Impact

Since this condition began, it has had a severe impact on my life, limiting my ability to eat, socialize, exercise, and work regularly. Here, however, I will focus on the more dire impact it has had over the last 12–16 months starting in the summer of 2022, since having my dietary need for protein increase 30% has had a catastrophic impact on my ability to function.

Since this increase it has been virtually impossible to meet the basic needs of existing, working, and fundamental self care. I generally need 8–9 hours of sleep to feel healthy, but have consistently gotten 4–7. There are just not enough hours in the day to fit the quantity of protein I need to consume to be able to sleep restfully. My ingestion of the protein is further slowed by the fact that I am never really properly hungry. The first meal or two go relatively quickly (still taking 45 minutes to an hour each). The 3rd and even more so the 4th meal go very slowly, as it is a struggle every day to get the mass of food into my body. These meals each take a minimum of an hour if I really push, but it is much more comfortable if I allow the last meal to take 1–1.5 hours. All told this means I spend 3.5–4.5 hours a day just consuming enough boiled chicken breast to sleep restfully through the night. This does not even account for the prep time. While I have become proficient at bulk meal prep, this all takes an absurd amount of time.

Many times since the large increase in required protein, I have been eating my last meal half falling asleep while chewing my food.

One might rightfully ask, “If you're falling asleep, why not just go to sleep?” Even when completely exhausted, if I under-eat just a little, I will wake starving and not be able to rest more, despite being brutally tired, without getting a full protein meal in. The only thing that's worse than gorging myself on protein before a night of 6 hours of sleep is sleeping slightly earlier, only to wake and end up with two 2-hour naps divided by a large meal.

I try my best to get a short 30–40 minute walk in each day, but between that, the eating, the cooking, and working, I have virtually zero time for anything outside of subsistence and often still end up unable to meet all of my needs without failing at another. E.g. in order to eat enough I must steal an hour from work to cook, or if work is tight, I just sleep 5 instead of 6 hours. The math simply does not work.

I have thought many times of taking time off, applying for medical leave, or even quitting to get a handle on things. Given the mysterious nature of my condition, however, I end up spending a lot of money on non-covered medical tests and other health investigations. If dealing with this while having a regular income is challenging, I'm terrified of being unemployed and burning through my savings, winding up in the same position but with no resources to look for solutions.

By non-functional I mean the “softer” ways in which this condition affects me. Essentially there are three areas.