I recently started passing only a few tiny stones with each flush, and my chest pain (liver/pancreas pain) has vanished completely. But here's the really fun part:

As some folks might remember, a week or so ago I was worried about oxalate poisoning from my new (3 months old) all-vegetable-nut-fruit diet (with a bit too much spinach). This was stupid of me, I now believe. Oxalate is the ordinary waste of plant metabolism and is in all plant foods, so surely a healthy human body can deal with it.

I am predisposed to fear joint pain because terrible Rheumatoid Arthritis runs in my family. But eventually I examined the locations of the pain closely enough to realize that what I was experiencing was not joint pain from oxalate buildup or calcium deficiency or anything else. It was tendonitis, and a peculiar sort of tendonitis. It would flare up with vigor in one place for a few hours or a day, then vanish completely, only to suddenly reappear somewhere else. When it went to my left hip, for example, it forced me to limp stiffly for parts of one day, but I had no hip pain the days before or after.

At last I remembered that I DO have various tendon problems that need healing. I had forgotten them, but they flare when some activity triggers them, sometimes in quite a debilitating way. In recent years I had simply learned the habit of avoiding extended hikes or steep climbs. Now these pains were flaring up in a strange ephemeral way without any activity to trigger them. I finally realized they were probably being healed and that this was a Herxheimer reaction!

The problem spots were my big toes (that minor issue goes way back into childhood), followed by my knees (front and back), then
my hips, hands/forearms, and most recently something mysterious deep inside my extreme lower back or upper pelvis. Too much for a 29-year-old!

This unusual new tendon pain went to all these places, mostly one at a time, over the last week. Except my knees, that is. Today it was all quiet, which was a relief in one sense, but I hoped the little healing spirit had not left me without attending to my knees. I was coaxing silently... don't forget the knees... the knees... And tonight, after I had forgotten to hope, the backs of my knees started hurting, just like they have done for the last few years during long hikes.

Hooray for knee pain!

Of course I am jumping to the conclusion that this is a healing process. But after cleaning out my liver and eating fabulous nutrition for three months (after decades of horrible junk food), what else would it be, a DISEASE!?