Embarking on a Medical Experiment

Several weeks ago I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and more specifically Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO). This diagnosis comes after frequently experiencing severe bloating and abdominal pain after meals over the past several years. I'm working with a doctor in San Francisco to address my immediate symptoms and determine the underlying cause.

I recently took a SIBO Breath Test that showed high amounts of methane, leading to the SIBO diagnosis. This means that there are a bunch of bacteria that normally live in the large intestine but that have migrated to my small intestine where they are eating a bunch of my food before it gets absorbed by the small intestine (or sugars that my small intestine doesn't have the enzymes to break down on its own -- see below), and in the process they are giving off gases that make me feel bad.

The first step is to kill off all these bacteria that don't belong in the small intestine. I'm currently taking a medication called Rifaximin (Xifaxan) for 2 weeks, which has a success rate of about 70%. If that doesn't work, I'll have to try something stronger (and more toxic). It's not clear yet whether this is helping.

The next step is to try to prevent the bacteria overgrowth from happening again in the future. My doctor says that patients typically feel good for about 6 months after taking the Rifaximin, but if they don't change anything else they will typically have a relapse. Based on his experience helping many patients with symptoms similar to mine, he has observed that there is frequently a connection between SIBO and some kind of food intolerance, usually toward gluten (a protein) or a specific type of carbohydrate (e.g. lactose, fructose, starch).

To that end, my doctor currently has me on a very low-carb diet. The idea is to avoid any of the foods that I might be intolerant of until the bacteria have full evacuated the small intestine. Then I can start reintroducing carbs back into my diet one at a time and watching how my body reacts. For the next 3 months I'm not supposed to eat any fruit (berries, OJ, bananas, etc), dairy (milk, cheese, ice cream), grains (bread, rice, pasta, etc), sugary foods (candy, cookies), or starchy vegetables (potatoes). This means I can eat nothing but meat, eggs, vegetables (mostly green ones) and nuts. Every meal. For 3 months.

It's amazingly hard already and I've been doing it (or attempting to) for less than 2 weeks. I am a girl who loves fruit, pasta, and ice cream. Out of the major food categories, the ones I'm allowed to eat are actually the ones I would most readily give up. After drinking a fruit smoothie almost every morning for about 7 years, I'm trying to get used to eating bacon and eggs for breakfast. Lunch now consists of a green salad with some chicken. And dinner has become a depressing lump of cooked vegetables with some type of meat.

Of course, the holidays are not the best time to start a new and highly restrictive diet (I haven't been as strict on vacation as I was during the first week at home.) But even so, it's hard to decide which is harder to cope with -- the bloating and pain in my belly when I eat something it doesn't like, or the depressing realization that I'm sitting down to lunch with 4 other people whose are eating cheese and crackers with a fruit salad, and I can't eat a single thing that's on any of their plates. I start to feel sick to my stomach when I look at my own plate, and only manage to choke it down because I'm so hungry. I now drink at least 5 cups of tea per day because it's the only flavored drink that I'm allowed.

In the meantime I'm keeping a food diary to record everything I eat and how I feel afterward, and I plan to continue blogging about this in the hope that my experience will help somebody else who is also struggling with SIBO and trying to locate the real cause.

I have a real badge now

I gave my first Google tour last week when Luke came to visit! Although I'm still new to the campus myself, it's fun to show off my new workplace. I'm really enjoying the company and culture thus far, so here's a little update on my new job.

Basically I can't tell you anything.

Actually, from a technical/tactical perspective that's entirely true. But I'll try to share some of my experiences with starting a new job and working at Google in particular. One thing I can say is that the learning process is non trivial. I'm currently drinking from the fire hose of tools, infrastructure, and codenames. It's a little overwhelming but at the same time very interesting and motivating. My current goals are to meet someone new every day and to explore the campus and cafes before I get too busy. It's fun to be at the main campus where lots of things are happening, and it's interesting to work for a company that makes headlines on a regular basis for cool new projects.

The commute is kind of long (at least by Boise standards), but we are really enjoying living in San Francisco so it seems worthwhile thus far. I'm currently experimenting with methods to reduce motion sickness while riding the bus during rush hour. The thing that seems to help the most so far is the Sea Band wristbands that I bought for a cruise a few years ago. It's hard to do a controlled experiment when it comes to motion sickness since conditions are hard to repeat. However after several weeks of data, I think the bands are helping. The percentage of days where I walk in the door at 6:30 feeling sick to my stomach has decreased significantly since early February, and often I am able to read or work on my laptop for most of the ride. The other happy part about this solution is that it doesn't involve taking dramamine every day (yuck) and the total cost is about $5 at Walgreens. :)

If you want to hear more about my job, come visit and I'll give you a tour!

Traveling

In the past two months I have flown through all three of the major Bay Area airports (SFO, OAK, SJC). The transportation logistics can be a little tricky, but having multiple options definitely helps with price shopping. As a side note, if you're coming to visit us SFO is definitely the best option, but the others are also feasible (OAK is better than SJC if you want to get to our place via public transit.)

Anyway, two weekends ago I spent several lovely days at Newport Beach, CA with my grandma, aunts, and girl cousins. My family is crazy and wonderful. I also learned something very important on that trip, which is this: I failed to develop hula hoop skills early in life, and evidently it's not something that you "just pick up". :)

The beach was beautiful and the trip was rich with conversations, silliness, water, and sunshine. Thanks to everyone who made this a fun weekend with lots of good food!

