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Well out of that list the only thing that is really hard to replace is cheerios. Everything else is safe and you can use any of the gluten free pastas. Mrs. Leeper's makes a package that is fun shapes like cars and elephants.
Give the rice chex a try if you find them. She won't starve. I'm not saying it's easy. My daughter lives on fruit, yogurt, oatmeal and the occasional muffin or pancake. She misses her chicken noodle soup but at the end of the day my health (and yours) takes precedent over a 2 year old being picky and stubborn.
It says in your signature that you have SEVERE damage. Your husband needs to take this seriously. This is where those "sickness and health" vows come into play. He promised to take care of you and now he gets to stand up to that promise, nobody said it was going to be fun or easy.
For example - My husband had to have a vasectomy because of a blood disorder I have. Being pregnant is very dangerous for me, I can have a stroke before I even know I'm pregnant. I'm also allergic to latex and the only reasonable solution to the problem was for him to get snipped. He didn't like it but ultimately it was that or celibacy.
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You told your hub about this dream?
Yup, he asked if it was anyone I knew. I told him it was a random hot stranger.
We are the two least jealous people on the planet.
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22*C. That's the perfect temperature for me inside or outside the house. Love it.
Let's see I think that is around 74*F
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I really want a deep fryer. So bad!
I've got my eye on a 4l Bravetti, just waiting for it to go on sale.
I miss going out for tempura and wings and fries and onion rings ....etc etc.. I need a deep fryer.
Other than that I love my rice cooker (12 years old, still going strong), my crock pots and my toaster oven.
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I had a crazy dream last night too!
I was telling my husband about it when I woke up. I was having an affair and in my dream it had progressed from flirting to long conversations to the first kiss. But then our 2 year old woke me up before I got to the good part.
I tried to go back to sleep and see if I could pick up where I left off but it didn't work. Bummer.
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I think you are right about the 2 year old. She puts her food everywhere. I tried making her gluten free but she only eats a few foods and she wasnt getting enough to eat. I am wondering if she has celiac - her ttg and iga came back normal but her igg was off the charts. about the contamination - she spills cheerios and pasta freequently and even puts it on me. We are very close so she is also climbing all over me with food on her face and hands before i can clean it.
My husband leaves crumbs on the counter and puts pizza in the mocrowave without a plate, and many other contaminating things. I try hard to clean up after them both and he does sometimes but most of the time i just seem like a nag so he rolls his eyes.
ps poppi - you look very familiar
Your husband needs to be on board. I would sit him down and be very frank with him. Let him know that you want more than anything to be happy and healthy but you can't do it without his cooperation. It's a hard adjustment and it took a month or two for my husband to really get the difference between me feeling great and me feeling awful. He likes happy, healthy, energetic me much better than the me that lays on the couch with a heating pad. It was ultimately his idea to make the whole house gluten free. We have an extra kitchen downstairs and we will probably allow the 3 teenagers to make themselves gluten lunches down there during the school year as long as they clean up well and never bring the food upstairs.
Your 2 year old will adjust. They are stubborn as heck at that age but ultimately fairly malleable. She'll whine about her cheerios but honey nut rice chex are pretty awesome. Lily misses her Campbell's chicken noodle soup pretty bad but she loves yogurt and blueberries, white cheddar popcorn and the pancakes I make with Pamela's baking mix (I cook these in cast iron to get more iron into her). I make up any deficiencies in her diet with protein shakes and smoothies with Vega whole food smoothie infusion powder.
If your daughter likes oatmeal you can switch over to steel cut oats from Only Oats or Bob's Red Mill (buy the ones marked gluten free). More fiber and good stuff than regular oatmeal and safe for you too. I put 1 cup of steel cut oats in a pot, add 4 cups of water, bring to a boil, turn off the heat, put on a lid and leave it overnight. The next morning just stir and reheat.
I've never been further east than Winnipeg so unless you're originally from the Island we've probably never met.
