Begin at the beginning.
For as long as I can remember, I have had a huge appetite. I was the skinny girl in school who out-ate all her boyfriends, not to mention the rest of the football team. I can straight up devour an entire pizza and look around to see what's for dessert. Even when I am extremely full, full to the point of nausea, I am still ravenously hungry. I have always attributed this to a love of food, and thanked whatever gods there were for a high enough metabolism to counter-balance this huge hunger and keep me relatively trim.
When I was 19, I was turned down at a blood drive because my iron levels were way too low. I self-diagnosed as anemic, never talked to a Dr about it, and took iron supplements on and off for years.
Twice in my early twenties, I had unexplained miscarriages. It is not something I talk about often. It is something I have always been terrified to find an explanation for.
I have always been depressed or at least hyper-sensitive. I bounce from being happy with the world to very near tears more often than most people I have met. Most of you have never seen this side of me, because I am very good at hiding it.
The last two years, I have dealt with an array of gastrointestinal issues, skin problems, and have been genuinely unhappy with my body. Not unhappy with how it looked, but with how it worked. Because of stomach distention, people started to believe I was pregnant. Enough people that it became a joke at work. Enough people that I stopped being offended. That is a lot of people.
All this to say, this week I went in for a blood panel to find out if I have Celiac Disease. There is a very high chance that I do. For those that don't know what Celiac Disease is, it basically means that whenever I eat gluten, my body produces antibodies that attack and kill off the villi in my intestines, making it impossible for me to absorb nutrients. This malabsorption leads to nutrient deficiency and ravenous hunger. There are tons of symptoms, most of which, I have had. Everything I have written leading up to this paragraph is something that can be explained by Celiac Disease.
The only cure for Celiac is to completely cut gluten out of your diet. Completely. Being that gluten is over-used in our culture, being that it is in things you would not expect it to be in (ketchup! ice cream! soy sauce!), I am now very very limited on food options. I am going to have to purchase new cookware, appliances, etc. I am going to have to get rid of anything that has gluten in it. I have to re-learn how to cook. I have to get rid of my mother's 25 year old Kitchen Aid stand mixer, in which I have made every cookie I have ever baked in my entire life, because a speck of flour too small for me to see could cause damage to my insides. This is sadder than it should be. I am simultaneously so relieved and so very, very devastated.
Celiac Disease is not an allergy, but a genetic auto-immune disease. My father refuses to get tested for it, as does my brother, so I will never know where it came from or whether my family is safe from it. This, especially if you are familiar with my history of dealing with loss, is horrifying in ways I don't know how to deal with yet. The idea of losing anyone in my family because of this wholly preventable thing has me completely beside myself.
The next few months will be difficult. I will probably bounce back and forth a lot between sick and healthy. Hopefully not. I will definitely be a basket case about things I can't eat anymore, things I must get rid of, money I must spend to keep myself healthy. I will find out what things my body can absorb and what it no longer has the ability to, and what I will have to supplement with vitamins, probably for the rest of my life.
This is a good thing. My dad told me, a few weeks ago, when I was doing an elimination diet (Dr. recommended) to narrow down whether it was gluten that was giving me problems, "You don't want Celiac Disease." Like some hypochondriac who was doing this for attention. Like I had flipped through a list of diseases and chosen Celiac because it sounded fun. I don't want a diagnosis because I want a diagnosis. I want a diagnosis because then I can work on fixing it. Because then I don't have to feel shitty anymore.
There is a decent chance that I will have a false negative result. In order to insure a positive blood test for this, you have to eat gluten every day for six weeks, and I couldn't do it. The first day back on gluten (after three weeks off it) made me so violently ill I couldn't go to work. The next morning, I cried while forcing myself to eat toast, knowing I would be sick later in the day. And then I went to the Dr. And they agreed to have me tested that day, and said that even if I got a negative result, I should act as if I had not, because clearly this was something that was very very important for my health, that I needed to cut gluten out of my diet if I was going to be OK.
And that's it. I have not felt this good maybe ever. I am exhausted, but in a good way. I eat regular-sized meals and am full for the first time in years, maybe ever. I have so much more energy. My stomach is no longer distended. My skin isn't cracking. I've lost seven pounds in three weeks because I'm not eating like a werewolf anymore (this is an unexpected side-effect, as I was pretty happy where I was at, weight-wise).
