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I want to make a few comments about Kevin Nadherny's suggestion that
"oatmeal is good for us 'celiacs.'"

It's good for him, *maybe* in his situation.  Just because he didn't have a
reaction doesn't mean all celiacs can eat oats, and certainly all celiacs
don't have the opportunity to go to a farm to get oats and pick out the
contaminants.

I know many of us have figured out that there is not one set of symptoms or
sensitivities connected with CD, but a palette of problems, and some of us
are sensitive to one thing and not to others.  I don't want to be too hard
on Kevin, but I think it's dangerous to suggest that just because he didn't
have a reaction that oats are good for everyone.  I probably wouldn't have
been diagnosed with CD if I hadn't started having trouble with pains in my
side about 4 hours after eating oatmeal.  That was what sent me to the
doctor.  When I stopped eating oatmeal the pains stopped.  This gets to be
a terribly long story, and my CD has never been confirmed by testing, but I
was having dry skin and rash problems that my doctors thought were caused
by other problems, and when I went on a GF (and also oats-free) diet the
symptoms went away, and after 3 years on a GF diet my liver enzymes are at
normal levels for the first time ever.  Looking back at what happened in
the 10 years or so before my mother became ill with CD (and it took them 6
months to diagnose it after she became violently ill because so little was
known about it at that time), I was obviously headed down the same course,
and I'm hopeful that I've saved myself years of misery by going on a GF
diet before major damage was done.  I hate to say that I'm glad I had that
reaction to oatmeal, but I might have ended up in really bad shape 5 or 10
years from now if it weren't for those stomach pains!

Anyway, the point of this is is to thank people who report their
experiences here who make it clear that their experiences are their own,
and to ask the others to *please* realize that their situation may apply to
some others but may cause harm to someone who doesn't know any better.