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Well, we talk about poop, hemorrhoids, vomit
...why not about something as wonderful as sex???!!
To be even more frank, both men and women can have "intimacy issues" associated with celiac--(it affects every body system and delicate tissues, hormone levels , etc.) and some people have severe pelvic pain as a result of celiac as well--so, if they also disappear after going gluten-free-- then people can resume that part of their lives as well.
And BTW, I must have missed this development somehow--CONGRATS on a 100% gluten-free house! I am happy for all of you!!
I have had a problem called cytolytic vaginosis for well over a year. It is fairly horrible and makes life somewhat miserable (and sex impossible) for 2 weeks out of every month. Last month is was better and this month.... GONE!
Yippee!
And yup, we are on day 5 of complete gluten free-ness. Some huge adjustments to be made for sure, my little kids are both in mourning for squishy white bread and campbell's chicken noodle soup. The two older girls head back to Vietnam for the summer in a couple of days so they aren't an issue yet and my oldest son is still eating gluten downstairs as I am taking in to request the bloodwork on Thursday.
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Sara you can still have s'mores but make them with gluten free chocolate chip cookies!
YUM, YUM, YUM, even better!
That sounds good! I use the kinnikinnick s'moreables (gluten-free graham crackers). They are great. On Sunday night my husband had taken the wee one in to bed and my son wanted help with his s'more so without thinking I helped him squish it and then went back to eating my own. I had that "oh NO!" sinking feeling that I had messed up as I was licking the marshmallow off my fingers. Sure enough the stomach rumbling started an hour later.
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The 2 year old is probably keeping you sick. I have a 2 year old daughter (as well as 6, 16, 17 and 20 year old kids in the house) and she is the #1 cause of my glutenings. In fact the whole house is now 100% gluten free to keep me healthy.
Little ones just aren't good at containing their crumbs. She would eat a sandwich, spread crumbs all over the table and her clothes, drop some on the floor, touch all over the back of her chair, run her hands through her hair and then she'd run off and sit on the couch or touch the bathroom door handle or even go in the bathroom and decide to use my toothbrush. Then of course she wants to hug and kiss me and stick her fingers in my mouth or take a drink of my tea when I'm not looking. I get flare ups of pain from non-visible amount of gluten so having her contaminating every surface was a disaster. I wiped counters and washed my hands until they bled and it didn't help.
I would sit down and talk to your husband about the whole family being gluten free in the house at least. I know it's expensive, I am now figuring out how to feed a family of 7 gluten free! It's important though.
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Healing takes place in all the body systems. Look at Sara (POPPI) and her triumph! It will happen for you, too!!
You're so sweet.
I'm not sure if we are allowed to talk about this here but one of the nice benefits of having more energy is that I'm not too tired for sexytime any more.
Of course I glutened myself on Father's Day helping my son with a s'more (this was the last day of gluten in the house, we went 100% gluten free on Monday - go figure) so I'm a mess right now but it's been nice having the energy to devote to that important part of our relationship.
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1. How long does it usually take to work? (I was told to try it for 2 weeks - is that long enough?)
It can take a few days or it can take months. Everyone heals at a different pace. I think most people find some improvement in the first couple of weeks though.
2. Will it still work if I am accidentally exposed to trace amounts of gluten? Or do I have to start over if that happens?(for example, I went to a restaurant where there was nothing for me to eat, so I had a garden burger and took the bun off --- then I learned that many veggie burgers contain gluten!)
Nope. Even if that garden burger patty had been 100% gluten free it was contaminated with the bun. If you had fries then they were probably fried in a contaminated fryer. It's all or nothing if you want to see results. I am sick right now because a few days ago I touched my son's graham cracker with one finger and then forgot to wash my hands before eating my own snack and licking marshmallow off my fingers.
3. Any other tips or advice from anyone else who did a diagnosis through elimination diet?
Patience. With yourselves and others. The easiest thing to do for the first weeks and months is to go to a whole foods diet. Eat things that are naturally gluten free like meats, vegetables, fruit, dairy products (if you can digest dairy) and eggs. When you do add new foods add one at a time and wait a couple of days to make sure it doesn't make you feel horrible.
