a special shoutout to some special people.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I attended two days of the Gluten Free Living Now Expo in Carmel, Indiana. I'll blog more about it later (and on some of the products which really stood out to me), but I'd like to take this opportunity to send a special thank you to the wonderful folks at Kinnikinnick foods, the people of Gluten Free Living Now, and the staff of The Fountains Banquet & Conference Center in Carmel, Indiana, where the Expo was held.

I had to drive over an hour just to get to the Expo, and by the time I got going and found the place, it was about 4:30 in the afternoon. Since I knew they were closing down in a half hour, I tried to look around as much as possible before I had to leave. I knew I would be coming back the next day, but I didn't want my trip Friday to be for nothing!

I had collected quite a few samples and a free reusable grocery bag by five o'clock, and I was ready to go. Now, when I know I am going to be walking around a lot, I don't like to carry a heavy purse; I will bring along a smaller bag and put just the essentials in it, such as my wallet and the key to my van. I pulled out the key to my van, and was holding it in my hand (along with my phone and my bag and the shopping bag full of samples) when I suddenly remembered a photo I wanted to take to jog my memory. I walked back, took the photo (of the Harvest Cafe Coffee Roasters booth; their coffee is great, buy some!) and walked just out the door to the outside. It was at this point that I made a discovery which no person likes to make...I didn't have my key.

communion, celiac disease, and you.

Recently, I came up against yet another hurdle in my life with Celiac Disease...what does the Celiac do when it's time to take Communion?

(Let me preface this blog post by saying I don't care what religion you are, or if you're no religion at all; that's not the point. If you have Celiac Disease, you're more than welcome here. These are just my thoughts and my feelings; feel free to skip this post if you want.)

I was told I have Celiac Disease on July 14, 2011. Shortly after, we had Communion at church. I belong to one of the largest mainstream Protestant denominations in the world, and it's basically up to each local church how often they celebrate Communion. Some do it every couple of weeks, once a month, a few times a year, it just depends on each local church and their pastor.We have communion about six to eight times a year. I was fortunate enough to find out beforehand the last time, and came prepared with my own rice cracker. This was early in my diagnosis, so I didn't even think about possible cross-contamination of the little cups of juice.

Since then, however, I have learned a lot more about cross-contamination, and when I showed up at church on Sunday morning (my daughter and I have to be there at 8:30 due to music practice being at that time) and learned we were having Communion, I kind of panicked. I wasn't prepared!

now, let's look at the good things about gluten intolerance.

In a previous post, I spent some time talking about the bad things about Celiac Disease; the rough things we have to do, the various hurdles we have to deal with on a daily basis, stuff like that. I was trying to put forth a worst-case scenario to make a point about how people who can eat whatever they want just taking that fact for granted.  Now, I'd like to take a moment and talk about all of the positives that Celiac Disease has brought to my life.

• It's taught me that I can't just put anything in my body and expect to be healthy.

For years, I abused my body. I just fed it anything and expected it to run and run and run, go at top speed and stay in mint condition. Oh sure, every once in a while I'd try to make a change. I followed a fad diet put out by a cult leader and lost fifty pounds. I was a vegetarian for about a day and a half. I tried to be low-carb until I saw that "low-carb" meant "no pbj". And, if you've followed this blog at all, you'll know that I followed an IBS diet plan for about two years, back when I thought this was IBS (lesson to you:  Don't self-diagnose; find a good physician).

But this has really forced me to stop and take a good, hard look at my life and my eating. Even back when I was eating for IBS, I rationalized that having a bite or two of "forbidden" food wasn't going to really hurt me that much. But now, I realize that eating gluten will have a very serious negative effect on my health.  Even one bite will have an almost automatic detrimental effect on my gut. Not only are there long-term, shapeless, faceless consequences, but there are immediate short-term consequences. Whenever I want to cheat, I just look at whatever is tempting me and think:  "Okay...do I eat this and have gut-bombs and get cancer, or do I just skip it?"  Let me tell you, the choice is easy when I think about it that way.

• It's taught me that good things can come in oddly-wrapped packages.

