Sick Day: A Whine and a Rant

So, if you’re going to ask if I want cheese with my whine, the answer to that is a resounding yes.

Now, to be more serious. I was given something with gluten that I happened to eat some of just over 3 weeks ago. Here I am now… still dealing with fighting off the symptoms of eating it. This is frustrating.

I feel like I want to cry. I feel dizzy all the time. I also feel sick. My joints hurt. I feel like this is a complaint that I shouldn’t be dealing with. I’m always very careful when it comes to ordering food at a restaurant. Mistakes happen. I get that.

As I start the 4th week (and coming in to one month of being sick), I can’t help but feel angry, upset and frustrated. How else should one feel when one’s body is constantly fighting itself?

I’m trying to take things in stride and not just throw my hands up in the air and just say fuck it all. It’s hard. It’s really hard… especially since all I can do is try to cope with this. All I can do is try to handle this day-to-day.

But, damn it! I want to feel better. I’m tired of feeling like I’m locked in this prison a flesh and bone. I want to be active and do things again. It feels like it’s constantly one step forward, four back. It’s impeding on my physical health. I’m at a loss on what to do now. I can’t do much exercise because it wears my body out. My joints ache more if I do.

If anyone has any good and decent solutions to this, I would love to hear them. I am beyond frustrated at this point. I hate feeling like this. I feel like my body is holding me back from doing what I love. It’s angering. I just want to do more of… well… anything.

But I can’t.

Here I sit, trying to figure out what I can do… and that’s difficult in and of itself as my brain feels like it’s impaired… because it is. I feel like it’s moving through a thick fog. I might need to take the rest of this month off, and I don’t want to.

I can’t think straight. I feel like my brain is under a thick blanket or haze. No matter how badly I want to be able to do or think, I can’t. I want to write, but it’s difficult at best.

This is also longer than I have ever been sick this long before from gluten. I also haven’t really eaten anything with gluten for over 2 years. My body isn’t handling this well. I’m not handling this well.

I guess the only good thing to come out of this is that I know definitively that I do not want to do the gluten challenge. This is not good now. I don’t think I could do this for months.

I’m just at a loss on what to do now. If anyone has any advice, please share it. I need something, anything, right now.

In the Midst of It

I’ve often written about the fact that I get sick from gluten. I generally do this in retrospect. I rarely write when I’m going through it because it’s hard for me to think straight. It’s more like my brain is sludging through molasses. I’m never sure if I’m saying what I mean to say.

Well, I’m elbow-deep in the middle of gluten sickness this time. I’m writing this largely so I can try to understand what it is that I go through.

When I say sickness, it’s not just nausea. I think I could tolerate this if it were just nausea. After all, I dealt with constant nausea for 30+ years. I can also deal with the physical aches. I can deal with the constant sweating like a drug addict looking for a fix, even if it does make me look like I’m going through premature menopause. I could even deal with the constant feeling tired.

What really starts getting me is how my brain feels. It really feels like my brain is slow and pokey. More recently my brain has not felt like it was even attached to my body. For a while I couldn’t really think of the best way to describe what it’s like. I can’t really to say it’s like being nicely buzzed minus the pain killing, because this doesn’t quite feel like when I’m drunk.

Then as we were walking through the grocery store, someone mentioned grass. My partner made the joke, “Grass, pot, close enough.”

And it clicked. I have felt this way before. My brain felt exactly like this after I smoke pot. I feel quite dopey. It’s a familiar disembodied feeling that I don’t much care for. It’s just like pot brain, minus the painkilling, appetite and the ability to sleep for hours.

Really, I’m pretty much done with being this sick. This is hard. It’s hard on my psyche. It effects my emotions as well. It starts to depress me… a lot.

I can also go on about the joint aches that goes with the muscle aches.

But really, it how much it impairs my brain that is the worst for me personally. I like having my mental acuity. When I’m sick like that, I feel like I’m just not functioning like I usually do. I’m not working to the full potential of my brain.

That’s really the hardest part of all.

And that’s something I need to remind myself. I need to remind myself that my body is fighting all it can from something that acts like a poison in my body. Something that’s so begin that most people can eat it.

I know I can get past this. I’m more looking forward to working with a doctor who wants to help me support a healthy life. I’m hoping that I’ve finally obtained that goal, because frankly, this situation sucks.

