The gluten-free experiment has failed.
A few months ago, when I initially was given the news that the Celiac diagnosis is indeed confirmed, five years worth of denial and convincing myself that it's just not true were met with a reality that I was not ready to deal with. I took a few months, started to slowly reduce the things that had gluten in them, attempted to prepare myself mentally for what I knew would be an incredibly difficult task, and even set a date.
A month ago, when we got back from Toronto, I started the diet.
Before the diet, I was almost entirely asymptomatic. Now I've spent a week with a horrible stomachache. But the physical symptoms aren't what bother me, because they've never been the issue here.
I am disproportionately angrier now than I was before the diet. I explode at the smallest thing. For all my trolling of websites that validate the anger involved in the diagnosis and the diet, there is no way to validate how much anger I'm feeling in general. Chances are that this is a biased correlation. But there's this added monster gnawing away at me, constantly telling me that I can't eat what I want, that even if I could eat it the food might be contaminated, and a huge proportion of all the food I ever once loved I'll never be able to have again. So everything that would otherwise bother me is turned into a stimulus to get really fucking pissed off.
I could give the excuse that life right now is not very conducive to undergo such a major lifestyle change. (It's not, but I'll always have that excuse.) I could say that I need more time to mentally prepare for this. (I do, but I'll likely never be mentally prepared enough.) But the medicine behind it doesn't care. With very few exceptions, medicine isn't a cost-benefit analysis. You have a disease, you treat it with the appropriate treatment. But I'm having a whole lot of trouble swallowing this pill.
Untreated Celiac disease with chronic villous atrophy triples the chances of developing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Treated Celiac disease means I'm viciously angry at everyone.
"But how could you do that to your wife and kids?" It's not like I couldn't drop dead at any moment. I've already had one heart attack, the next one can't be too far away. My liver is under attack twice daily from a pharmacopeia of drugs. My psychiatric issues are more-or-less under control, but I'd rather not be caught off-guard. And besides, how could I impose my seething anger upon them? Yes, I just said that medicine isn't a cost-benefit analysis, but this treatment isn't the only one I'm on, and Celiac disease isn't the only problem that I have.
I don't need to see a dietician; I could teach most dieticians things about Celiac disease that they never knew were even applicable. I don't need to see my gastroenterologist; chances are I'm more current on the research than he is. I don't need to see a therapist... scratch that, I'm seeing a therapist, and for all the work we did on getting myself ready for this, it didn't work. I really don't need your fucking recipes. Oh sweet God, I don't need your fucking recipes. I don't need your show of support for me being on the diet, because it ain't gonna make a difference in the outcome. I will fucking stab the next person that says anything remotely close to "you can live a good and fulfilling life gluten-free", because my relationship with food seriously doesn't allow that.
It's not healthy for me, it's against medical orders, it makes me a stinkin' hypocrite, it triples my chances of cancer, but for the good of my sanity and everyone around me, I really don't think that I should continue on this diet.
A month ago, when we got back from Toronto, I started the diet.
Before the diet, I was almost entirely asymptomatic. Now I've spent a week with a horrible stomachache. But the physical symptoms aren't what bother me, because they've never been the issue here.
I am disproportionately angrier now than I was before the diet. I explode at the smallest thing. For all my trolling of websites that validate the anger involved in the diagnosis and the diet, there is no way to validate how much anger I'm feeling in general. Chances are that this is a biased correlation. But there's this added monster gnawing away at me, constantly telling me that I can't eat what I want, that even if I could eat it the food might be contaminated, and a huge proportion of all the food I ever once loved I'll never be able to have again. So everything that would otherwise bother me is turned into a stimulus to get really fucking pissed off.
I could give the excuse that life right now is not very conducive to undergo such a major lifestyle change. (It's not, but I'll always have that excuse.) I could say that I need more time to mentally prepare for this. (I do, but I'll likely never be mentally prepared enough.) But the medicine behind it doesn't care. With very few exceptions, medicine isn't a cost-benefit analysis. You have a disease, you treat it with the appropriate treatment. But I'm having a whole lot of trouble swallowing this pill.
Untreated Celiac disease with chronic villous atrophy triples the chances of developing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Treated Celiac disease means I'm viciously angry at everyone.
"But how could you do that to your wife and kids?" It's not like I couldn't drop dead at any moment. I've already had one heart attack, the next one can't be too far away. My liver is under attack twice daily from a pharmacopeia of drugs. My psychiatric issues are more-or-less under control, but I'd rather not be caught off-guard. And besides, how could I impose my seething anger upon them? Yes, I just said that medicine isn't a cost-benefit analysis, but this treatment isn't the only one I'm on, and Celiac disease isn't the only problem that I have.
I don't need to see a dietician; I could teach most dieticians things about Celiac disease that they never knew were even applicable. I don't need to see my gastroenterologist; chances are I'm more current on the research than he is. I don't need to see a therapist... scratch that, I'm seeing a therapist, and for all the work we did on getting myself ready for this, it didn't work. I really don't need your fucking recipes. Oh sweet God, I don't need your fucking recipes. I don't need your show of support for me being on the diet, because it ain't gonna make a difference in the outcome. I will fucking stab the next person that says anything remotely close to "you can live a good and fulfilling life gluten-free", because my relationship with food seriously doesn't allow that.
It's not healthy for me, it's against medical orders, it makes me a stinkin' hypocrite, it triples my chances of cancer, but for the good of my sanity and everyone around me, I really don't think that I should continue on this diet.