More than anything, I am so very, very relieved.
When I was 19, I was turned down at a blood drive because my iron levels were way too low. I self-diagnosed as anemic, never talked to a Dr about it, and took iron supplements on and off for years.
Twice in my early twenties, I had unexplained miscarriages. It is not something I talk about often. It is something I have always been terrified to find an explanation for.
I have always been depressed or at least hyper-sensitive. I bounce from being happy with the world to very near tears more often than most people I have met. Most of you have never seen this side of me, because I am very good at hiding it.
The last two years, I have dealt with an array of gastrointestinal issues, skin problems, and have been genuinely unhappy with my body. Not unhappy with how it looked, but with how it worked. Because of stomach distention, people started to believe I was pregnant. Enough people that it became a joke at work. Enough people that I stopped being offended. That is a lot of people.
All this to say, this week I went in for a blood panel to find out if I have Celiac Disease. There is a very high chance that I do. For those that don't know what Celiac Disease is, it basically means that whenever I eat gluten, my body produces antibodies that attack and kill off the villi in my intestines, making it impossible for me to absorb nutrients. This malabsorption leads to nutrient deficiency and ravenous hunger. There are tons of symptoms, most of which, I have had. Everything I have written leading up to this paragraph is something that can be explained by Celiac Disease.
The only cure for Celiac is to completely cut gluten out of your diet. Completely. Being that gluten is over-used in our culture, being that it is in things you would not expect it to be in (ketchup! ice cream! soy sauce!), I am now very very limited on food options. I am going to have to purchase new cookware, appliances, etc. I am going to have to get rid of anything that has gluten in it. I have to re-learn how to cook. I have to get rid of my mother's 25 year old Kitchen Aid stand mixer, in which I have made every cookie I have ever baked in my entire life, because a speck of flour too small for me to see could cause damage to my insides. This is sadder than it should be. I am simultaneously so relieved and so very, very devastated.
Celiac Disease is not an allergy, but a genetic auto-immune disease. My father refuses to get tested for it, as does my brother, so I will never know where it came from or whether my family is safe from it. This, especially if you are familiar with my history of dealing with loss, is horrifying in ways I don't know how to deal with yet. The idea of losing anyone in my family because of this wholly preventable thing has me completely beside myself.
The next few months will be difficult. I will probably bounce back and forth a lot between sick and healthy. Hopefully not. I will definitely be a basket case about things I can't eat anymore, things I must get rid of, money I must spend to keep myself healthy. I will find out what things my body can absorb and what it no longer has the ability to, and what I will have to supplement with vitamins, probably for the rest of my life.
This is a good thing. My dad told me, a few weeks ago, when I was doing an elimination diet (Dr. recommended) to narrow down whether it was gluten that was giving me problems, "You don't want Celiac Disease." Like some hypochondriac who was doing this for attention. Like I had flipped through a list of diseases and chosen Celiac because it sounded fun. I don't want a diagnosis because I want a diagnosis. I want a diagnosis because then I can work on fixing it. Because then I don't have to feel shitty anymore.
There is a decent chance that I will have a false negative result. In order to insure a positive blood test for this, you have to eat gluten every day for six weeks, and I couldn't do it. The first day back on gluten (after three weeks off it) made me so violently ill I couldn't go to work. The next morning, I cried while forcing myself to eat toast, knowing I would be sick later in the day. And then I went to the Dr. And they agreed to have me tested that day, and said that even if I got a negative result, I should act as if I had not, because clearly this was something that was very very important for my health, that I needed to cut gluten out of my diet if I was going to be OK.
And that's it. I have not felt this good maybe ever. I am exhausted, but in a good way. I eat regular-sized meals and am full for the first time in years, maybe ever. I have so much more energy. My stomach is no longer distended. My skin isn't cracking. I've lost seven pounds in three weeks because I'm not eating like a werewolf anymore (this is an unexpected side-effect, as I was pretty happy where I was at, weight-wise).
More than anything, I am so very, very relieved.