A Word About My Health

So, I know at this point that pretty much everyone who’s read this knows that I have had to have a drastic change to my diet due to health concerns. I had to go gluten-free because it seems to be wrecking my body more than I ever realized.

It’s been over a year since I started this. I still find myself wanting to eat food like I used to. I miss being able to find a dearth of things I can eat. I miss not having to worry about if something’s going to make me sick. I miss sourdough bread.

The health benefits that I get from being gluten-free far outweigh everything that I miss.

Sure I miss sourdough and not having to triple-check everything I eat. What I don’t miss is being sick all the time. My immune system has never been stronger. I have noticed that I used to get sick with everything every time someone else was sick. In the past year plus, I have been sick twice, both times were minor colds. This has been an even bigger revelation than not having to be sick after eating anything. For once in my life I’m not being sick all the time.

And while that’s been incredibly amazing… and it seriously has been. I have felt better and stronger than I have in my whole life. So, giving up anything with wheat, barley rye and a majority of food and soda is a small concession compared to feeling healthy.

The downside is, now if I even have the smallest of gluten, I get sick. I get sicker than when I was eating gluten.

In many ways it makes me feel like I can’t go many places to get food. Cross-contamination becomes a huge concern. I’ve got gluten-sick off and on since. Some places have been great places to eat. I generally go back to those places often. Some places give it lip service or the servers might be clueless about what it means to be gluten-free. It’s these places that get me.

The illness is similar to what I would get with a flu… with certain exclusions.

I wind up in pain all over my body. I feel fatigued, run-down. My brain feels foggy. I get constipated followed by a very unpleasant stomach explosion. I bloat. I start feeling emotionally… well, blah. I become moodier. I’m sure that there’s more to it than that… but that’s all I can think of at the moment.

It’s this illness that makes me have to spend a lot of downtime at home. It’s not a time that I enjoy or relish.

So, I’ve learned that now, I’m going to need to eat at home almost all the time. And that’s what I’ve done. I still will go out to get things like tea or something like. I just don’t eat out as often.

That might be able to change though. The FDA is now going to compel restaurants to be as safe as food manufacturers. If they’re going to have food they’re saying is gluten-free, they need to keep it to 20 PPM (parts per million). I’m curious how this will play out. Will it make restaurants more aware of their gluten handling and they will do better or will they drop gluten-free altogether? I think that’s something we need to wait and see.

All I know is that being gluten-free has been one of the best things I have done in my life (only one of them). And I’m super happy I have. I’m not saying that I think that everyone needs to be gluten-free… actually, it’s to the contrary. If it’s making your health better, do it. Otherwise, it’s not worth it. It’s constrictive and you’re depriving yourself of a lot of vitamins that are naturally found in wheat and wheat variants. It’s not for everyone, but it is right for some people.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

If there were one word that I could use to describe where my life was now, it would be massive amounts of change. I might even say that it’s too much change to deal with at one time. I feel like there are massive changes happening. Some are for the best, some probably aren’t. That’s the nature of change.

I have had one massive change in my life. One that both enriches and limits things in my life.

I’ve lived my entire life with stomach problems. I have a stomach condition where I almost always maintain a certain amount of nausea. My mom has plenty of stories of how I was given medication for my stomach when I was a little child. I have spent years and had countless different tests. I’ve had a colonoscopy, upper GI. I’ve had numerous blood tests. We haven’t been able to put a finger on this problem.

I’ve even tried an elimination diet, but it was cut short by an allergy test.

Turns out, maybe it was cut too short.

It turns out, maybe the problem all along has been that I’m gluten intolerant. It was that simple… and that difficult.

Since I’ve spent a week not eating any gluten. In that week, for the first time in my life, I have just felt full. I haven’t felt full and sick, I’ve simply felt full. I feel as though I have more energy. I feel revitalized in a way that I couldn’t have imagined.

It’s also a bit heart-breaking. There’s a lot of things that I really wish I could have. I want sourdough bread. I want ravioli and tortellini. I want to be able to go to a restaurant and not worry if what I’m ordering is going to have gluten in it.

So, I way the positive changes versus how I was feeling before.

It seems that I can go on missing those things. There are ways around eating those. There isn’t a way for me to take all these positive physical changes and compare it to not being able to eat certain foods. The truth is, I’d rather feel better. After 32 years of being sick, it’s wonderful to finally not feel sick.

If only all the other changes could yield equally positive results…

Well, only time will tell.