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Life Before and After Celiac Diagnosis

By on May 25, 2016 in Advice, Celiac Disease, Health, Relationships | 0 comments

Life before being diagnosed with Celiac Disease is vastly different than life afterward. Beforehand, you are more carefree and willing to take risks. Vacations are easy to plan, spontaneity is second-nature, and the prospect of exploring the world is just a car ride or plane ticket away. After Celiac diagnosis, you realize that there are many more things in the world that can harm you than not. Curiosity turns to fear as you realize that very few truly understand the seriousness of Celiac Disease. Gluten free becomes a phrase that courses through your veins every time someone mocks it or dismisses it as a fad. It’s like being ridiculed for having an O negative blood type. We’ve always considered ourselves an adventurous couple. Early on we would take day trips to different places, like malls or parks in the area. As we ran out of local places, we started taking long...

How Celiac Disease Affects Confidence

By on May 24, 2016 in Advice, Celiac Disease, Health, Relationships | 0 comments

The way that Celiac Disease affects confidence is similar to the way a scar on your face might affect your confidence. If it has been there your whole life, it might not have the same effect as if it were to happen a month ago, or a few years ago. When you live for thirty-some years in seemingly good health, with no indication that something underlying is terribly wrong, the Celiac diagnosis cuts you like a knife and your confidence with it. When Julie was diagnosed, she was experiencing a full plate of Celiac symptoms and we thought it might be diet related. The trial and error of testing different foods, including going vegetarian and cutting out different fruits, vegetables, dairy and nuts was making us crazy. People in the family never knew what to expect when it came to her diet trends, but nothing was working. Going vegetarian only made her physically tired. Cutting out specific...

Celiac Disease and Being Glutened

By on May 20, 2016 in Celiac Disease, Dieting, Dining Out, Gluten Free | 0 comments

When you have Celiac Disease, you have days that are manageable, and you have days that are tough to get through. The diet restrictions alone are enough to keep you from enjoying some of the good things in life like dining out or traveling to new places. Since Julie’s diagnosis, we found that gluten free choices are limited to more than just places that advertise gluten free, but places that truly understand the contamination risks and take precautions to get the order right. There have been a few times we were either rushed or misunderstood and the order was not right, which led to Julie ‘being glutened’. We use the term being glutened like we use ‘food poisoning’, but the physical healing time from being exposed to gluten can last for days beyond the exposure. The mental and emotional effects can last longer. It is critical that we limit the chances that...

Celiac Disease and Broken Bones

By on May 17, 2016 in Celiac Disease, Health, Talking to Doctors | 1 comment

There are dozens of symptoms of Celiac Disease, some are more prevalent than others, and some are more difficult to deal with than others. Over the last several years, Julie has experienced many symptoms including trembling stomach cramps, constant fatigue, irritability, severe headaches, skin changes, debilitating joint pain, bone loss and broken bones. By the time we finally got her Celiac diagnosis, her nutrient levels were through the floor. Her first broken bone was in her foot, which she wasn’t overly concerned about. The second was a stress fracture in her leg, which could have been from anything, but she attributed to weight loss and physical training before our wedding. The third broken bone was more serious, so we started looking for answers. At first, we wondered if it was her thyroid medication. We found a possible connection, but we also skeptical because she had a...

Flying With Celiac Disease

By on May 15, 2016 in Advice, Celiac Disease, Dining Out, Travel | 0 comments

Flying with Celiac Disease is one of the more challenging dietary restrictions a person can face. We find it exceptionally difficult to find food while we’re moving through airports. Larger airports would seem to have more selection, but they are not much better than smaller commuter airports. Julie and I have spent more time looking for food in airports than actually sitting down and enjoying a meal. Our last trip was unfortunate – we found a gluten free restaurant advertised as such, open until 10PM with our plane landing at 8:45, so we should have had plenty of time to get to the spot and have a decent meal. By the time we reached the restaurant at 9:00PM, they told us they closed at 9. They reluctantly agreed to seat us, but no one knew exactly how the gluten free food was prepared, or the degree in which they could assure no cross-contamination. We were starving, so we...

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