I'm back! I'm in my 60s now, and nearly as heavy as when I began my journey back in 2006. In the 15 years since my departure from this site, I've done Keto and Whole30, both with such success that I had a tummy tuck in 2013. Unfortunately, it only worked as long as I cooked for hours every week. Eventually, the commute and the angst of my job halted it, and with it, my shape. By 2017, I was nearly at my top weight, at 230.8. I started walking in desperation, and it helped. Over the next two months, I dropped 15 pounds and felt terrific. I hadn't changed my diet yet, but I was encouraged by the progress. But then my family life blew up, settling down only last year. In the interim, my weight ballooned. I went from 160 pounds in May to 230 pounds in August. This year, I vowed to get healthy again, and I started walking. I was walking the dogs up to an hour a day and feeling good. And then I got a kidney stone. Whatever terrible things you've heard about kidney stones are true. It was more painful than labor, it went on for days without relief and I was so crazed with pain and the shaking that came from it that I rode in the ambulance wearing only a sheet and a blanket. I'm not into Greek medicine: I just couldn't bear anything touching me. A trip to the ER turned into a 1.1 cm kidney stone too large to pass. I got stented, watered, and, in a twist of horror, a case of high blood pressure. I hate medical offices. I am so rarely sick that I can count on my fingers the number of times it has happened: one flu in high school, 2 cases of strep throat in my 40s, another flu in my 50s, COVID in 2020 and now this. I spent 4 days laying in a hospital bed, except for every 15 minutes when I was up to go to the bathroom. In addition to blood pressure medication, I got a water pill. Goody. I've been home for about 2 weeks now. I was so weak coming home that I only managed to walk 4 minutes outside before I came back home and collapsed. There's nothing like looking at your route and thinking, "gee, maybe I'll make it to the end of my driveway today--score!". I'm up to 40 minutes now. It's hard, and I can feel the stent pressing on my back when I go too far, but I do feel better. I still have the stink of the hospital and all the loss of control that comes with being a bed in a hospital wing. It's hard and I don't like it, but I'm doing it. I managed to convince myself that it doesn't matter how I feel about it; it only matters that I do it. The hospital is no place for control freaks or for people like me, who enjoy talking to others. Doctors to talk to, they talk at. Nurses are better, but essentially the same. Tired of getting interrupted and talking to myself, I stopped interacting with my care team altogether. Medical professionals sound like they're making conversation, but they're not. They're just filling in their instructions with words that sound like conversation. Phrases such as "how are you doing today?" and "have you been burping and passing gas?" need only one or two words. Anything else and they just blank out on you until you stop talking, and then they resume their lecture. "Your blood pressure is dangerously high." No comment. "It'll have to come down before we can let you go home." I want to protest and tell them that I've never had high blood pressure except in a White Coat setting, but remember, they aren't listening. And getting angry over their attitude just sent my blood pressure higher, so I stopped. In addition to the walking, I turn to my old favorite stand-by, the diet. I needed to lose weight and I needed to get my blood pressure under control. I happened upon a nutrition book by a doctor titled "How Not to Die". The author lists the 15 deadliest human diseases and discusses how they come about and how to correct and even reverse the illness. I read the chapters on Hypertension, Kidney Disease and Heart Disease (my family has a long history of instant death by heart attack or stroke). In looking through these preventable diseases, I decided to go whole foods, organic wherever possible, and largely plant-based. I removed all the excess sodium from my diet, most meats, fishes and sugar and replaced it with leafy greens. Leafy greens, a food I hadn't had in quite some time. It meant cooking again, but I looked at it as Cook or