the waiting room, waiting to see him. The ENT told the shocked receptionist to give me whatever I wanted.

“Just shut her up and get her the hell out of my office!” he said.

I have no idea what he told the Primary Physician, but I'm sure it wasn't good.

Stand-In Doctor Offers a Little Help

At my next visit with the Primary Care Physician, he just happened to be out of the office that day, so I got to see a stand-in doctor.

This was the break I needed.

The stand-in doctor was more knowledgeable about the symptoms I was having:

• vertigo
• nystagmus
• tinnitis
• brain fog
• sensory issues
• nausea and throwing up
• off-balance
• fullness and pressure in the ear
• substantial hearing loss

He tested me for nystagmus.

Nystagmus is when your eyes dart all over the place. You find it difficult to zero in and focus on just one thing. It also affects your depth perception and ability to balance yourself.

He taught me how to move more slowly and consciously avoid tilting my head to eliminate a majority of the spins.

[This too, was extremely helpful information. Not only for that initial vertigo experience, but also for when I started to go bilateral. Thanks to this particular doctor, I already knew what to do when the vertigo came back in full force a few months ago.]

The stand-in doc wrote an authorization letter to the insurance company to get me the MRI I desperately needed.

An MRI is used to rule out brain damage, a tumor, scars, or a central nervous system problem resulting from an inner ear problem. It should have been one of the first tests the doctor ran, but it wasn't.

The MRI came back normal, which at the time, meant I did not have any brain scares or tumors. However, today, the MRI is known to not be as sensitive as it was originally thought to be, so it can miss smaller scars and lacerations.

This is an important point because sensory issues are thought to be caused from brain damage, and not from an inner ear disorder, so it seems like I might have been hit with a double whammy.

[Further research today is also pointing to the greater majority of those with Meniere's Disease having a narrowed juggler vein, resulting in a lack of adequate blood flow to the brain.]

The audiologist found inner ear damage, but the sensory problems continue to go unexplained.

Standard State Disability Review

Each doctor I saw taught me something new about my condition and the medical profession as a whole.

This included the state doctor I was sent to next.

By this time, I'd been on state disability for three months, so the State of California had one of their contract doctors review my case.

This wasn't about diagnosis, though. It was just a formality, a second opinion, to make sure I really was too disabled to work.

During the interview, the doctor asked me if I wanted the State to retrain me to work on the computer. I wasn't sure if that was possible because I had a hard time staying focused. I couldn't sit still. I had to really fight with myself to keep from rocking. Something, I still do today.

While I was able to do a bit of computer research, here and there, it was on my own terms. Five minutes here, five minutes there, and then I'd end up sleeping for a couple of hours. Doing computer work professionally was a frightening prospect.

Hubby spoke up and said he didn't think that was possible. I couldn't even stay focused when just sitting there. The nystagmus was very prominent that day, and the anxiety I felt was through the roof.

After watching me for several minutes, the doctor agreed with hubby.

[The doctor's knee-jerk reaction to retraining me on the computer is why I never chased after social security disability. I'm sure their reaction would have been the same: retrain me for computer work. You don't have to walk to do that.]

I understood there was no way I could go back to the workshop in the condition I was in. That was a no-brainer, but I still didn't get it.

“When this goes away, I can . . .”

I was going to say just go back to what I was doing before, but I never got to finish that sentence. The doctor interrupted me:

“This is NEVER going away!”

All of the air got sucked right out of me. Although, the ENT had implied something similar, I tossed it off because he was ignorant of the condition.

But now:

Now, I couldn't ignore the truth any longer. Meniere's Disease is for life. There is no cure. I had literally become one of my clients!

“Never?” I said weakly.

“NEVER!”

The doctor asked me to stand up, put my feet together, bend over, and touch my toes.

I hesitated, more than a little shocked at the request, and glanced over at hubby.

He couldn't be serious.

Could he?

I couldn't even walk and he wanted me to touch my toes?

The doctor didn't appreciate the hesitation and ordered me to stand up, bend over, and touch my toes.

“NOW!” he said.

