At Grandma and Grandpa's and a Celiac update

Kiddoes having a good time at Grandma & Grandpas while the Home and Garden Show was going. We are getting a new kitchen floor and are thinking about getting stained concrete. I think it is so pretty.

And...I want to give an update on Celiac Disease. I will probably put some stuff on here every now and then in case it would help anyone else. I know I have been searching for a lot of information. So, I think I have mentioned before that I have been having "attacks" ever since I was pregnant with Liv. Once Derrick and I thought I was miscarrying her and I had a very terrible pain that I can hardly describe. He took me to the emergency room and I was in such pain, crying, and scared. I could hardly sit in the car. It went away not long after we got to the hospital. I ended up getting my gallbladder checked out for possible gall stones. It was fine. After Liv was born I had an attack that was so terrible I ended up at Urgent Care hooked up to an I.V. for dehydration. Then, after the Gall Bladder looked good I was sent to a Gastro doctor and he did an endoscopy looking for ulcers and didn't find any. He said he thought I had Gastritis or possible Reflux. I knew something was terribly wrong with my body and would just have random attacks. They would come like a "thief in the night." Such pain (among other things) that I lose atleast two hours of sleep when I have one. Then I am extremely weak the next morning and have a hard time taking care of the kids. It is always nice if it hits on a weekend! Pepto Bismal has been a close friend of mine for the past 10 months. I have sent Derrick out for it at an hour such as 3 a.m. for it a couple of times. He has always been so sweet about it and known how desperate I am for it. I started researching Celiac's Disease and found that I had symptoms like the ones that were described. I even found out it's connected to autoimmune disorders people in my family have/had. And, this crazy heart pain that I have had since I was a child that feels like there is a knife in my chest and causes difficulty in breathing.

So, I took a blood test and came out with a weak positive (IGG). That seemed like a big deal to me but it is possible to have that with other gastro disorders so it is not exactly specific to the disease. So, I heard to be diagnosed you have to have an Endoscopy (it's the Gold Standard). Well, I had already had one but the dr. didn't suspect Celiac's so he didn't biopsy my villi to check for damage. I went back to him fully prepared to beg him to do another one and check that. You see, I know me. There are two reasons why I wanted that done instead of just going on a gluten-free diet to see if that helped. You have to stay on gluten for the test results to be accurate because your body will heal itself if you stay away from gluten and you will test negative. The first reason I want the diagnosis is because if I don't have it I will think,"Well, I can have a cookie...maybe I don't really have it (Celiac's)..." The second reason is because I want to know without a shadow of doubt what is wrong with me. I want to be well. I will stay away from whatever it is that causes it. I love food. But, when I am in the middle of an attack and have extreme nausea or when I am feeling extreme fatigue I KNOW it is not worth it. And, wait, here is a third reason. If you have Celiac's and continue putting gluten in your body the damage will worsen. It could lead to many other issues, including Cancer. An article from the Mayo clinic said the following about a study, "The study also found that subjects who unknowingly had celiac disease were nearly four times as likely as celiac-free subjects to have died during the 45 years of follow-up."


So, I went back into the Gastro dr. He said it was just a weak positive and wanted to know if, again, I wanted a prescription. I didn't take the last prescription he gave because I am nursing and would rather not take medicine but see what I can do with my diet. I said no I did not. He was not taking me seriously and said maybe I have IBS. I then told him that I didn't think I had stressed to him how sick I am and I think a "weak" positive is something to look into. He said he was sure I would come out negative and he didn't like the blood test I had. But, apparently, somehow he knew I was pleading and looked me in the eye and said, "But, okay, I'll do it." I was also about to ask that he give me the blood test he did like and he had already written that out for me to do.

That brings me up to this week. I was laying in the hospital bed for my procedure and after he greeted me and before he did the procedure he said, "Well, I just got a text from my nurse and it looks like you're pretty positive for Celiac's." I would say he had a bit of a "change of heart". ;) The endoscopy results won't be in until next week but the paper and pictures he gave me after the procedure have words on them that they look for with Celiac's disease. It said I had atrophy and "slightly flattened duodenal folds." The nurse told me the next morning that my test was a low positive but this time for IGA, which is a specific marker for Celiac's disease. A very high percentage (I want to say 90% but need to check my numbers) of people that have a positive for this have Celiac's.

They have not told me to begin the gluten-free diet yet but I have already begun because I am ready to be well and not put poison in my body. It is so complicated though!!! Wheat is in lipstick, soy sauce, RICE krispies (malt)...Lots of things you wouldn't suspect. Like, just today, I went to Akin's and got Gluten-free cornbread and then got stuff at Target to make chili. I could not believe it when I read the label on the chili seasoning. It had wheat in it. Luckily, I discovered 2-Alarm Chili Seasoning is Gluten-free. Yay! Then, there is the matter of cross-contamination. You could kiss someone that had eaten gluten, make your children pb&j...and it could set you into an attack. I think some people are more sensitive than others and attacks vary. You could order a chocolate shake and hope that a Cookies n Cream one wasn't made just before and left any gluten on the machine. Or find out the chocolate ice cream has wheat in it too (I heard Blue Bell's chocolate ice cream has it)! Or you could order fries and hope that chicken nuggets weren't made in the same fryer. Order an omelet and discover they make toast on the same grill...It's going to be a journey. But, one good thing is that I already knew I needed to make changes and was putting unhealthy things in my body. Although, you could still have opportunity to indulge in certain foods that are gluten-free too. And I do know God will use it for my good.