Die, so here we are in the kitchen again. Big changes. Big opportunities. Big stress. The salt removal was awful. I didn't realize how salty my diet had become. Paleo and Whole30, with their meat- and fat-heavy diets, lured me into a salt mine where I rolled around in white-crystal ecstacy until I made a kidney stone. Determined not to repeat this horror of the hospital, I found a few recipes. At first, it was miserable. Everything tasted like water or cardboard and, while I wasn't really hungry, I didn't enjoy anything I made. I decided that if I had to eat bland in order to live, I would do it. But then, as the book claimed, my taste buds began to change. By the second week, I was shoveling salad like it was my Destiny. We ran out of food one night, and I found a frozen tilapia filet to bake. It was so salty and nasty that I threw it out after 2 bites. Then I had stomch cramps all evening. I'm willing to believe that the stomach issue was brain-induced but, all the same, I hated it. Now, in the 3rd week, I'm actually buying dried garbanzo beans and red lentils just to have in the house. What? The only thing I've ever kept in my house that I didn't consume in one sitting is we*d. But here I am, preparing for next week already. Last weekend, I went to the grocery store for the first time in several years. The delivery service from the store has sent questionable produce in the last several weeks, and they invariably forget at least one thing, so I sucked up my hatred of grocery stores and went in. It was beautiful. I had a list of produce that I needed--a long list. I wandered up and down the aisles, looking for the organics, checking each piece for color (the brigher/darker the better for nutrition), and setting them in my basket. When I was done, I had only dried lentils, coconut milk and tofu that wasn't from the produce aisle. And my grocery bill was about $100 less that it was in my Meat Era. So far, so good. Then I made a vegetable soup that I'm drooling over. I bought 3 different types of lettuce (no iceberg!) for the salad and I made a tumeric-based tofu scramble for breakfast. I am famous for eating the same foods over and over again, but the nutrition book encouraged readers to eat a variety of food: greens, fruits, vegetables and grains. I'm celiac, so no grains for me, but I was in for the rest of it. I took my time, choosing fruits I hadn't eaten in the first 2 weeks, and I substituted lentils for chicken in a recipe. When I unpacked at home, a lot of the food was on my counter, smiling at me. The rest was lighting up my refrigerator like a rainbow. I haven't lost any weight since I came home from the hospital. I went from 2,200 calories of junk per day to 1,600 calories of clean organics, but no pounds are gone. It's irritating, and in my current state of irritation, sometimes it brings me to tears. I did test for low thyroid function but come on! Even at my age, weight loss is possible. I'm walking 30 minutes every day and I'm drinking 3 quarts of water. I stopped drinking all but water years ago, but I've never ingested an Atmospheric River like I do now. Pretty soon, I'll have to carry toilet paper in my purse, because I have to go so often. I actually schedule my errands and activites around my bathroom breaks. Woo hoo! But no pounds off. And so I go into Week 4, prepared with new recipes, including a pineapple-coconut carrot salad I'm making for my Mah Jongg group. My garden, finally, is producing in my 4th year, and so I have basil, cilantro, rosemary, chives and oregano to put with my tomatoes, banana peppers, potatoes and butternut squash. I can hardly wait for winter to come so I can make root vegetable soup. Imagine; I'm thinking of vegetable soup with longing. The good news is, I don't miss meat. I'm astonished at this, and I really don't believe it, but I just don't like it any more. I hope to keep it that way. I have a follow-up appointment with my GP in 3 months to check my sugars (pre-diabetic, sigh), thyroid, blood pressure and weight. I really want to get out of the healthcare system, so I'm putting all my effort into living clean. My hope is that my clean living will eventually catch up to my body and the weight will come off naturally. Wish me luck, and send me your vegan recipes. A the B(ig, but not forgotten)

