The moment I was told I'd live with this pain forever

Your tests came back normal and you're still in pain, but nobody can name it, so how do you find it without a name?

At five, one food put me on the floor. My mom blamed the pesticides. She was half right.

The last real doctor I saw sent a hundred-page report on me to the University of Michigan. It was my last real shot at an answer. He wanted me ready if it came back empty. "If they can't find it, you're going to live with this for the rest of your life." He wasn't being unkind. He said it like a weather report. It came back empty.

For the better part of twenty years, most days went the same way. I'd eat. A few hours later I'd be on the floor. I couldn't have told you which plate did it. After enough maybes you stop being sure anyone believes you. The part I never said out loud is that I'd stopped believing my own body.

Here's what got skipped. Two of my maybes turned into surgeries. My gallbladder, because the levels weren't perfect, and a small cut near the pancreas after that. Both made things worse. Both came before anyone isolated a cause. Those were good doctors holding the wrong tool. They ran the right tests for the wrong question. A maybe was the most honest answer those tests could give.

This course is for you if your tests came back normal, often more than once. You were told "maybe." Or "it's IBS," or "it's stress," or "it's in your head." And you're still in pain. If I'd been told for years that everything came back normal, I'd half believe it was in my head too. I don't blame you one bit for wondering. I wondered.

You know that wait after a clean test, hoping the next one finally has a name for it?

I waited on names for most of twenty years. Whatever got blamed for a bad day was whatever somebody had a story for. Then I decided to write down the whole plate, and let the story wait.

Most people with stomach pain believe one of two things. Either a doctor will find it eventually, or you cut everything that might be the problem and pray. I believed both, for two decades. Both are reasonable.

A trigger food isn't a disease, so a scan has nothing to look for. It shows up on a Tuesday, four hours after lunch, and only if somebody wrote down what lunch was. Doctors test for diseases. They tested me for every one with a name. The log is the right tool for this job. It's the only thing in the room that was there at lunch.

What worked is smaller than you'd think. One question after every meal, written down. What did I eat, and what happened after. Then one food out at a time, two to three weeks, everything else the same. Then that food goes back in, alone, a small amount, and I watch. I end up with two lists I trust. Find, Log, Remove, Re-test, Keep. Everything after this lesson is one of those five. It's boring. Boring is the point.

Nobody handed me this, and the slow part was mine. Twenty years, and I never once took a single food out and put it back to check. I swung from one whole diet to the next instead. You'll hear exactly how in the next lesson, so you don't have to do it that way.

What the log finds is different for everyone. Someone I talked to cut dairy and was fine. Someone else found it was onions and garlic. One person's entire problem was carbonation. Another found it was coffee on an empty stomach. The way I found mine is the way to find yours. That's the only part of my story I need you to keep.

Where this breaks. I'm not a doctor, and this isn't medicine. If there's blood, a fever, weight falling off you, or pain that keeps getting worse, that's a doctor, today. This runs alongside your doctor. Never instead of one.

The question I get most is about the name. Nobody ever gave you one, so how would you know what to cut. I never got a name for what I have. I built my two lists without one. The name is for the disease. The list is for lunch.

Now the food at five. It wasn't the pesticides. It was something about the form. My mom had the right food. She blamed the wrong half. Years later I learned a food can be fine one way and bad another. Raw or cooked. A small bit or a big bowl. Alone, or with a heavy meal. That's mine, one case. Yours could be milk, wheat, onion, beans, or a beer.

A scan looks for a disease. The log was there at lunch.

One thing for today. Write down the number you usually live at, zero to ten. Your usual day, and I mean usual. The worst day is easy to remember, and it isn't the one we measure. That's the number the guarantee is measured against. It's the number I want to beat. I wrote mine down late. Write yours down first.

Can you give me that one number before the next lesson?