Week 3: Recap

I would not be honest if I said that since I have been gluten-free, it has been smooth sailing.  In fact, it has been quite the contrary.  After the holidays, and since my last recap, I can honestly say that to the best of my knowledge, I have been 100% gluten-free.  It was only until I made absolutely sure that everything I put in my mouth was g-free, that I could even begin to recover.

Early on, however, I continued to feel nauseous from time to time, feeling some chest congestion and tightness and daily headaches.  I still did not know the results of my blood tests (tTG) or even what my cholesterol numbers were. Was this nausea and general malaise part of celiac disease?

At the same time, I was feeling the symptoms of another kidney infection caming on-- including the same back pain on the same left side. My skin was tingling and flushing again, and it seemed like some of the symptoms that sent me to the ER last October were returning. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was coming down with something. I was feeling flu-like again. Worse, I was beginning to doubt my original self-diagnosis of celiac disease. What else could it be??  I did more research, wondering just how much time would need to go by before I would feel the benefits of being g-free.

I found that:

"Greater than 90% of those with celiac disease have improvement in symptoms within two weeks of starting a gluten-free diet (CeliacDisease.net)"

So I determined to give it more time. After all, if celiac was present in my body all these years, it was certainly going to take some time to heal. Digging around on the internet a little more, I found a chart on Celiac.com in which 19 members posted how long it took for their symptoms began to subside. I have borrowed that chart and posted it here.  Clearly it is not a scientific poll in the annals of the medical community but it represents that recovering from celiac complications does take time.

I finally called the clinic to find out the results of my blood tests. The tTG came back as less than 1.2, while the standard for having celiac is a minimum of 4. This was discouraging news indeed, because if I didn't have celiac, what did I have?? On the other hand, my cholesterol was at 162 and all numbers within that score were healthy.


Needless to say, this was getting very frustrating for me. Did this mean I had GERD after all? Then why is it that it didn't seem to matter what I ate, no matter how bland? It didn't matter what I ate or when I ate it-- if I ate it, I felt bad. All I knew was that it had to be food related.

Doubting my own diagnosis of CD, I resolved to go back to eating gluten-- after all, if the tTG was negative (normal), what did it matter? I must not have CD after all.

I ate a roll.

I figured that in order to rule out celiac disease, I would simply have to incorporate gluten into my diet again.

It was not a good time. It wasn't long before stomach hurt-- the same familiar "gluten stomach ache" I had experienced before. I was so frustrated. I couldn't do anything-- I couldn't clean the house, I couldn't cook, I couldn't take the kids to their appointments during the day, I couldn't do my homework, and it was all I could do to just get out of bed.

Week 3 was a difficult week, but not as difficult as the week to come...