What's up, doc?

It’s somewhat customary, when one has been absent a long time from one’s corner of T’Internet, to apologise and offer an explanation.  So, lovely readers, the primary reason that I have not been posting recently is because it is hard to work up any enthusiasm for writing about food when you seem to spend half your life dealing with it at the other end.  I am sorry to be coarse, unladylike and to be offering what is undoubtedly I of the TM sort.  But there you have it. 

Finally, at the end of last week the problem was diagnosed as Bile Acid Malabsorption (BAM) or, as it is sometimes called, Bile Acid Diarrhoea (BAD), almost certainly caused by the removal of my gallbladder around eighteen months ago (I wrote a post about my experience with that so will link the two together in case it should prove useful to anyone).

I won’t pretend to understand the ins and outs of it, but basically BAM means that your guts are not absorbing as much bile acid as they should be so you end up with bile swilling around that your body tries to flush out by releasing more water – the result being that you end up with pretty much permanent tummy trouble.  A normal reasbsorption rate is about 20%.  Anything under 15% and you get your BAM diagnosis.  Anything under 5% is considered severe.  My rate was 1.8% so –well.  Winning. 

I have now started taking medication which should mean that the problem is sorted out and very shortly I will be looking back and laughing at all this.  Because, believe me.  I am not labouring under any sort of delusion that this is a Big Problem in the grand scheme of things.  I am perfectly well aware that there are many people out there who are dealing with far worse and I am a little ashamed that even at my ripe old age I have not got any better at pulling on Big Girl Pants and being stoic in the face of such annoyances.