For years, I have prayed to God to please, please, please help me lose weight. And this has been my answer. I know...you're thinking, "Why would God send you a disease just to help you lose weight?" But you see, I wouldn't listen any other way. I wanted to lose weight, but I wanted to do on my terms, which in my case meant that I could have ice cream every night and candy bars every day. As long as I was relatively healthy I could rationalize my weight away, even though I was seriously unhappy about how I looked. But now that I'm getting older (forty-two years young), I realize that I'm not ten feet tall and bulletproof. If I want the rest of my life to be happy, healthy, and fun, I need to lose this extra weight. I've lost around ten pounds so far by going gluten-free; add that to the ten I'd already lost, and that's twenty unhealthy pounds gone.  Only...um, a lot more to go.

• It's taught me to make good food choices.

You know how it goes; you're out running errands, and you forget to eat. Suddenly, you find that you're starving. What to do? If you're like me, you often chose the easiest route...hit a drive-thru and order a double cheeseburger, only cheese and onions. Or, if you're standing in a checkout, you grab a bag of cookies or a candy bar. But now with a diagnosis of CD, those options are out. I've found that I won't starve to death before I get home, and I'm really truly hungry to the point of a problem (I have mild hypoglycemia), I'll grab a single serving of string cheese or a banana or a gluten-free snack bar (Larabars are a good option). Of course, I've also learned that I need to be prepared, so I normally have a gluten-free snack in my purse. That's another part of making a good food choice, because if you're prepared with a healthy snack you're much less likely to make a bad food choice on impulse.

• It's taught me that life could be much worse.

Yes, when I was first diagnosed with Celiac Disease, I was not thrilled. Sure, I was happy that what I was suffering with finally had a name, and that it wasn't all in my head like my previous physician tried to make me believe. But, at the same time, I couldn't help but have some days when I just sat around and felt sorry for myself. The more I learned about what to avoid, the more I realized just how many foods contained gluten, including some of my favorite foods. I still don't know how I'm going to handle Thanksgiving and Christmas (I always make homemade cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning...I'm going to have to do some experimenting).

But at the same time, I could have life much, much worse. After all, if all I have to give up is some gluten to have a fairly healthy life, that's not such a big price to pay, is it? Is eating a full-floured cinnamon roll really worth getting cancer for? Is what I'm being asked to do really that tough? After all, it's just food. It isn't the center of my universe. God is, followed by my family.

And that's probably the best lesson of all.

i'm back...new year, new name, new diagnosis.

I bet you thought I fell off the earth, huh?  Nope...but I've had quite a journey.

I've been gone from the blog because I became totally disillusioned with the whole Eating For IBS thing, mainly because it just wasn't working for me.  That's not to say that it doesn't work (clearly it does, for many people who suffer), but if you don't have IBS in the first place it isn't going to do you any good.  It's kinda like taking a Benadryl for a broken arm...right medicine for what it is designed for but completely inadequate for what it isn't designed for.  Quite honestly, it was just flat depressing to come here and post again and again that I was not feeling any better despite following the program to a T.  I wasn't making any progress, and I just felt like I wasn't being any help to anyone...least of all, myself.  I was feeling worse and worse and popping Imodium like it was candy.  For a while, I just quit following it altogether and ate whatever it was I wanted...I couldn't feel any worse, I reasoned.  It was certainly no way to live.

I decided to take my life back.

It was time to jettison the dead weight, so to speak.  I got rid of my physician.  She was a nurse practitioner who took over my old doctor's practice, and we had been going to her for the past several years; but she gradually got worse and worse until finally I just couldn't justify going to her any longer.  She had moved what was left of her practice to a quick-stop clinic-type place in a strip shopping center, and I felt like the service I was getting was second-rate at best.  Besides, she is the one who told me that everything was just fine with my colonoscopy, and that these problems I was having were all in my head, when it turns out I have Celiac Disease...a problem she never even tested for.

I asked around and found a new doctor, an actual doctor-type doctor, one who is treating me with the respect I deserve and who is hearing me instead of turning a deaf ear.  She has listened to me, taken me seriously, realized my symptoms were real, and ordered the appropriate tests.  Not only has she diagnosed me with Celiac Disease (confirmed by bloodwork), but she also ordered a sleep study to be done and it turns out I need to be on a CPAP machine (more on that later).

