to infinity...and beyond

The last week has been quite rough for me. I spent most of last Sunday in the bathroom and managed to make a doctors appointment for monday afternoon.

Although we are grateful for my diagnosis of Celiac Disease in December, I have continued to have rough days and weeks. i went back to the doctor to investigate another chronic disease or some other culprit. Mike and I are realizing that there have been great milestones since December, but there are still several days (or even weeks) that I can hardly function in society. After last weekend, we went back to visit the doctor.

After waiting for an hour to see the guy, he came in pushed on my stomach a few times, and said "We can send you back to the GI." Again, I'm grateful this guy was willing and ran a million tests on me for a few weeks, but I really don't enjoy seeing him or paying him money to send me to someone else. Why couldn't he just tell me this on the phone?

Tuesday and Wednesday were great days. We celebrated Wednesday by having a gluten free pizza from one of our favorite places in town. TASTY! I even added my homegrown fresh basil. Delicious! Well, Thursday came and so did the pizza. Apparently, since I have now been GF, I am more sensitive to it. So, simply by baking the pizza in the same oven (or touching it with contaminated hands) I was MISERABLE. 1:00am - 1:00pm I was leaning against cold metal fixtures and walking laps around the block. Luckily, once I made it to the bathroom a couple times, all was over and I even regained some energy.

On my way home from work, I called a new friend. Katie has been diagnosed with Celiac just about a year longer than I. She has figured out some tricks of the trade and found that going GF was not quite enough for her. I took some notes and was encouraged by our conversation. The next day, I was back to normal and even went out to pick up Elisabeth Hasselbeck's new book, "The G Free Diet." I read nearly half of it within 24 hours. I've realized that although I thought I had eliminated gluten from my diet, it was still creeping in to my body. Now, with lots of help, encouragement, and prayers, we are continuing this fight against Celiac. I've learned that the 100% GF diet is more like 110%, and HAS to be. I never want to feel that nausea again, especially when I can do something to prevent it. The silver lining, I don't know if i have any other chronic disease or anything else, simply just an elastic grain that haunts me everywhere I go.

Since it is Sunday and some of you haven't made it to church, I'll leave you with some action points:
1) PRAY! Pray for me and my body. Pray for Mike to continue to have patience and understanding with me. Pray for a good dietitian and wisdom from him/her and wisdom for me and understanding my body.

2) Get tested. Nearly 1 in 133 Americans have Celiac Disease. However, less than 5% of them know they have it. Many people will never experience symptoms. That might seem like a good thing, but there are many more complications of Celiac, especially if people continue to eat Gluten. A simple blood test can help identify if you are at risk or not. If a first degree relative has CD, your chances are 1 in 22. If a second degree relative has it, your chances are 1 in 39. Again, it's better to be safe than sorry. Can you imagine finding out you have cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, infertility, thyroid disease, colitis, etc and then realize you may have been able to prevent it, just from changing some things in your diet? Next time you go to the doctor, ask them to draw some blood. Americans are FAR behind the times with this one, but more and more research is being done. Thank you to Australia and Europe for leading the way! (Even Italians with all their pasta and pizza have more GF options than we do.)

And a side note, thank you Katie! You've helped me see some hope in this and I am grateful that hopefully my other chronic pain and headaches will go away as well. Who knows, maybe even I'll realize what it feels like to not have my skin hurt.