Hi - I'm Maura and I Think I'm Celiac

Hello everyone.

My lovely and oh-so-supportive friend, Yasmine, has kindly allowed me to guest on this blog in light of some recent realizations about my diet and my health. I wanted to talk about what has happened to make me realize I may have Celiac Disease and what my symptoms are in the hopes it may help others. I also wanted a forum to talk about my journey to becoming gluten-free.

Fair warning - I'm not going to mince words here...reader beware.

I've always thought I could basically eat anything as long as it didn't involve melons or bell peppers - or too much milk. Melons and bell peppers give me mouth sores and a sore throat - I'm allergic to them. I thought that was annoying, bell peppers are in a LOT of things.

As for milk, I thought I was lactose intolerant. Too much milk would send me running for the bathroom. I tried lactaid but it never did me much good. Yet I could eat yogurt and cottage cheese and never really thought about why most lactose intolerant people couldn't eat either.

I was pretty comfortable in my little cave in the land of De Nile.

Then I had a really bad 2008 as far as stress, early 2009 was worse and then I had a really bad cat bite injury that stressed my body out in July of 2009. Since then I'd been having more and more problems with diarrhea. I tried to find a pattern in the reactions by watching milk and such but could not find one. I was miserable and 6 months of off and on diarrhea, stomach aches, gas and headaches were getting me down.

Then after knowing Yasmine for a while and knowing what happens when she has gluten flipped on the light bulb for me and I asked her about what was happening to me. She said it might be gluten intolerance or celiac and I did a bunch more reading.

The symptoms sounded Way Too Familiar.

Being science-minded by nature, I started to conduct a few of my own diet experiments until I could see my naturopath (hopefully this week).

I drank chai tea with egg nog. No problem at all.
I ate roast beef. No problem.
I made a sandwich with the same roast beef. I only finished half the sandwich before I was in the bathroom.

I ate 2 packets of my beloved Cream of Wheat. I couldn't leave the bathroom for a half hour.

I had a lovely pork dinner. No problem.
I had one piece of bread with butter. I barely finished the slice before I was in the bathroom.

2 very small Christmas cookies and I had a stomach ache for a half hour.

When I look back at what I've blamed on milk before, I see a gluten pattern too. When a bowl of cereal with milk caused diarrhea, I blamed the milk. Instead I should have been blaming the gluten in the cereal.

The evidence is only mounting, I'm afraid. I did buy some gluten-free items to try at Whole Foods yesterday but I know I need to not go completely gluten-free until I see the dr for the blood test for celiac (the standard advice). Yet another reason I'm hoping to go in this week - I'm sick of feeling sick.

Celiac Disease is actually an autoimmune disease while gluten intolerance is an immune system reaction but the treatment for both is the same - remove all gluten from the diet. I'm actually hoping the blood test gives us answers because it will validate what's been my problem all this time and it will allow me to prove to my husband, who is waffling between supportive and unsupportive, that I have an issues I have to deal with.

So I'm currently hoping for a definitive diagnosis but not really willing to have the intestinal biopsy that's considered the gold-standard of celiac diagnosis. So cross all our fingers for a definitive blood test. I'm angry at my body but also hoping to have a way to deal with the problems. I keep leaning on Yasmine for advice and reassurance that I'm not nuts. This IS real.

Maybe dealing with this will help my rosacea as well. And my goal of losing 100 lbs this year.

Wish me luck!