At that point, I wasn't sure what to do, but hubby moved in front of me, and gently told me to show the doctor what happens when I try to bend over.

“I'll catch you,” he said.

So, I did.

Putting full trust in hubby to catch me, I slowly stood up, steadied myself, and then started to bend over. Within a second or two I was falling forward, and unable to catch myself, but just as he promised, hubby was there to break the fall.

The doctor started yelling.

Not at me, just at the situation.

“You should have a walker!” he said. “WHY don't you have a walker?”

Looking back now, I find it quite odd that a State doctor, paid to deny services if at all possible, would have more compassion for me than my own Primary Care Physician.

But that's how life is, sometimes.

When I called work to give them an update, they asked for my resignation.

“This isn't a sit-down job,” they said.

That meant, I would be losing my health insurance by the end of the month.

Approaching the Primary Care Physician About Meniere's Disease

I printed out all of the info I could find on the web about Meniere's Disease, and hubby took it with us to my next appointment and handed it to the doctor.

The doctor was not in a good mood.

He told us right from the start that he was not going to sign any more state disability papers.

As for the stack of articles on Meniere's Disease, he didn't even look at them.

“Meniere's Disease comes with a full set of symptoms,” he said, as if I didn't have any of those.

“Yeah, and my wife has every single one!” hubby said hotly.

The doctor frowned at hubby, and then turned to me.

“Remind me again,” he said. “What did the neurologist think you have?”

“Meniere's Disease or an ear infection,” I told him.

He winced a bit. How could he not?

“Okay. We've sent you to a neurologist, an audiologist, and an ENT. You've had an MRI. Your carotid artery is clear and your blood glucose level is fine. Now, we're going to send you to our Internist Department.”

In other words, he was going to have my heart checked out. Oddly, he didn't remember that I was supposed to already be on statins.

Hubby spoke up and told the doctor in no uncertain terms that if he did not sign the state disability papers, we could not afford any more doctors or tests.

With losing my job and health insurance, we needed the state disability money to pay for health care. There would be no money coming in to pay for any more testing, but the doctor refused to listen.

“You are not disabled until a specialist tells me that you are disabled!” he said.

Keep in mind that I'm looking back on this episode with a greater understanding of what was going on then I had then, but even today, I'm shocked at how the doctor behaved.

The neurologist was a specialist who had told him I have Meniere's Disease, a disabling condition since I wasn't episodic.

I saw it in her notes.

In fact, she had it marked in red and circled.

There was no way he could have missed it.

He had simply decided to reject her specialist opinion because it didn't match his own.

At that point in my life, I realized that the medical profession – at least those in the area of Southern California where we were living in 2004 – were not going to help me.

I was completely on my own.

No doctor was going to rescue me.

According to the ENT, the vestibular dysfunction was not fatal. Having daily vertigo wasn't going to kill me, so the vertigo spins, brain fog, and sensory dysfunction was my new normal.

If I wanted to regain even a small piece of life, if I wanted to not spend the rest of my life in bed, if I wanted to stop packing on the pounds, I would have to figure out how to recover on my own.

I would have to teach myself how to walk again.

I tried to stand up, and almost fell over, but hubby caught me.

I was done with doctors, and hubby knew it.

The doctor looked at me, surprised to see that I could not stand on my own. He was even more surprised when hubby took me in his arms, and we turned our backs on him.

I have no clue what he was really thinking.

“If you won't help us, we'll find someone else who will,” hubby said, as he carried me out of the office.

Perplexed, the doctor called after us:

“Does this mean you aren't going to keep your appointment with the Internist Department?”

He obviously had not heard a single thing hubby or I said.

“We're going to Utah,” hubby announced, as he helped me into the car. “If you can't get disability, I can at least take you where you won't have to be on asthma meds three times a day. I don't see any point in staying here now.”

Part 6 - The Shocking Evolution of the Atkins Diet (Returning to Atkins in 2007 was a bit of a shock. The whole low-carb world had changed tremendously, and so had the diet. Learn how well I did for the first two months on Atkins 2002.)