Idiots and Celiac
I’m having some major issues this afternoon. I half way skimmed an article that came through my twitter stream this morning. I blew off as an uneducated post and went on. Then came the flood of people up in arms over said article. Ok, now I had to go back and read it and the comments to it. Now I’m upset. You can read it here.
Idiots, all of them are idiots, well maybe not all of them but a good stinking portion of them are. I don’t know one person suffering from Celiac that if given the choice wouldn’t give it all up for a slice of pizza and a cold beer from any place they wanted it from. It’s not about moderation. It’s not some fad diet. It sure the hell isn’t because Elizabeth Hasselback wrote a stinking book!!! It’s a real issue that effects not only the suffer but also the family of the person with Celiac.
Five years ago I met my husband, he told me he had Celiac. I smiled nodded my head and went on about my business. I later asked what that meant and he told me he couldn’t eat wheat but he wasn’t following the diet. Oh ok, no biggie then. I found out that he didn’t like a lot of my favorite things, he didn’t like pasta, he only ate pizza once in a great while, sandwiches were evil unless they were made from cracker like bread and loaded with as much filling as it could hold. I could adjust, he loved my chicken and noodles, ate my baked foods like they were going out of style, and thought fry bread was the greatest thing every. We got married and six months later we were in the doctor’s office.
It was the scariest thing in my life, ok not really but it ranked right up there. One Sunday while I was watching a Nascar race, he was outside doing yard work. I didn’t think anything of it. A while later his nephew walked in with him they chatted for a while and the nephew left. A few days later, I was finally let in on why the nephew walked him into the house. He had collapsed in the yard. I made a doctors appointment and we went. It was now ten days after the collapse. Blood work was done, EKG strip ran, full physical completed. A few days later we got the results, the blood work showed major muscle damage, like a heart attack, but no heart damage. He needed to see some specialists for testing. He took the stress test and passed it with flying colors. He went through all the testing for MS and Lou Gehrig’s Disease. They all came back negative. He was still having horrible pains in his arms and legs. The doctor said he was fatigued and dehydrated. I didn’t buy it.
I started researching, low and behold his symptoms went hand in hand with Celiac. I was relieved I now knew what was causing it. When he came home from work that evening, I told him about my discovery. He was happy to know too. He wasn’t ready to go back on the diet though. Then came the flare from hell. It went for days. He a few days into it and he said, “I’ve got to go back on the gluten free diet.” I sat down at the computer figured out what I needed to started ordering stuff and removing offending things from our kitchen. I was happy to have an active healthy husband again. Food was hard to get a hold of but as time went by things got easier to find. Tasty alternatives to bread and pasta were being stocked in regular grocery stores. Wal-Mart went from one of my least favorite stores to one of my favorites. The fact that they labeled their food gluten-free was worth shopping there. I became an advocate via the net for education in Celiac.
Now that all seems fine and dandy right? Our lives were back to normal thanks to a diet change. He was happy that there were options available that weren’t there when he was first diagnosed. It didn’t seem so restrictive. The options were varied, available on the regular grocery store shelves, there are a handful of ready to eat dinners we can store in the freezer it’s not so bad. I started this blog to share my thoughts, joined twitter where I have a group of celiac friends, and even started another website to share local dining out options with fellow celiac families.
Then today I see that all the work that myself and others have done to get the word out is being made fun of. Comments to that article are cruel and ignorant at best. People saying it’s all in the head, moderation is key, ect. I gave you a general overview of my journey with a celiac husband. If you want to stop reading now, do so because the next part is going to be graphic and gross.
Remember when I said earlier he got the flare from hell? Let me describe it. He couldn’t sleep in bed with me. He had diarrhea so bad it was like water. He couldn’t relax or it would just run out. Nothing he ate stayed in his body with in moments he was in the bathroom. The longer it went on the weaker he got. No sleep, dehydrated, and no nutrients equalled a grouchy husband. He couldn’t stop it and that’s why he went back on the diet. When he wasn’t on the diet every time he ate something with gluten in it this would happen for a couple of days. Then after being gluten free for a couple of years, it happened. He got accidentally glutened. He told me that evening that he was sure he had gotten into something. We both figured it would mean a few days of bathroom time and both blew it off other than to make note of what we were sure was the offending food. The next day I got up for work, woke him up and he was complaining his shoulder hurt. Still I thought nothing of it and went to work. At 10:00 AM he was on the phone asking me to come home. I was there within minutes, I work less than two blocks from home. By 11:00 AM we were in the emergancy room with a outlook of a heart attack. I called his mom at work and she came to the hospital as quickly as she could. His dad was on his way too. I told the doctor that he was Celiac and to please make sure any and all drugs given to him were gluten free. The blood work finally came back no heart attack. I was thankful. Hours later after all the testing the doctor came in and told us the news. There were four things that could cause what he had, a heart attack, an esophageal spasm, something I can’t remember, or Celiac. Since the other three things had been ruled out it had to be the Celiac. We were relieved to know that was all it was. He spent the next month at the chiropractor though. His stomach had cramped so hard and so bad that it dislocated his shoulder.
After reading all of that if you honestly can say that he would be fine if he just moderated his gluten intake you can think that. I can’t change your mind. He will not go back to eating a little gluten here or there. It’s not worth it. Until you have lived with someone who has it, you’ll never fully understand.