Weeks 7 & 8

I made it through Thanksgiving, although not as well as I had hoped. The hostess was amazing and did everything in her power to cook lots of foods I could eat. She cooks mostly from scratch, so the issue was more cross-contamination than actual ingredients. But since there was flour floating around from other dishes, I think a bit probably got into my food anyway. I wasn't ill that day at dinner, which was my biggest fear, so that was a big plus. But I was still sorta sick that night, and I realized over the next few days that I must have been exposed just enough to cause damage inside. Every time I ate, I'd feel discomfort and stomach pain. Oh, the gluten monster. It's been over a week and I'm still not healed from it. It's a good exercise in positive reframing and acceptance.

If you've ever played Apples to Apples, you'll appreciate that I played with our family the day after Thanksgiving and I picked the green adjective card "Overwhelming". When everyone handed in a card they thought met that definition, lo and behold, someone had handed in "Wheat". Clearly, they had me pegged. It was very funny, in that dark sorta sad kind of way. Hopefully that same card won't be true by next Thanksgiving.

Otherwise, I'm just trying to make it through my commitments till things lighten up with school over winter break. With the discomfort I've been experiencing since Thanksgiving, I've been eating way too little. I've tried supplementing with nutrition shakes like Ensure, but I don't think that's nearly enough. So I'm in the process of scheduling a nutritionist and plan to change primary care doctors-- No one at health services knows anything about Celiac... I actually came in for my follow-up visit and the triage nurse wrote that I was there for "lab results". Not exactly, honey. The doctor forgot I was there because she had asked me to do so after I got the final diagnosis from my GI, and she let the student doctor see me, who tried to explain to me that there's no pill he can prescribe to "cure" it. Uh, thanks for the novel information, man. I had no idea.

I'm thinking of trying some digestive enzymes or probiotics to help speed up the healing and help aid digestion. I've read about a ton of possible ones to try, but I'll have to sift through them to find one to try first. I'm actually wondering if the new legalization of medical marijuana might be an option for me if this keeps up for very long...