Boring Medical Crap Alert

Once again... Blog-stymied. This time it's a triple threat.

1. New health problems. Rather, an unexpected diagnosis of a problem I have been having.
2. My blogging time has been sucked down by Googling and processing info on new diagnosis-illness-treatment (it was suggested by my Doctor so shut it)
   
3. Indecision on how much/what I want to share with the Internets.

Right-o then. Here it is in a nut shell. Auto immune disorders run happy rampant through my family on my Mom's side (Yo Ma!). Fun things like Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and various funky permutations of such. Also, or possibly in cahoots with these auto immune befunkifications come food allergies and intolerance's, the most diagnosable of which being Celiac Sprue. Celiacs are folks who lack an important enzyme that allows them to digest gluten, this lack causes a slow destruction of the guts and the sufferer dies a rather horrid death... eventually from, for lack of a better way to put it, malnutrition and the trots. As a matter of fact, some pretty important genealogical breakthroughs have been made in my family by checking the cause of death on the person of record. If they died from diarrhea? Then look at them closer, they may well be related. If you were wondering? Gluten is found in wheat, oats, barley and MOST standard western used grains. Notable exceptions are rice and corn.

I have Hashimotos. Diagnosed at age 13, on meds for it since then and for the rest of my life. It adds an all new level of fun to my pregnancies, as the second trimester (the fun trimester) my thyroid levels take a nosedive and it's a scamble to get me evened out but not over the proper level. When I am over, I look like this from my scalp to the soles of my feet. I have also got food... mmmm... issues. Lactose intolerance, and I'm allergic to tree nuts.

A few weeks ago I hit the doctor's office with a few concerns. I have been lactose intolerant for a decade and a half... all that time I could eat cheese in moderation without having any problems. A serving of Lasagna? Sure. A few slices of pizza? No problem. It was just straight milk, ice cream, cottage cheese, yogurt and the like that gave me... problems. Tree nuts. All my life I've had to stay away from pecans, walnuts, almonds UNLESS they were cooked. Something about cooking them altered their chemistry enough so I could enjoy a pecan tartlet, a banana nut muffin. Not any more. I have already documented the disappearance of oatmeal from my list of loves, only....

...something is still wrong.

Now my doctor is a bit of a windfall, I was referred to him by a local Midwife as a doc with a rep for not being knife happy when it comes to squeezing out babies. We started seeing him over five years ago when Birdie was just a wee yolk in my tum. He doesn't actually deliver babies that much any more but he promised to be there for mine. In any case, he is a Doctor with a liberal side of hippy-de-la-holistic to him. I call him Dr. J, PhD, HiPpy, or Dr. J for short. So he takes me for serious when I tell him of my family background and orders up a whole slew of blood tests. Yay.

The nurse asks if I have an arm of preference and I show her my left. "Just go for the bulls eye right there," I tell her, indicating the indentation surrounded by scar tissue in the crook of my arm, and as per usual... paydirt.

I did not test positive for Celiac, and I am very likely am not a Celiac (although it is certainly not a guarantee). I am very likely gluten sensitive, however. This means that I get to EAT like a freaking Celiac for an extended period of time just to find out if I AM. Gluten Free diet equal NO FUN, and MORE WORK. Did you know that virtually every prepackaged or processed food has gluten in it? There is a @&*$! list as long as my arm of ingredient label type terms that mean "gluten" or "probably gluten" or even "maybe gluten." Distilled Vinegar? Yeah baby, bye bye condiments. I am angry and resentful about this business. How the flippity-doo-dah will I feed myself and my family. I already have a lousy attitude about coming up with three relatively nutritious meals for my small and diverse hoard. If you now my family, you are already aware of some of the dietary quirks we've got going. Bread-foods and pastas made up the bulk of the common ground we had going. HAD... past tense.

Crap. This has been a behemoth nut shell.

On top of it all, something screwy is going on with my insulin... yeah, that kinda crap runs in the fam-damly too. So a new round of meds right there. Put it all together my friends and....

1. No gluten, wheat, processed foods or prepackaged foods.
2. No oatmeal
3. No pasta, breads
4. No dairy
5. No tree nuts
6. No sugar (thankfully not yet but I see it on the horizon)
   
7. Can I just kill myself now and be done?
   

Soooooo, the upshot of deciding to tell all y'all about this is I am scared and this is why.... diets suck. Even diets that give you immediate happy pay-offs like losing weight, looking svelter and getting new clothes that fit better... even those diets I SUCK at. How am I going to do a diet that takes several months to pay off in terms of feeling better and holy sweet mayonnaise what if it doesn't fix a crapping THING!?? I have a good girlfriend who was diagnosed with full blown Celiac almost two years ago and has recently had a baby and even she has not been able to stick to it very well. Like, she eats all the things she isn't supposed to and lives with being overall sickish.

I am not looking to you for accountability. Frankly, I'm not really sure that kinda thing works... weight loss blogs and quit smoking blogs. They can be funny, but folks don't really seem to get much of anywhere... at least on the blogs I've read. I DO hope that you will wade through some of this new territory with me... it's gonna be a big, annoying, frustrating part of my life for the next while and if I don't give myself permission to blog about it now I may stop blogging altogether. Can't afford to do that folks, I feel isolated enough as it is.

Tomorrow starts my all-new rice-o-rama lifestyle... my struggle to find a way to accept the possible loss forever of toast, crackers and eating out. Eeek, I'm starting to cry right now with the self-pity of it all... and if I find out that I also have to give up my beloved Diet Dr. Pepper? My little sis will be able to hear my screams all the way in Maryland. Gahgk! Hold me now.