The ICU, my left eye, and twenty years of maybe

Gabe GatesTwenty years of maybe. I'm not a doctor. This is what worked for me.

The worst of my three or four ICU stays was five days. One night in that bed, I screamed for forty-five minutes, waiting on a pain shot. I about died in that bed.

Long-term steroids helped the pain more than anything had. Then my left eye went dark. Blind, for three months.

I tell you this so you know I've stared at the same ceiling you have. I'm well past it now.

Where it started

Here's what it was like for me. At five, half a bowl of cherries put me on the floor. We'd picked them that morning. My mom blamed the pesticides. At thirteen, out scouting deer with my dad, I ate several golden apples straight off the ground. Hours later, cramps so bad I thought I was going to die. Two flares, eight years apart, and nobody in either room to connect them.

Twenty years of maybe

From my early twenties, a flare every six months, hours after eating. Twenty years of maybe. Five maybes, five different names. Two surgeries came out of them, and both made it worse. I agreed to the second one because I was tired. Nobody was sure.

Being told maybe for years does something to you. You stop being sure anyone believes you. Then you stop trusting your own body. So you trust the advice instead. I did.

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 they can't find it, you're going to live with this.” He wasn't being unkind. He said it like a weather report. It came back empty.

So here's what got missed. A trigger food. It isn't a disease, so a scan has nothing to look for. Doctors test for diseases, and they tested me for every one with a name. The symptoms got managed, and surgery came before anyone isolated a cause. Those were good doctors holding the wrong tool. A trigger food shows up on a Tuesday, four hours after lunch, and only if somebody wrote down what lunch was.

What I did

Long before Michigan I had been looking on my own. In the wrong places, mostly. I ate everything raw for a stretch. I drank juiced Granny Smith apples for a month. I got worse, on a thing that should have been safe. I lived on sixteen to twenty-two bananas a day, blended with raw vanilla. That worked for nine months. Then it stopped.

Each time something helped I stopped there. I never put one food back to check what had done the damage. On a road trip to Georgia that habit caught up with me. A bag of coconut-covered dates, then three days in a hospital.

The slow part was mine. For about fifteen of those twenty years, I did nothing about it. I waited for somebody to hand me the answer. It cost me most of my thirties.

When that report came back empty, I stopped waiting. I decided to test food myself. One food out, everything else the same. Written down. Then back in, alone, and I watched.

That was the piece missing for me. The cherries at five were the skins. So were the golden apples at thirteen. My mom had the right bowl. She blamed the wrong half. For nineteen years I chased single foods. Most of my flares were one category in a different costume.

My own cut list has the form on it. Skins, seeds, nuts, rough fiber. Raw vegetables, except a salad about once a week. Whole grains and corn. Alcohol.

And my safe list. Meat and eggs. Rice, potatoes, white carbs. All dairy, which is just me. Fruit and vegetables without skin or seeds, cooked soft. Bananas. Peaches in yogurt. One case. Mine.

This is what my gut needed. Guts differ. Find what your gut can take. If you've ever had a blockage or bowel surgery, ask your doctor first.

I could not tell you the day it dropped. It came in stages, over months.

It was never the notebook alone. A new doctor who listened was part of it. So were supplements, and ten thousand steps a day. Your lists won't look like mine. Yours might hold coffee, fried food, sugar alcohols or a fruit nobody warned you about.

Where it landed

I stopped guessing by symptom and found what my gut could take.

Six or seven out of ten most days, down to zero to three. No true flare since 2020. Not once back in the ICU for my stomach since. I work ten-hour shifts now.

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. So one claim before I've earned it. I believe you. I don't know what's wrong with you. I believe something is.

I never did get a name for what I have. I didn't need one. I needed a notebook, and I needed to know how to read it.