Over the (Muffin) Top

Well, then.

I'm not Catholic, but writing here feels a bit like sliding into a confessional. Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. It has been 16 months since my last post...

A few things have happened since last I wrote. Those who know the personal stuff are already updated, and I won't test the patience of those who don't, so suffice to say that I have had a year of rampant, selective, amnesia.

First, I forgot how to keep my weight off. Then I forgot how to lose it the weight I'd gained. Then I forgot that going to restaurants and eating gluten free tiramisu actually exacerbates the problem. Finally, I forgot that running cures all my woes.

Spring has yet to make anything other than a fleeting dash in and out of Chicago, but on the days that it's reached above freezing I have taken my 165 pound frame out and pounded the Prairie Path. Over the last 2 or 3 weeks I've managed to climb back up to a respectable 6 miles per run, though at an embarrassing Senior's pace of 12:56 minutes/mile, largely since I'm still doing intervals. I run 2.5 minutes and then walk 1.5. I tell myself it's because I'm just getting back into it, which I am, but in reality it burns my brain to think I can't run for 3 minutes when 18 months ago I ran 13 miles with barely a stop for water.

But....plenty of time for Scarlet Letter re-enactments later on. It's time to jostle the cottage cheese from my thighs and send the octopus back into retirement.

I started tracking my food intake and the shame of writing "Baby Ruth" skinnied my intake down in a big hurry. I've also helped myself along by overdosing on Reese's eggs, so I can't even look at them now without shuddering. All Hail the Overconsuming PMS beast! I will probably have to hypnotize myself to forget about Cadbury mini-eggs, but since Easter is over, I figure if I can stay out of Target, Walgreen's, Wal-Mart and CVS until the Clearance sales are over, I'll be free.

And it's working. The up side of gaining weight is that you get a new "first week". I've lost 5.4 pounds since Sunday and with the 17 points I burned over lunch (6.7 miles, 89 minutes), I will doubtless have a decent weigh-in tomorrow morning. I may be up over goal for the first time since hitting my goal, but I am back in the groove, and this might be the best $13 I've ever spent on a Weight Watcher's meeting.

Somewhere along this I have to figure out what happened. Was it the 'I can track in my head?' Was it the cold weather that drove me to the treadmill and then out of the FOX-news blaring YMCA? Was it my new relationship with a lover so much fun that I *liked* to go out and I didn't bother to adjust my weekday eating to compensate for the GF Uno's pepperoni pizza I was eating twice a month? Yes, yes, yes and probably many other things.

I think what I've discovered is that this journey is never over. My relationship with food and overeating is like any other, and requires maintenance.. I must be aware always that I am caring for myself and my diet, and never take for granted that things are OK and don't need my attention. I must check in regularly, and consider that I may need to spice things up once in a while, because even if it looks like it's going all right, anything will turn stale if not paid attention to.

So there it is. I must maintain. It only took 5 years and a flop off the wagon to figure it out. But maybe that's OK; sometimes it is the very act of failing when we learn exactly how to succeed.

Hope to see more of me here and less of me everywhere else.

A the R(eborn)

Homespun Wisdom

Yesterday I finished my first usable bed-sized quilt. It’s a queen-sized log cabin variation that I made for DS, and as soon as I can figure out how to post a picture, I will put it here.

I’ve made bed quilts before, but they were so shabbily constructed that their useful life was confined to stuffing them back into the trash can liner I’d used as a “gift bag”. Quilting is a long, painful process for me, and one that I’m not fully prepared to say that I enjoy. The Working With My Hands part is satisfying, if still disappointing because I have no eye for color, no ability to sew on point and no patience to quilt feathered circles or detailed flowers into the blocks. But I persevere, hoping that someday I’ll be able to do something that I enjoy with at least a modicum of talent.

The thing I like best about quilting is the sewing, called ‘piecing’ in quilt lingo. In piecing, I can watch my efforts over a time continuum that does not resemble moving through a black hole, unlike all the other parts of the quilting process. Fabric selection, washing, cutting, assembly, layering, quilting, binding, and, for me, a truckload of bellowed cursing, are the reams of pain and torture that I endure in order to do the one thing about quilting that I like.

I do all these things because I understand it’s a process, but frankly I’ve always considered it a little bit of false advertising to call ‘quilting’ just ‘quilting’ and not ‘back-breaking thankless work with a tiny bit of creation inserted in the middle’. It’s rather akin to a peanut butter cookie that’s smashed in between foods that give me the dry heaves. I want the cookie, but I have to think really, really hard about making the effort to go get it.

It’s a difficult, stress-laden hobby, and most times, I cannot explain why I haven’t thrown it all in and returned to sewing. Sewing is easy. when I decided to learn sewing, I took a class, bought a machine, and in a few weeks I was churning out dresses, shirts and even a few draperies. Even now, years removed from regular sewing, I can build a shirt in 5 hours. It took me over a month to make this quilt, and I muttered obscenities to myself at every turn of the needle.

Sometimes I think it’s my attempt to teach myself patience or to learn precision work. I’m a high-level thinker and I work in technology, so there’s nothing about my professional life that I can ‘touch’ as an accomplishment. Quilting gives me that, though it also serves as a reminder that Mistakes are Visible, and since I always give my projects away as presents, this escalates them to Mistakes are Visible to Others. Still, despite my poor quality, my poorer attitude and the pinched nerves in my low back that inevitably happen as a project winds down, I continue.

And here’s why: this morning, when I showed the quilt to DS and he just stood on the bed smiling at it and holding me, I knew that it had been worth it.

A the N(eedled)

Free At Last

Last Friday night, I completed the final exam of my last class in my MBA program. Though it will be some weeks before I receive my diploma, I am officially finished with school.