Don't eat out. For the first little while just don't do it. It's not worth it.
Chin up and remember that if this works it'll be a whole new life for you and that is worth the inconvenience.
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Hi Sara,
Have you tried grinding your own rice flour? Just use brown rice and one of those large coffee grinders (sans coffee of course).
Growing your own or simply buying potatoes in bulk can help too. You can cook up a potato and mash it up later to put in your rice flour pancakes or other baked goods with eggs, agar or xanthum gum (or some combination thereof) as a binder. I personally am allergic to xanthum gum as well as all other things made from corn.
What I do is when I cook, I make a lot at a time. That way I don't always have to be slaving in the kitchen, plus it ends up costing less. I use leftover rice as an ingredient in a lot of baked goods as well as in pancakes. It makes them a lot less dry. I also cook more veggies at a time than we'll use for the same reason. Makes it easy if I want to whip up something fast to have already cooked rice and veggies and say chicken or whatever. Maybe make a dish with a bit of egg in as a binder for lunch or whatever, or a very quick stir fry or soup.
The only flour I seem to tolerate so far besides rice is sorghum flour. For me the potatoes have to be white and peeled -- this is the sensitivity to high to moderate salicylic acid talking.
Maybe if your family is supportive and helpfully participatory, you could have chickens and either a milk cow or goat.
Some people also have rabbits. Anyone there not squeamish about raising one's own meat??
A lot of work, but also very pleasant if you like that sort of thing. I haven't done the raising animals currently, but we did do so when I was a child. I wouldn't mind doing it again if I had the opportunity.
I do like having a garden, however, whenever possible. It just gives back so much good energy as well as good greens and squashes, and herbs even with my limited palate (i.e., the salicylic acid sensitivity). Being so far north, consider putting in a greenhouse--which would be better against the radiation too.
I think that's another subject of course; lately the continued radiation from Fukishima has been worrying me a lot since my original celiac developed when I was an infant exposed to radiation from Hanford nuclear power plant. I hear that from Santa Cruz to Seattle there has been a 38% increase in infant mortality since mid March... That is not talking about infants getting pneumonia and such--like what I also got after being healthy prior to. God only knows what the continuing radiation is doing to the health of the general populace, by now spread world wide.
Bea
I do grind my own rice flour (white and brown). My Mom has a vita mix so I go over there and grind up flour. Our city is fairly strict on anyone operating a "farm". We have 4 chickens and 65 square feet of raised bed gardens. Next year we will add 2 chickens to our flock (that will max out our city allowance) and put in a couple more raised beds. We aren't allowed goats or cows (and don't have room for a cow anyway) and aren't allowed to raise animals for meat consumption in city limits so no rabbits for us.
I have 16 square feet of potatoes in right now and the rest of my garden will hopefully start producing if we ever get nice weather. I discovered cabbage worms on my cauliflower today though so I'm debating whether to spray or just rip it all up and avoid that whole vegetable family. Whenever I try cabbage, cauliflower or broccoli I get worms.
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-Save all the coupons you find for any type of milk. (I'm a regular couponer so I save the whole circular)
we don't get really coupons in Canada
We can send away online for occasional coupons but they are usually 25 cents off cleaning products or gluten foods. Not useful. Stores will not combine or double coupons here either.
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Its sad about the kissing and your son. Could he not brush his teeth at bed time then he'll be ok for kiss on lips? Or does the gluten stay in his mouth?
Maybe that would work but I'm too nervous about getting sick. I am in pain right now because I touched a graham cracker with 1 finger without thinking about it and didn't wash my hands before eating my own food. I'm pretty sensitive and it doesn't take much to set me off.
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It would be a one of a kind business in your area it sounds like. There must be others that have to eat gluten-free on your island.
