My gallbladder adventure continues. I did the liver and gallbladder purge on Friday night and spent a lot of Saturday making close friends with my toilet (an expected part of the purge). I can tell you one thing: epsom salt solution is the vilest tasting thing known to man, closely followed by a drink of 50% olive oil and 50% grapefruit and lemon juice. The toilet part of the process was easy after that!

At the moment, two and a half days later, I feel fine. I have to say I can still feel my liver and gallbladder quite clearly: a slight pressure under my right rib cage. But other than that I feel quite open and clear somehow. Which is great.

On Friday evening, as I lay there letting my gallbladder do its thing, I could feel it spasm. It hurt, but nothing like the original attack. As this was going on, I journeyed as my spirits had asked me to do. Nothing very momentous happened: I was surrounded by Ancestors as my shamanic teacher and my healing teacher dealt with the intrusions (still the big black insect with the little one embedded in it). They took them and reduced them in size considerably, before putting them into the Ancestral Lake to dissolve.

Since early on in this adventure, I have been sitting with the spirit of my father every evening. This evolved from time spent mourning him and the tough life he had, the tough life I had as a child with a father who had MS, to acceptance, and time spent together sitting quietly by the Ancestral Lake.

In the night of my gallbladder purge, I had another ancestor dream. In the dream, I was sitting in the garden with a friend, explaining that I had an ancestor who was a coal miner. I went inside the house to fetch his copper miner's lamp to show her. In reality, this lamp is in my mother's house in Belgium. My great-grandfather died in 1929 of an infected wound sustained in a mining accident.

The next evening, I continued my practice of sitting with my dad. After a while, he got up and left. My great-grandfather came to sit with me instead. Obviously, I'm moving to another ancestor, to another branch of my family. He is Joseph Welsch, my mother's mother's father. I will sit with him until I learn what I need to know, until he leaves and the practice changes again.

I am sure that all this work is for the good. My change in diet can only be good for me, as is losing a bit of excess weight. The close work I am doing with my spirits and my Ancestors can only strengthen my trust in them and enhance my shamanic work.

As for the purge - the jury is out on that. I'll be slowly re-introducing more foods, trying this and that. I'm sure I'll soon find out what my body can take and what it can't. Obviously, my gallbladder still needs a little time to heal as well. My surgeon has agreed to call me back for a check-up and another ultrasound in January. It'll be really interesting to see what that'll look like. I'll be sure to let you know.

In the meantime: here is the information on the purge (follow the links to 'Health' and 'Liver Cleanse') and a sceptic view of what happened in my body. The results will tell...