Twenty seven months of constant stress around homework, reading assignments, quizzes, exams and online discussions have left their mark. I am staunchly avoiding my home office these days, reluctant even to sit down for fear of rejuvenating the anxiety of deadlines and self-paced learning. I'm glad I did it, and now I am very glad it's done.

As I am an insane individual, I spent parts of last week looking through other online programs, seeing if I could pick up a 'quick' MS in Technology or a PhD in something of interest to me (Business Administration most definitely is not). After turning in that last exam, though, I decided that I really did need a break. I may enroll in non-degree courses at the local community college, after a suitable hiatus. I've long wanted to learn French, so that in the event I needed to apply for permanent residency in Canada, I would score more points for having some command of their other official languages.

I've also had a long-held interest in automotive technology, based in part on the fact that I have zero knowledge and so am forced to trust whatever coverall-uniformed crew member has been sent out to 'discuss' my car problems with me. As both our cars are elderly, I think it's smart to get more savvy about what I'm driving and how it operates. These courses are also available at the community college. In fact, there are more auto classes than French classes, so I stand a better chance of becoming a skilled tradesman in the North Country than I do a bilingual white collar working stiff. No matter; I am interested in these things, but my brain needs a rest.I can decide whether to continue my education once I've recovered, and if I will study something of interest vs. something practical.

In racing, you're supposed to take one day's rest from running for every mile you ran. I'm trying to figure out if there's some corresponding formula for how long to lay off capital "E" education after I've finished a degree. One week for every month? One month for every class? One lifetime for every MBA? We'll see. I made it all the way to 10am on Saturday before the allure of Having Nothing To Do wore thin. As of this moment, I have 27 items on my Must Do Immediately list.

I did resume running in the spring and actually ran the Chicago Half Marathon last month. It was long, it was hard and I lost a toenail but I really felt good doing it. I'm running a 10k with a fellow Weight Watcher this weekend, and it's very pleasing to me that 6.2 miles is a no-big-deal, standard workout for me now. It's getting colder now, and so far I've managed to adjust to Runner as Popsicle. We'll see how things change once it snows.

One thing that may propel me through the winter is a twitching need to run faster. I can run 10 miles with no issue, and obviously can run up to 13.1 without stopping or falling over. But my 11:23 minute/mile pace needs work. Even at my age, I should be able to cross the finish line a little zippier than I do. So this winter is a devotion to speed work, intervals and conditioning. I'm not going to worry about running without stopping or keeping my speed down so I can put all the miles in. I'm going to run when I feel like it, as fast as I feel like, and then I'm going to walk to rest until I can run again.

I may never do the Chicago Half again--it's a total drag getting up at 4am for a 7:30 race and eating (gluten free!) pancakes on the fly in the dark on the way to the South Side. However, there is a half marathon in the suburbs that is of interest and there's races in other cities that are now worth investigating.

I also have to slim down my eating. I'm up 6 pounds from my pre-celiac diagnosis, and while I'd like to blame the corn vs. wheat thing, I think I'm just eating more. I let my calories creep up while I was running and now that I'm not in full tilt race mode, I can't sustain it, so I've gained. I am giving myself until Thanksgiving to get back to the mid-150s, and I'm running faster now, which should help. Wish me luck.

I hope to be here more often now that I have my life back and catch you up on what's happening. I didn't really realize how much of my life got sucked up into school, and now that it's over, I feel like I have 2 years of catching up to do with the house and with my personal life. Maybe it all worked out that way: it was time for school and now it's time for life. I am totally OK with that: the men in my life are super-cool, and as it turns out, they are a hoot to be with.

More to follow, assuming I can drag myself downstairs to type.

A the E(mancipated)

My Trading Post

I'm in my second-to-last MBA class this term, and while it is butt-kicking dull, it is also insanely time-sucking, and so, as usual, I have no time to write what I wish.

One of the things I am always required to do with these online classes is participate in the 'student louge' or online forum for talking about This Week's Topic. One can only imagine the cliffhangers generated from a bunch of overworked 40somethings trying to drum up creative things to say about the Price Elasticity of Demand or the Fundamentals of Supply Chain Management in a Lean Manufacturing Environment. One can almost hear the paint drying on the growing grass...

Despite my utter frustration with the third-grade level writing and the propensity for my fellow students to agree with one another rather than risk a debate on anything, I continue to write as I always do--long and with attempted wit. As a result, I am largely ignored. I do not understand this, except to surmise that it is simply too much trouble to read my blatherings and/or respond.