We have a few health food stores around. They have okay selections of gluten-free products but they are all really expensive. There is one gluten free bakery in town as well but it's not phenomenal and it's a lousy place to take little kids because it's full of tiny breakable decorations and the service is ridiculously slow.
I guess I shouldn't say our island is super small. It would take you 6-7 hours to drive the length of it and there are 700,000+ people on it spread out over several cities. We live in the second largest city with 76,000 people. We have a costco, walmart, superstore and everything but we don't have nearly the selection of similar stores on the mainland. Kinnikinnick delivers here for a $10 flat rate but Bob's Red Mill and Amazon won't deliver here at all. Some of the other places I've wanted to order from have rates varying from $40-$70 to deliver a package to me. That more than outweighs any savings I'd get from ordering online.
Opening a strictly gluten free store would be super cool though!
I think we will buy a split side of beef and a side of pork this summer along with a couple dozen chickens from a local farm. Our own chickens should start laying in September or October and my garden would sure help if I could get the deer and the cabbage lopers to stop eating everything.
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I space out in the middle of sentences, stutter and completely forget the topic of conversation when I've been glutened.
I was having coffee with a friend a few weeks ago and I guess we were talking about babies. I looked down at my knitting and my mind went blank I guess. We then had the following conversation:
Her: Yeah, they grow up so fast
Me: Who grows up?
Her: Uh. Babies.
Me: Oh. Were we talking about babies?
Her: *Looking confused* Um, yeah, we've been talking about babies for like half an hour.
Me: Really? Huh.
Pretty typical conversation with me sadly.
My husband will often say something to me along the lines of, "Remember when you told me about ________?"
Nope. I sure don't.
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I would try one in the self clean oven. Ceramics are fired in a kiln, right? A kiln gets far hotter than the self clean cycle on the oven so it should be okay.
I still haven't gotten around to running my baking stone through the self clean. It's saturated with years of gluten but I haven't been able to bring myself to toss it so I'm going to give it a try.
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Thanks for the ideas and support. We are on a small island off the west coast of Canada (which explains our grocery costs) though so places like amazon aren't available to us and our small costco doesn't carry any gluten free bread, pasta or cereal. Milk here is $5 a gallon, eggs are $4-$6 a dozen and even regular wheat bread is $3-$6 a loaf. If I watch the sales and stock up I can get chicken on sale for $3-$5 a pound depending on which part of the chicken I want. Eating here is not cheap.
I just finished the upstairs kitchen cupboards and removed a rubbermaid tote full of food. Some is sealed and will go to the food bank, some is probably destined for the trash and some will go downstairs for my oldest son to eat while he awaits his celiac blood test in 9 days.
It would be nice if I could order flours online in bulk but the very few who ship to Canada want a ridiculous amount to do so. I am going to be in San Diego in August and have a friend down there who I can ship stuff to. I think I can bring back 25 kg of food and still be within my baggage allowance so I need to think carefully about what to order. I love the Namaste flour blend so I'll definitely be ordering 10kg of that to bring back.
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So for the past almost 3 months we have had a mixed household. I'm gluten free, I cook mostly gluten free food and everyone else eats gluten. As my system gets more sensitive I am having more and more problems and of course there are the inevitable slip ups and accidents.
On Sunday night I helped my 5 year old unwrap his s'more, then I unwrapped a gluten free s'more for myself and ate it. As I was finishing it off I had that sinking feeling in my stomach. Did I touch his graham cracker by accident? Yup, I think I helped him squish the s'more without thinking about it. Sure enough the stomach rumbling started a couple hours later and now my typical back and neck pain is in full flare up.
That was the last straw for me and my husband is finally 100% on board with switching over the whole house.
So today I will completely de-gluten the upstairs kitchen. There isn't much gluten food up here. Some pasta, a couple boxes of crackers, cereal and all the contaminated jars of peanut butter, jelly and nutella. Probably some soy sauce and teriyaki in the fridge.
