epiphany's Blog

...so i am new here and still trying to figure out the site....mostly what i am hoping for by joining is finding some one to relate to....i guess i'll start with how i ended up here...

Celiac.com Sponsor (A13):
...if i think about it i can remember being sick always....as a kid i always had a headache...i also had chronic sinusitis and what i thought of as skin rashes....my family did not have alot of money growing up so the doctors i saw were not top notch....example: when i was 12 i remember being sick and the doctor asking me if i just didn't like school...i happened to be on the honor roll...later he informed me i had pneumonia which resulted in asthma...come to think of it when i was nine my mother took me to urgent care because i'd been having intense abdominal pains for a few days....the doctors there told my mother i had appendicitis but it went away...is that possible?...or did they not want to do more tests?...i don't know...

....fast forward to when i was twenty...i was rear-ended in a car accident and the doctors said the joint injuries in my neck and lower back were too severe to have been caused by this minor accident...i knew i had not been injured before and that i now was in pain...i ended up having to quit my job as a hairdresser(which i really enjoyed) and take out huge student loans instead of working to pay for school...

...i have been in school for two years now and my energy level seems to have only gone down hill...while my life long anxiety has increased accompanied by deppression........

...i am not even clear on when i started having digestive problems...but they started to get really bad last year...i was avoiding eating things like pizza and pasta at certain restaraunts because they made me feel sick....eventually i felt sick and week all the time....i was losing my apetite for all foods and only eating because i had to...

...my sister is lactose intolerant so i tried cutting out dairy but it didn't seem to help....one day it just occured to me...i remembered that my brother was sick as a baby....he was diagnosed with celiac disease as an infant but during puberty his symptoms seemed to disappear....his doctor told him that celiac disease sometimes just goes away....he had suffered from more classic symptoms which i was experiencing lately...

...by thanksgiving i was having really bad stomach cramps with bloating and constant nausea (along with that pleasant gurgling that makes it so easy to concentrate in class)....i went to the nearby book store and thumbed through every gluten sensitivety book i could find...i felt relief and dissapointment at the same time....

...i have since read three books on the subject and found alot that i can relate to....i have been trying to go gluten free(and dairy free) for about three months and i just keep feeling better and better....when i do slip and eat the wrong thing my symptoms are really obvious....i feel better knowing where my discomfort has been coming from all of these years and i look forward to continuing to feel more like a normal person....