<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> > wracked with complications. Even though I gone to great lengths to > pre-arrange gf meals, in the end, I did not receive them. The moral to my > story is: don't even trust the hospital! Sally - so sorry to hear about your hospital stay. One of my worst nightmares is having to go into the hospital and trust the dietitians to make the proper arrangements for gf meals for me. I've been gf for nearly 4 years now. Over the course of that time, my mother has been in and out of the hospital and whenever I go up to visit them, I have extreme difficulty finding gf food to eat in the hospital cafeteria (I will only eat bananas, boiled eggs still in the shell - I bring all the rest of my food and keep it in a cooler in the car). The first time I was at the hospital visiting my mom, I went and found the head dietitian and the cafeteria supervisor and had to explain to them just what a gluten-free diet is (I wasn't surprised that I had to explain that). Even after all the discussions and explanations, they assured me of some foods that I would be able to safely eat. Within an hour of eating that meal, I became quite ill and had to go back to my parents house to lay down for several hours (they live 40 miles away from the hospital). Since that time, I do NOT trust what the dietitian says at the hospital as far as what is gf and what is not. Two months ago, my mom was in the hospital again for an extended stay and I was staying over night at the hospital with her. Well, meals were a nightmare. One day, they did not have boiled eggs on the cafeteria line and so I asked if they could make some for me. You'll never believe this but I had to talk to 3 different people in order to get that done. They initially said they didn't have the "manpower" to make boiled eggs. Good grief. I offered to go to a dept store to buy a pan and some eggs and then come back into the kitchen to boil them myself. Would you believe that they don't boil their eggs in water but that they steam them? It took 2 hours to get steamed hard boiled eggs. I found it highly ridiculous and if I hadn't have been going through so many other things with my mom's health problems, I would've written a complaint and screamed bloody murder about it. In my initial conversation with the nutritionist and the dietitian, they said I was lying when I told them that I had had a terrible gluten reaction the last time I ate food at the hospital - they said it was "impossible for something like that to happen". Anyway, it was difficult finding nutritious things to eat that didn't require constant refrigeration or cooking....since I was staying at the hospital over night for a week (not as a patient but staying in their hospitality rooms) and my mom was too seriously ill for me to make time to go out to their house to cook decent meals for myself, it was a nightmare. A person can only eat so many bananas, peanut butter and peanuts. You'd think that a hospital would be more conscientious about dietary restrictions. I get more consideration from local restaurants when ordering a gf meal. If anyone has any suggestions for how to deal with this type of problem, I'd love to hear it. My Mom is still seriously ill and in and out of the hospital and I'm sure I'll be facing this dilemma again. Deb