Wanda-E

Thanks for the advice. I'm eating gluten again. Am very scared though!

My head is hurting of course, but my stomach is still doing better than I expected (knock on wood).

I hope I'm not doing too much damage to my body.

We talked to my new doctor and she's going to do a celiac test on Wednesday.

Thanks so much for answering! It does all feel very confusing and lonely.

Especially since I have to switch doctors now. I was never too happy with my doctor, but it didn't matter much, because I've always been healthy and hardly needed her.

Now I really feel I need a good doctor, I have to put some time into finding a good one.

I'm seeing someone next Wednesday. She was recommended by a friend and I hope she's good.

I'll ask about the Celiac Panel.

But don't I have to be eating gluten for this test to work?

I'm new here and would love some advice from people who know more about celiac disease and gluten/wheat sensitivities.

A few weeks ago I was dealing with an earache that just wouldn't go away. I also had really bad depression, was tired all the time and had night sweats/chills.

My husband suddenly asked me whether it might be the new cereal I had started to eat, since it was all happening at the same time.

This cereal has a lot of wheat and bran in it, so I started googling about wheat sensitivity.

The symptoms seemed to match (including the food cravings), so I decided to stop eating wheat/gluten for a while.

All the symptoms (including the earache) went away in about two weeks.

However, I've always been a major gluten eater. It just doesn't make sense to me that this could be related.

So I slowly started eating some gluten again and Friday decided to even eat seitan. Seitan is basically made from pure wheat gluten.

That evening I got a really bad headache. I didn't think it was related, because we'd had a very busy evening.

At 3 in the morning though, I woke up covered with sweat, had chills and a really bad stomach ache (including stomach acid). That stomach ache + headache stayed for several days. Today, a week later, is finally an okay day again. (I'd gone of gluten again the very next day).

It seems to all match, but still doesn't really make sense to me.

Why would this cereal suddenly trigger it, when I eat seiten (pure wheat gluten) all the time? Shouldn't that have triggered it?

And if the cereal triggered it, can it just go away again? I keep reading about staying of gluten for the rest of your life. Can it really not go away as fast as it came?

This is all very new to me.

I've been reading online a lot and just found a post on this forum that links celiac with gallbladder problems.

I had my gallbladder removed about 9 years ago.

Do my symptoms sound like a wheat/gluten sensitivity? Could it even be celiac disease?

Is the next step getting tested? I read that for most tests you have to be on gluten, so they can pick up on the antibodies. I'm really not looking forward to putting gluten back in my body right now.

After a week of so much pain, I can't take that anymore.

Any advice? Any tips? Any ideas?

I would love to hear from some people who have experience with all of this.