So, that brings me to the challenge. 1 person being gluten free is a bit expensive but no biggie. 7 people is a challenge. Our grocery bill is already $1600 a month and that cannot go up. It just can't. The two girls will be going back to Vietnam in a week and won't return until September 2 so I've got 2 months with just the 5 of us.
So obviously it's not going to be cost effective to feed us all Udi's bread and corn spaghetti and glutino crackers so we will have to avoid the gluten free convenience foods most of the time.
My little kids live on grilled cheese sandwiches, crackers and peanut butter, cereal, pancakes, muffins, fruit and yogurt. To say they are picky would be an understatement. I'm definitely feeling a bit stressed out about finding foods that they will eat without resorting to the convenience foods. I can make good muffins at least!
This morning they had honey nut rice chex and sliced banana and seemed happy although my 2 year old did whine for a bit when she realized she wasn't getting cheerios.
You know what I'm most excited about? Being able to kiss my kids and my husband without asking them what they've eaten. I was so sad last night when my 5 year old went to kiss me and I had to turn my face so he kissed my cheek. He asked me why I never let him kiss my lips anymore.
Okay, that was super rambly and long winded and I'm not sure if it makes any sense. I blame the gluten.
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Thanks again everyone. I feel so blessed to have recovered so quickly. I read about so many of you who are still dealing with crippling health problems even after years of being gluten free and my heart breaks. My life isn't all sunshine and roses yet, and I'll never get the cartilage back in my feet so there are high impact things I probably will never be able to do but I'm so happy to be on my way.
I am thinking that we will push the level 1 course back to October or even next year. I had the most intense and painful muscle spasms/burning pain in my neck, arms and hands last night. Everything from the base of my skull to the tips of my fingers was on fire. It was awful. The only time I can remember being in that much pain was when I was in the hospital with meningitis last summer and after 14 days on constant high doses of dilaudid a doctor decided I was a drug addict and cut me off the drugs cold turkey and sent me home. Withdrawing from that was the worst 3 days of my life and the pain last night was very similar. I have a lot of work to do on my stamina and fitness before I'll be ready to do two days of hard paddling. I'm happy to have a goal though and I look forward to achieving it.
Thanks so much for your kind words and support, I means a lot coming from people who understand how deep people like us have to dig to do things that feel normal to most.
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Thank you so much. Every part of my body hurts right now but it was worth it. We're looking at doing our level 1 skills certification in August and that is two 8 hour days in a row.
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I don't know if this belongs in "Coping With" but there is no "Celebrating" section so I'm putting this here.
2 1/2 months ago I could not walk my youngest son to school. 6 blocks was too far for me. My arthritis was crippling, I had no energy, every part of my body hurt. SIX BLOCKS was beyond me. I was terrified at the thought of living another 60 years in this body becoming more and more crippled.
Today I completed my intro level sea kayak certification. 6 hours in a kayak paddling against wind in ocean swell. Wet exits, eskimo rescues, using my upper body strength the lift and turn kayaks in the water and climb in and out of the boats. It was exhausting but I am so proud of myself. I was the only woman in the course and the other 3 participants were military men in great shape (my husband and 2 coworkers). I kept up with them all day and did everything that they did. Occasionally it took a couple of tries but I did it.
The 2 coworkers and the instructors were horrified at lunch when I was telling them what I can't have because of celiac but it didn't phase me at all. Go ahead and eat your sandwich, drink your beer ... being gluten free has given me a life I always envied in others.
I'm so happy right now. Exhausted and sore but happy.
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I've never been able to drink coffee - it always gave me painful gas. Love the smell of it, though.
Edited to say that I loved the smell of the coffee, not the gas. lol
:D
Thanks for the giggle. Nothing quite like waking up to the smell of fresh brewed gas.
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Owie owie owie. That pain between the shoulder blades is a big one for me too. It lasts for a couple of weeks when I get glutened. Big hugs, sorry you feel icky.
The Funny Pages - Tickle Me Elbow - The Original
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Cool! My Nana was an Empire Loyalist. She passed away in 1999 at 107.