Dear Diary

Yesterday, I promised you, my dear reader, that I would tell the sordid story of how modern medicine nearly snuffed my talent out in the cradle. But before I get onto that tale of intrigue, business ventures, and just plain fucking up... I have to define a few things.

"Modern Medicine", when I use it in the context of this story, is actually shorthand for "modern medicine at the time" because modern medicine is constantly in flux and capable of change. Except where the results are profitable. Then their attitudes can stick around long past the time that actual science has been done to prove them wrong.

Eg: Modern medicine will accept that you, as a parent, would much rather not do the inoculation thing. Why? Because then they make loads more money when your kid gets sick from preventable diseases.

All right. Enough mini-rants.

Rewind to the year 1973. Baby me has just grown some teeth and is using them in entirely predictable ways on MeMum (ouch!). So, of course, weaning takes place.

The problem? Modern Medicine recommends that MeMum swap me over to chemical formulas which are either mixed with Cow Milk, or vanilla tap water with absolutely nothing done to it. Not even "boil, then cool".

I displayed my fine ability to get along with over-the-counter solutions to everyone else's problems. Translated, I was sick. Biliously sick. Gloriously, technicolour, something-is-wrong-here sick.

Modern Medicine recommended all the different formulas out there. And every single one of them failed. And instead of recommending MeMum pump-and-save, they instead started talking about exploratory surgery.

Surgery. On a baby. They were going to cut me open (with little in the way of anaesthetic, mind. Because you can't give anaesthetic to babies) to see if there was anything wrong with my innards because I wouldn't slug down chemicals like every other average child of the time.

Fortunately for me and survival rates for that kind of surgery, MeMum took the advice of a neighbour and learned about how goat's milk was better for babies. And goat's milk was harder to find at the markets back then than it is now³. Fortunately, MeMum had other options. We knew a goat farmer.

So, for about eight years of my life, my family never popped up to the shops for milk. We toddled across the road to swap some of our eggs, or the odd chook, for some fresh goat squeezings in some good, old-fashioned, rural barter.

Well... our neighbour of goats did possess a home-pasteurisation rig, because it was and still is illegal to sell or give away 'raw' milk. Even in the best of farms, mastitis and other bad bacteria in the milk is still a problem.

This was the main cause of Modern Medicine diagnosing me with Large Fat Globule Intolerance. I couldn't come at a lot of fat. It just made me sick. And for roughly eight years, I didn't indulge in cow's milk, or cow's milk byproducts.

I still ate eggs, toast (with Modern Medicine approved margarine), and other mainstream things. And white sugar. But the important part was... not much bread, and not much sugar.

Around about my eighth year of being a baby nerd, my family discovered that I had grown out of my more violent reactions to the cow milk. And it was also around the time that I got a bad pertussis inoculation (sold to Aus for profit by Modern Medicine in the US because our stipulations were not as strict as theirs) and fell victim to whooping cough. And repetitive bouts of bronchitis, which lead to my chronic asthma.

Things that make you go 'hmmm'...

Fast forward to the modern era, and I look up the nutritional facts of goat's milk. Because (a) shits and giggles, and (b) I'm a writer and I like to know about strange things.

Goat's milk has a very ketogenic balance of essential elements. 25% carbs, 53% fats, and 22% protein.

More things that make you go 'hmmm'...

Maybe I got that sick because my infant body wanted to remain in ketogenesis¹. Maybe I reacted to the way cow's milk is processed and how cows are essentially mistreated in order increase yield.

Alas, the successes of LCHF are only eleven years old and only recommended in Switzerland. If only... if only Modern Medicine was open to actually looking at the science involved² and not just going with the stuff the pill companies' paid research points to.

Waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with Switzerland is personal agony for me. Mainly because MeMum is no longer shopping for alternatives in the face of bad news, and is trusting Modern Medicine with her health.

Given that it's nearly killed and has killed members of the family, I'd have thought that trust would be very thin indeed. But that's not the way any more.

I wish I knew why.