Last weekend I joined Mike in Boise for a few days to visit parents and watch the Boise Philharmonic concert. It felt totally normal to be back in Boise, except that I was surprised at the large amount of space between cars that had parallel parked on the street downtown. I guess I'm getting used to living in a city, at least in some small ways.

Now we're back in SF for a while, and it's good to be home just so I can catch up on some sleep.

More pictures to come later.

Fun Local Adventures

Here are some snapshots from our recent adventures around the Bay Area. Enjoy!

A few weeks ago I met Mary Ann in Palo Alto to watch the Stanford women's gymnastics team complete against UCLA. It was awesome to watch two of the nation's top college teams in person.



The weekend before Chinese New Year we met up with Tet and some of his friends for dim sum in Chinatown. The neighborhood was in the midst of preparing for the big parade and and I captured a few photos while wandering through the crowds.




(don't miss out on the opportunity to check your kidney function)

Taking advantage of an especially warm, sunny day on Super Bowl Sunday, we drove down Hwy 1 to Half Moon Bay and stopped for a delightful lunch at Miramar Beach. Aside from an unidentified driver side swiping our car in the parking lot, it was a perfect day.



The rest of these pictures are from a ferry ride across the bay to Sausalito, where we wandered around for a few hours before returning at sunset. Click on the individual pictures for a larger view.

San Francisco Apartment

Several of you have expressed interest in seeing some pictures of our new apartment. Here is a little preview.

Coming through the front door you enter the living room, featuring the "wall of friendly faces" where we get to see some of you every day. This space also doubles as our primary dining area, as you can see from the small table and two chairs. We're learning that furniture items need to serve multiple purposes in a small space, and in this case the dining chairs magically turn into living room furniture by rotating them 90 degrees.



Here is our new futon! It also serves two purposes: living room sofa and guest bed. We've also used mirrors throughout the apartment to make it feel bigger, which seems to be working so far.



Meet Ramon, the adjustable height desk that I built with my dad last summer. It makes my shoulders happy because I can stand up while working on the computer, but then I can sit down when I get tired. It's a one-of-a-kind desk with a completely original design. He currently lives in the living/dining room, off to the side.



This is our master bedroom, showing off our beautiful wedding quilt from Nancy.



The ceilings are only about 7 feet high, which makes the room very cozy. But it also means that we'll have to disassemble this wardrobe when we eventually move, since we can't tip it forward without running into the ceiling!



Our awesome awesome awesome kitchen. Love it.



And we use the white board to keep track of where we parked the car...and when we have to move it.



I haven't taken any pictures of the second bedroom yet, but basically we turned it into a home office for Mike. It's at the far end of the house past the kitchen, and has its own bathroom and walk-in closet, where we store most of our "other stuff". We have definitely noticed the lack of basement (our previous storage location for "other stuff"), but hopefully it will help us cut down on non-essential possessions.

Please schedule a visit if you want an in-person tour. We welcome visitors on any and all weekends!

New Job

As you can see, Theo started his new job this week.



He spent most of the week going to orientation sessions and various training classes. So far he has good things to say about the work environment and the corporate style, although he doesn't actually know how to do anything useful yet. Aside from trying to absorb as much information as possible, he enjoyed eating at the yummy cafes and riding the colorful bikes from one end of the campus to the other. The shuttle bus is also very handy since he doesn't have a driver's license and his paws don't actually reach the pedals. Besides, he can use the hour-long commute time to work on his laptop or comb his mane. Sometimes he also takes a nap. It's a good life for a lion.

Bike Excursion

Taking advantage of the Monday holiday, we rode our bikes to Golden Gate Park this afternoon, which is a beautiful (and very large) park in the city, containing various museums and special gardens. See a map here.

Step #1 - Find a bike route that doesn't involve riding up/down really steep hills. Not a simple task. We actually ended up buying a bike map that has every block of every street color-coded based on the incline!

Step #2 - Buy new bike locks that are more sturdy that our Boise ones.

Step #3 - Enjoy the beautiful sunny day, with a leisurely ride through the park which was crowded with walkers, joggers, bikers, and people will roller skates and hula hoops.



We kept riding through the park until we reached the west edge of the San Francisco peninsula, and crossed the Great Highway to reach a wide boardwalk and a long sandy beach. We think that's the Pacific Ocean in the distance, but it declined to show itself so we're currently in negotiations with the fog to obtain future viewing privileges. We'll keep you posted. All I have to say right now is that the San Francisco coast is FREEZING!



After taking this picture we met up with my Aunt Molly to explore the botanical gardens in the fog. Hopefully we will get to see the Conservatory of Flowers next time too. Who knew it would be closed on Mondays???

Total round trip: 15 miles

You know you're in San Francisco when...

1. The sofa can't make it through the door of the apartment.



2. Patio tables are built at an angle. On purpose.



3. You finally understand the genius of Smart cars.



4. Respect is earned through feats of parallel parking.



5. People love their dogs. In our neighborhood (Noe Valley) in particular. And yes, I have actually seen this in use.



6. The easiest way to air out the house in January is to open a window...because it's 60 degrees outside.

I have posted a bunch of pictures from our neighborhood on Picasa. Click on the picture below to see the whole album.