<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

   In the past 4-5 days I've enraged a few of you,
tickled a few of your funny bones, and ( i am most
thankful for this) said what many of you have wanted
to say but didn't want to get flamed! Many of the
folks replying to me asked for my 'celiac-vitae'. So
here are my celiac credentials:

   I was never that sick. As best as I can piece it
together, my celiac 'went active' in 1989 during a
bout with Bell's Palsy and a 6 month course of
Prednesone to ease the effects of it.

   Since that time I had sudden, unexplained,
multi-day migrains, bloating, stomach pains, lactose
intolerance, exhaustion. Then in 1998 I started
getting excruciating joint pain in my right knee that
would come out of the blue and stay for a month or two
(osteopenia)! I would also get the sharpest, most
intense, jabs of pain in my legs, again out of the
blue, that could last for a day or two. Aleve helped
me get to sleep many nights but the days were pure
hell. And the strangest symptom - I could not drink
water without feeling I was going to throw up!

   As with many of us in this country, my busy, hectic
lifestyle and many hours driving a stick-shift in
heavy traffic all week, were all too easy to blame for
all these maladies. When I finally went GF, the most
startling thing was that within the first week I felt
something I had not felt in over 13 years - NOTHING. I
mean, that for the previous 13 years I had persistent
GI pain and discomfort that I had subconciously
accepted as normal, until a week on a GF diet took all
of it away and I realized what being normal was really
like. I literally choked up describing it to my wife!

   Considering everything I am starting to believe
that a major factor in the low rate of diagnosis of
celiac disease is the fact that many celiac symptoms
resemble the symptoms of the busy, hectic,
overscheduled, 'life out of balance' we lead these
days. Our life gives us ample cause to rationalize
being tired, having migrains, having joint pains,
constant 'indigestion' and our pill-happy culture has
over the counter drugs to mask each and every one of
these symptoms. Then, at some point the damage gets
too great to mask and we wind up with a diagnosis -
after finding a doctor that can
'think-outside-the-box' and check for celiac!

   As best as I can tell, I never reached that level
of damage. My diagnosis was the result of trying to
find the cause of problems our 3-year old was having
that his regular doctors and GI specialist could not
find. One thing led to another and one day I came
across celiac disease on the internet. I looked down
the list of symptoms, realized that I had, 18 out of
20, and given that it is genetic, I proclaimed that my
son had it! It took a couple of months to convince the
GI to test for it, and guess what! Both of us went GF
2 1/2 years ago and doing great!

   See, I can write a post that doesn't offend,
brow-beat, pontificate, demagogue, anger, or otherwise
fold, spindle or mutilate anyone's feelings. What's
more, I suspect I'll get no flames for this one!

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/

*Support summarization of posts, reply to the SENDER not the CELIAC List*