Disneyland

After a long and difficult week we are headed to warm, sunny California! We will board our plane this afternoon. Derrick is not in town and able to be with us :( but the kids and I are meeting my mom there and then driving back. We plan to go to Disneyland and go by the Grand Canyon on our way back. We are excited! We need a vacation, especially after the week we've had!

Well, I had heard husbands talk about how thankful they are for their wives when they have had to take on their wife's role due to a loss of their job, a wife's sickness, or some other reason. They talk about how much they appreciate all their wife does. I have been learning how priceless a husband is! It is a looong story to go through it all but maybe I can paint a small picture of it. Being without a husband has been no.fun.at.all!

The blizzard that came through has been crazy to start with! I have never seen anything like this and have NEVER seen school called off for as long as it has been. With homeschooling we normally follow the public school's schedule. We have been able to continue schoolwork but have taken breaks too. We stayed at my in-laws for several days which was a lot of fun. I never dreamed we'd be "stuck" there for 5 days! The kids and I were sleeping in the living room together. It was time to get back to our house. I decided to drive home when the roads were better and before another snow storm came in. I chose to be "stuck" there for the next one. The reason I went in the first place was in case our power went out and we didn't have Derrick but the power never did go out. When I got home I saw that our house had been damaged. We had an ice dam and the water had melted and gone down our wall in the kitchen and water had seeped all into our kitchen floor too. If we had had wallpaper it would have come off but our paint almost looked like wall paper as it looked like it was wilting. The details of all that are quite a story in itself. So, we already had our floor ripped up in an area, big, loud fans constantly blowing downstairs to dry the water, and couldn't use our kitchen table to eat or do school on. One event seemed to happen after another. I'm not including all the little things! One of the kids had turned our refrigerator off. By the time I noticed I didn't know if it had been off for one or two days. I noticed my milk was not very cold in my cereal. Then I noticed some other things and finally opened the freezer to see everything melted in there. I had planned on making homemade spaghetti for my neighbor and was really disappointed that I couldn't use my meat. The streets were icy and I didn't want to get out to get more. I thought about what I should do and how I already told her I was bringing the spaghetti. I decided to start making it without meat. It would be better than nothing! So, the spaghetti was simmering. I started cleaning out the refrigerator and throwing everything out. I asked Bay to help and push the refrigerator toward me so I could sweep behind it. Apparently he pushed with a little too much force. I heard a loud noise that sounded like loud, forceful air. I didn't know what happened and was afraid something could catch fire. I think I was a little confused because the fire was on the stove boiling noodles and simmering spaghetti. I said, "Get out the house! Go get a neighbor!" I went and grabbed the baby out of her crib and threw a coat on because my shirt was not appropriate (I was not totally dressed for the day). We ran outside barefoot on the freezing snow. Man, does that burn your feet! Thankfully, I got ahold of Derrick and he told me to turn the breaker off, turn the water off, and turn a valve off. Water was shooting all over my kitchen and spaghetti. The dry floor that had been drying for days was again wet. Bailey had caused a tube to break that goes to our water and ice dispenser. There was a lot of pressure. Our mail (tax information) was soaked! Thankfully, the kids never got ahold of a neighbor. It would have been kind of embarrassing! Here I was in a torn up, soaked house with no spaghetti and, I forgot to mention, two minutes before this happened I got off the phone with the dr's office finding out I have a weak positive for Celiac's disease! This is where I just broke down. I was weeping. Derrick told me to send the kids to their rooms and sit down. I know he felt so helpless. He said, "I love you. You know I love you, right?"

I called a sweet, sweet family from church because my stomach literally felt sick and I was so weak. The wife took the kids, except Livi and her husband came to help me. My sweet in-laws wanted to be on the way but I told them not to worry because my close neighbors were coming.

I ended up ordering spaghetti for my neighbor, pizza for the kiddoes, and my grandparents brought me chili and a baked potato from Wendy's. The crying wore me out so I had to go to bed early and finish packing and cleaning early this morning.


I go to the dr this morning to find out what a "weak positive" means. I was insistent to talk to him before we catch the plane today so I can know...something. He is putting me on a gluten free diet. Having a diagnosis is scary, yet almost a blessing because I have been sick off and on ever since I had Livi almost 9 months ago. I have these "attacks" randomly. They hit like a thief in the night, are very painful, and I have a hard time functioning the whole day after they hit. I have known something is seriously wrong with my body so I will be glad to know what to do and to prevent further damage. Gluten is like putting poison in your body to a Celiac.