Photo Shoot

This woman is having a photo shoot this week. Glamour shots and all. Of my stomach and small intestine. :/ Jealous, aren’t you?

So I finally saw a GI specialist at the beginning of the month. He is such a lovely man. I went through my list of symptoms and joys ( not so much joy) and he had answers and solutions. Amen. First off, he said that I had bacterial overgrowth of the GI track. Say what? So, as it turns out many people with celiac (I’ll get to that later) and gluten sensitivities have a GI tract that is all out of sorts (which I knew). As I described my pain and abdominal growth with no consistent reason he said that it sounded like bacterial overgrowth. This occurs when the bacterial in the large intestine (bad) goes into the small intestine (really bad) Solution being a course of special antibiotics that are only absorbed in the GI track.

After 10 days of the pills I was amazed. My pain was almost all gone and the bloating was minimal. In one aspect I was pissed at myself. I had been walking around a year trying coffee and wine elimination, supplements up the wazoo and it was this simple of a solution. Yet, I was happy to have some relief.

So onto the glamour shots part. This Thursday I will be having an endoscopy of my esophagus, stomach and small intestine. I will have biopsies for celiac and they will check for physical damage to the organs themselves. Yes, my celiac blood tests have come back negative. Yet, when people go off gluten many times you will get false negatives for celiac in a blood test.

Enter gluten. Because I am having this procedure this week I have had to add gluten back into my diet for the past month. Now, after a year off of it (unless I made a mistake that I didn’t know about) this sounds like heaven on paper. Pizza from a pizzeria. Cut out cookies (with egg, but whatevs) Tim Bits, cookies, cake…..all my friends coming back to me.

Yet, let me tell you, it absolutely stinks. At my nephews birthday party I ate two pieces of yummy pizza. Within 10 minutes I was hot, flushed, dizzy and my ears were itching. Within an hour my sinuses were stuffy and I was tired. Abdominal pain, back in force. I have been eating gluten every day for a month now and I have only two days yet. I may have my most favorite pizza in the world and an awesome cupcake to go out with a bang- a stuffy, flushed, itchy bang but a bang nonetheless.

And all I have been able to think about has been “this is how people live their life and don’t think anything of it”. Studies show that 1 in 133 people will be a celiac in their lifetime but only 1 in every 4,700 of those are ever diagnosed. My list of stuff goes on and on. Including IBS but this is a family blog so we won’t share that part.

Thursday morning is the big day. It will be the first time I have gotten my picture taken where I won’t angle my chin to look thinner. And the super silver lining, I don’t need a colonoscopy. There is a God.

I’ll keep you posted on the outcome but as I always close with  a nugget- if you really listen to your body and I mean REALLY listen, it will tell you something. Observe how you react to food. Eliminate things and add then back in. And if you don’t feel write, see a Doctor. Just take the time.

Say cheese.

PS- I just noticed that I have been blabbing on here a year now. Didn’t even celebrate. Well, happy 1 year anniversary to this little blog. And thanks for reading Mom. (anyone else out there?)