I'm BACK!

So it's been more than three years since I've posted anything on a blog. But recently I've had something that I really want to vent about and I'm sick of talking about it so I think that blogging about it is a great idea.

I've had the chance to go to the web and see a lot of blogs that are out there about this particular topic (a lot) and now I GET IT. I understand why people blog about this. Because it's frustrating and it SUCKS. What am I talking about? Celiac. Yes. That. So I decided that rather than bend everyone's ear, I'm just going to start blogging. I figure that this can be therapeutic.

All my life I have not been a fan of some of the simple things in life... bread. Pasta. Pizza. My friends would tease me and tell me I was a freak of nature. "Who doesn't like BREAD?" "Really? You don't like Pizza? You're weird." Over time I realized that really, when I would actually be polite or humor my husband and go to an italian restaurant for dinner, I would feel really sick after eating one of the above items. I always wondered in the back of my head if I had an allergy or something but I figured that my body just wasn't used to dealing with that type of food and so I had a hard time digesting it. Well, about three months ago, I ran home for lunch. We had no food in the fridge that looked decent. All that I saw that appeared remotely edible was some Velveeta Mac N Cheese. How much harm could that do, right? Within 30 minutes I just wanted to die. I sat at my desk for the remainder of the afternoon and wallowed in self pity. I still didn't take any action but I realized that I really did have a problem.

Luckily, since I live in the Austin metro area, the capital of ALLERGIES, I had an appointment with an allergist, Dr. Thomas Leath. AWESOME allergist, btw. I asked him to test me for a wheat allergy. I sat there for my 15 minutes of itching, with many allergins poked in my back. I waited with excitement to get the results... and nope. No allergy to wheat. Dammit. So he sent me to the lab and said that he would send my blood to be tested for celiac disease. I knew that the chances of that being the case were pretty slim.

A week later I get a call from Dr. Leath. Lab results are in and I've tested positive. My initial reaction was honestly one of utter joy - in fact, it shocked him. But I explained to him that I finally felt validated that I wasn't crazy! And hell, I don't like bread. I don't like pasta. This can't be that bad, right?

Next step: go to my GI and get an endoscopy just to get that final stamp of confirmation.

I go to GI a few weeks later and he reviews the test results - based on the blood work he doesn't doubt it but still needs to do the endoscopy. He schedules it for the next week. I won't bore you with the details; but I will tell you that I had the best nap ever during that endoscopy and I will raise my hand to have that done any day. Results come in and everything is confirmed. This girl has to go gluten free from now on. Again, this can't be that bad, right?

My brother in law's stepmom has celiac as does her daughter. She was kind enough to send me an email with tons of resources for me to read and review. I went out and bought a book, The Gluten Free Bible, which she recommended and proves to be pretty interesting reading. In addition, I bought my first of what I anticipate to be many cookbooks. This is easy.

It was a Tuesday night, which of course means it's Taco Tuesday at the Bernfeld house. When it's beef taco night Ben particularly likes to use Taco Bell dinner kits (which is endearing since I love Taco Bell) - Don't JUDGE. I open the box... I take out the shells... all is good. I put them on the tray. I put the beef in the pot. Brown. Smells good. I take out the seasoning. Ingredient number one... WHEAT FLOUR. DAMMIT. Luckily I had some extra Penzeys seasoning that my sister bought me for Christmas and they looked safe so I used those. Ben started to sulk and I had to start explaining to him that life was going to be changing. Okay, so maybe this wasn't going to be so easy after all...