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Dear listmates,

Recently, because I was getting weaker and weaker and having more and more
problems with the food I ate, and more and more problems with stomach and
gastrointestinal problems despite sticking to the GF diet for 11 years.   I
was getting really down and actually felt like I was slowly dying.  I had
lost interest in almost everything around me.

A neighbor, who said that she had also gone from doctor to doctor and no one
could cure her malady (not related to CD) came to me and told me that her
doctor had sent her to the “wisest doctor he knew”.  She went to that man,
but he sent her to “the wisest doctor that he knew.”  The doctor was a
professor at the Thomas Jefferson University Medical Hospital.  After 18
months of searching, he figured out the problem.  She told me that he only
dealt with rare conditions that no one else seemed to be able to diagnose.

She told me to call him and see if he would take my case.  He had no actual
practice since he was a teacher of doctors.  I called and left my symptoms
on his answering machine and he called me back.  I went to see him.  I was
determined that I would only give him the symptoms and not tell him what
other doctors had said.  He asked me many questions – some odd for any
doctor I had been to.  The results were that he pegged me immediately with
CD.  I told him I knew that I had it and he began to counsel me about hidden
ingredients in food.  I loved him right away.  He told me that since I did
not have success with the diet as a complete cure that he felt that my
intestines were no longer able to digest starches and sugars.  He did
believe in intestinal permeability, which most doctors I have met disregard
as a myth.

He said that I had only one choice and that was to go on the Specific
carbohydrate diet.  It might take a year or two or perhaps longer since I am
older, but that was the only way that my intestines would recover.  Since I
am intolerant of casein in dairy, and don’t get along well with almonds, and
can’t have eggs—all of which are staples on the diet—I didn’t think that I
could do it.  He felt in time those things would also resolve themselves,
but there were a lot (hummm) of other foods that I could eat.  Well, when
faced with a life of sitting around and feeling like one is dying and going
on the diet, I chose the diet.  He referred me to the website

Pecanbread.com

and said I could find a support group there.

I am writing this because there are perhaps other out there who are in my
predicament, getting more and more food intolerances and intestinal
problems.  I know that a few years ago someone from this listserve told us
about the Specific carbohydrate diet.  I know I did not listen, thinking it
was just another diet.

I really respect this doctor because (with a sense of humor) said, “we have
established that you ARE crazy, but that is not your problem.  The problem
is the CD and the damage”.  I guess he knew after so many years that I must
have encountered so many doctors telling me it was all in my head, and we
can all think we are going nuts after so much of that.   It is great to find
a mainstream doctor, who is teaching other doctors at medical school about
CD.

This is my fourth week on the diet.  In the first 3 weeks I thought that it
was not working because I was so sick, dizzy, confused, weak and irritable.
Now this week I am beginning to feel better.  Apparently during “die-off”
period, one gets sicker than one was before going on the diet.  I thought I
would mention that in case someone else went on the diet and had a similar
reaction.

I will be signing off of this listserve for a year or so, to follow a
different path for a while.  Hopefully when I return, my gut will be well
enough to eat all the great things the GF diet has when it is only gluten I
must avoid.

Blessings, Carol

* Please remember some posters may be WHEAT-FREE, but not GLUTEN-FREE *