Diagnosis: Celiac. Remedy: Sweet Tattoo.

I've been speaking with a friend who is in a place that I'm sure many of us are familiar with. My friend was in a place of poor health on a very strict macrobiotic diet when her healer told her that she needed to be doing even more to heal herself.

Part of what's so hard about doing a healing diet is that the entire onus is on you. It's work. Not only is it work, but it's work at a time in your life when you are physically unable to do work. You're often not even able to do normal things like walk, bathe, eat, feed yourself, and do your job, and now you're expected to take responsibility for the entirety of your healing. Subtract from that the support of people in your life who think you're insane for not taking the Western medical route, and you've got one incredibly difficult time.

One thing I'd like to discuss here is that sometimes, illness is rooted to deep emotional or spiritual imbalance. Dredging up these issues can be difficult in the best of times, and overwhelming in the worst of times. Yet often, our body forces us to deal with them while we are at our worst. Our body and mind are weak, and the boundaries we set up to protect ourselves are totally torn down as our body weakens, and the problems overwhelm us. It feels like drowning, and it's terrible.

I wish I could say I've only had one or two of these moments, but I can think of about ten times in the past two years where I've thought that I would crack because I couldn't handle anything else. Letting go of my life in Boston last year and my dream of grad school and changing my identity because Tennessee isn't exactly a great place to be a liberal flamer... none of it is easy. And the illness itself can be painful, isolating, and embarrassing.

The only thing I can say is that it makes you tough as nails. Not hardened necessarily... just harder to crack. A lot of the emotional weight behind my illness is gone. There is a time for illness, but there is a time for healing. I believe that we stay ill with emotional and spiritual wounds much longer than we should, and it takes a serious physical illness for our body to teach us that there is a time for sickness and a time for health.

I read in a book recently about a town that burned down. A man said "The Creator willing, we'll rebuild. The Creator not willing, we'll do it anyways." That's the place I reached. Laying there cracked out on morphine from my kidney stone, I was like "Not only am I going to go to grad school, I'm going to Harvard. And if I don't get into Harvard, I'm going to earn enough money to buy a big, big house. And in the back yard of that big, big house will be the dog house for my big, big dog. And I'm going to name that big, big dog house Harvard. And then we'll see who makes the admissions decisions."

And when I've been better for a year straight, I'm getting a totally sweet tattoo.

If Hospitals Were Like Restaurants

I was in the car yesterday with my dad listening to the Sean Hannity show, and Sean graced us all with this arrow of truth to the heart: We don't need to fix health care, because hospitals, like restaurants, are a part of the free-market economy. If they were really that bad, consumers would just choose other hospitals, and the rotten ones would be forced to improve or close down.

Here's what the world would be like if that were true. If hospitals really were like restaurants.

You're wandering down the street on a warm Friday night with a couple of girlfriends wondering where to go to dinner when somebody pops out from around the corner and knocks you insensible. You wake up strapped into a white-linen dinner table at Ming Tsai's Blue Ginger, and the appetizer has been pre-determined. A napkin has been tucked in like a bib around your neck, and you don't have any pants on.

They ask you if you have any allergies. You're dazed an a little confused, because the menu is twelve pages long with an explicit statement that you don't actually get to choose anything, and that U.S. Health Department requires you to waive your right to read the soups. You sign a release statement at the end of the page stating that Ming Tsai has eaten far more food in his life than you, and has fed many more people than you will ever feed, and any notion of "choice" you may be foolishly entertaining is hereby waived.

A waiter comes by the table and asks you if you have ever eaten bell peppers, shucked an oyster or have been to Africa. He will proceed to ignore all of this. If you are a woman, you'll see him examine you up and down, pause, and scrawl "PREGNANT- NO SUSHI" in a large, messy hand.

The plates begin arriving... plate after plate. More than you could possibly eat. Several plates that look like things you shouldn't eat. You're getting nervous. You're beginning to wonder how much this will cost.

Everything stops dead.

The waiter looks at you like you're dribbling and crazy. Like you're frothing at the mouth. And not just from that queer-looking Lebanese crustacean you ate ten minutes ago.

You're feeling awkward. You apologize for asking. The waiter looks positively scandalized.

Someone whispers that you'll be lucky if he doesn't tell Chef Ming what you just asked. Somebody jokes that next you're going to ask to see a menu.

A cadaver gets left out by your table sometime after the second course that doesn't get wheeled away 'til dessert.

And three months later when the monumental bill arrives, you ask if you can negotiate, because that funny Middle Eastern lobster gave you the runs for three days, and if you want to talk picayune details, you were kidnapped. There is silence on the other end of the line.

"But you chose that lobster."

How To Find A Vegan Restaurant in New Orleans

When looking for vegan food, seek out the radical animal rights activists with bullhorns screaming "MEAT IS MURDER" in the French Quarter.

We got really lucky on about day 2 of our trip and hit a PETA protest going down right across the street from Cafe du Monde.

After two days of eating omelets and potatoes to avoid gluten and meat at all costs, we had pretty much given up hope of finding any vegetables anywhere. The only place with soy milk was a Starbucks I saw at the airport, and there was no tofu from here to Atlanta. On one memorable occasion, I ordered a Vegetarian Omelet that I discovered, upon taking a bite, contained that famed cruciferous vegetable known as "bacon."

As we wandered the streets, our hopes of healthy food were dashed as we passed tourist after tourist with a grenade in one hand and a grease stain on the shirt.

That was when we saw the giant truck parked on Decatur Street with a picture of a chicken mid-slaughter. I've never been so glad to see a giant portrait of tormented livestock.

Beautiful young drifters in Urban Outfitters faux-rags with white-people dreadlocks sat cross-legged with clipboards and guitars. I even saw a bicycle. I knew I had found my people.

As we passed, they fumbled at their clipboards and asked us if we would consider vegetarianism. May and I looked at each other and said "Oh... we're vegan," the cries went up and suddenly a slew of dejected, beaten-down elitist liberati youth rose up and shouted "OH MY GOD! REALLY? YOU GO GIRLS!"

It was awesome. I felt like I had just won a prize. They gave us restaurant recommendations, and we got our vegetables, and somebody told me I seemed like "a pretty awesome human being."

Becky Paxton

April 11, 2010

Pretty Awesome Human Being