After switching over to a gluten-free diet, I can say that while I don't feel 100% better, I do feel more like a human being.  My Imodium intake has slowed; I'm trying to wean myself off of them.  The gas and bloating has practically stopped and I no longer look like I am pregnant.  I'm still overweight, but at my last doctor's visit they told me I had lost five pounds, which makes about twenty pounds altogether.  All in all, I feel better and look better and I know this is the diagnosis I've been waiting for.  And, as it turns out, some of the things I was doing on the Eating For IBS plan were totally counter-productive to what I needed to be doing.  Again, they can work if you're suffering with IBS, but they aren't exactly compatible with Celiac Disease.

I have big ideas for this blog, and I hope to share with you those ideas soon.  In the meantime, just know this...

You are not alone, it is not in your head, and your problems are real.  You deserve to be treated with respect, and you deserve to treat yourself with respect.  It's time to take your life back.  Come with me!

colonoscopy results.

It took forever, but I finally got the final results from the colonoscopy I had earlier in the month. That day, they were able to tell me that everything looked good, no ulcers or anything, which ruled out things like Crohn's Disease and colitis. Today, though, I got a phone call from my doctor and she said that the samples that were taken also came back normal. So that's a good thing, right?

Well...I'm still having diarrhea, bloating, and gas. I'm still taking Imodium, along with Cipro and Dicyclomine for fluffy stools and attacks (as needed). I'm still afraid of an attack when I go out in public. I have a very fast transit time, which I'm sure doesn't help. I'm still trying to follow the Eating For IBS plan, and I do feel somewhat better when I follow it, but not as good as I'd like to feel.

The doctor who did the scope told my husband that the next step would be swallowing a little camera and having it take pictures of my insides. But if it doesn't find anything either, I'm afraid they'll just think it's all in my head. It's not, trust me.

Maybe food allergy testing is next. Maybe I have some sort of intolerance for certain foods.

I don't know, but if I'm going to continue with the diarrhea and gas and bloating, I may as well do it on a steak and loaded baked potato or a cheeseburger and fries instead of a plain chicken breast and white rice, right? (No worries, I'm not going to, but it sure sounds good.)

I'll talk more about the prep and actual procedure later. It was both good AND bad.

colonoscopy.

Well now, that sounds like a whole lot of fun, doesn't it?

Yep, I've finally taken drastic steps in my search for a way to cope with my colon. After a day when all I did was run to the bathroom, even though I'd been following my IBS eating plan religiously, I'd reached the limit of my patience with this. I went to my nurse practitioner and she set up an appointment with me for a colonoscopy...which I've had to change about four times due to scheduling conflicts. There's no way I'm going to a high school track meet the day before the procedure!

Oh wait, you ask why? Well, before you get the scope roaming around your intestines, you get to have a day of spring cleaning. Yep, in my case that was 2 Dulcolax at 10 AM, 2 Dulcolax at 2 PM, and a 10-ounce bottle of magnesium citrate at 5 PM. And let me tell you...that magnesium citrate is one nasty beverage. I've drank the glucose stuff for tests while I was pregnant and it wasn't as nasty as this stuff. The only way I'm managing to get it down is to sip it and then follow with a big swig of water. I've only got a few more sips to go and I'll be done with the bottle. It tastes like lemon-flavored baking soda. Just read the ingredients...it contains sodium saccharin, which is guaranteed to irritate my digestion. Oh hooray.

I tried to tell the nurses that I could get a bucket of Lee's Famous Recipe (the crispy spicy kind) or KFC (extra crispy) and it would have the same colon-cleansing effect, but no go. That would have been MUCH more fun.

Then, from everything I've read on the interwebs, the fun REALLY begins. Apparently this stuff is Drano for your colon. Stuff will come out that you ate at your tenth birthday party. Oh hooray.

But...I'm going to suffer through it. I want to know what is going on. Depending on what they tell me, I may have to change the name of this blog to "Fun With IBD" or "Fun With Crohn's" or maybe just "Fun With Diarrhea". That should bring in some Google hits, huh? :)

Well, just finished my bottle of magnesium citrate. Let the party begin!