I Am PKU

April 18th, 2014

Slight lack of entries of late. Yes I have been doing lots of stuff, the biggest leap forward has been my progress on my PKU diet. I have been to London to see my consultant and more recently seen a psychologist to work round my confusion when it comes to eating. When I was 12 I was told by the Doctors I could eat a normal diet, so I did for 15 years without any idea that it would disrupt my development or affect my motivation or mood, hence I flunked college, made wrong choices and ended up an emotional wreck by age 21. For six years I struggled to make sense of the conflict between my understanding of the world and what bullshit was being bombarded at me from various directions including the media and religion, when I was 27 my elder brother who is severely mentally handicapped because of PKU was put back on-diet and the change was miraculous! He morphed from a violent, self harming person, often throwing extremely angry fits, to a calm and placid man with little worry or frustration. I remember he always had scabs on the back of his hands and up his arms where he used to bite himself and thrash out at solid objects, these cleared up in a matter of months. This had a profound effect on my outlook concerning PKU and my diet, so I arranged a consultation in London and put myself back on-diet.

From that point on, I have learned to understand that the PKU diet is an immeasurably complicated task to manage and persevere, it absorbs so much free time and energy, there aren’t enough hours in the day when you are working most of those just to function as ‘normal’ in society. Eating an ordinary diet is a no-no but difficult to comprehend, so I have a conflict in my mind when it comes to the food I put in my mouth, I know I shouldn’t be eating this, but it tastes soo gooood! I have been on and off diet since 1997, often hitting rock bottom before picking myself up and carrying on, this I have done for long enough. I am now married to a wonderful woman who is highly supportive and looks after those issues regarding my diet that I don’t have time to because I am busy at work. So far it has been leaps and bounds and I am very optimistic of the future, I have all the support from the clinic in London regarding foods etc. and a sort of structure emerging that I can relate to, this being very important for the perseverance of the detestable monotony that is a PKU diet.

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