So to "get back" at my peers and to thrash out at least a little whimper of a post, I'm copying one of my Week 1 posts out here. We were asked to write out the "3 compelling reasons why we chose one product over another, and conversely, what we would sell if we were a supplier. Finally, why does it all work?" Stay with me; remember, if it's worth writing, it's worth making fun of. And there's no better target of fun-poking than myself.

More celiac writing to follow. Much, much, much to tell, but MBA comes first--at least until mid-October, when my last assignment is turned in.

A the I(n my Penultimate Class)

I am a Consumer Reports girl all the way down the line.

Price is a concern, but is secondary to quality and reliability. I take a very long time to decide on all but the most trivial of purchases, and I admit that even those "impulse" purchases are relative re: timing (it took me 3 months to choose a travel mug).

As a result of what I politely term my 'scientific mind' on purchases, I go for the sturdy, long-lasting, Global Warming-durable items. I'll choose stainless steel over plastic, cotton over polyester, and, in the higher-priced markets, Toyota over Hyundai. Both have lovely body styles, but even though Toyota is way more expensive and far less flexible on price, their cars never die.

My Eureka vacuum trumped the Hoover in microbial pickup and durability of attachments. The 45% silk cardigan I plucked from an obscenely expensive boutique has been with me since college, and the leather backpack I bought as a Starting My MBA Gift in 1995 (no typo, it's been 14 years in the making), just yielded its first tiny (repairable) tear.

The third category of Reasons to Purchase behind Durability and Price is propensity for timelessness re: fashion. Because it takes me so long to decide and because the things I buy last forever, I can't risk too much that's trendy, lest I look like a throwback, or some crazy Chicago lady who lives out of her shopping cart (irony intended). :)

On the seller side, I would not be so presumptuous to assume that everyone is as spastic as me regarding a Zillion year half-life, so I'd do a bell curve of items: 70% in the pretty good/no complaints/will last at least a season stock and then fill up the rest of my inventory with fringe on both sides: half in the fragile-yet-trendy and the other half in the Will Outlive Your Twinkies category.

Why do I think it all works? Because there are always buyers available to purchase items of quality (again, a relative term).

Gluten for Punishment

My sick mind is a powerful being.

Three weeks ago, in what was an otherwise ordinary checkup, I heard both ‘you’re anemic’ and ‘symptoms suggestive of celiac disease’. Because I am so fond of overreacting, I decided to eliminate gluten from my diet immediately. Celiac disease can cut up to 10 years off of your life, and in 60% of adult cases, celiacs have no symptoms. Since it is very easy to ignore a disease that makes no noise, I decided on a preemptive attack. Cut out the amber waves and bring back the villi! My small intestines, my weakening bones and my teeny red blood cells would all celebrate with me.

This proved harder than I imagined. First of all, much like celiac disease, gluten is everywhere. A sticky protein substance found in wheat, barley and rye, it is literally the ‘glue’ that holds processed foods together. When not playing a poison on TV, it’s a great fiber source, a base for any kind of bread or baked good, and sometimes used as a dusting on conveyor belts to keep items clean. An instance of 5 parts per billion can be enough to cause a reaction, though, so in order for a food to get the prized gluten-free label, it must not only be gluten-free, but also be manufactured in plants that separate the celiac foods from the gluten-made.

Soy sauce has gluten in it. So does Cool Whip, reduced fat sour cream, and the calcium supplements I’m taking to overcome my early-onset bone thinning. Howard is still unemployed, so now is not the time to be tossing out good food or spending $12 for gluten-free “Cheerinos”. Ten extra years of life is worth it, though, and from what I can tell, there’s no downside to removing gluten from my diet. There’s more calories in corn-based items, but again, I’d rather be 2 pounds heavier than dead. So if it means I have my stir-fry without garnish, and with rice instead of couscous, then I’m ok to try it for a while.

Celiac Treatment #1: Destroy Everyone Else’s Vacation
We were in Florida that next week. My poor in-laws; uprooted from their routine whenever we come down and now I have to shoo away all flour-like entities from the kitchen. You can’t even cook on the same surface where a flour-dusted item once lay. Forget the fat-free fudge pudding, the Reduced Fat Nilla Wafers and those yummy tortillas we can only find in Florida. The grandparents were really cool about it, and in fact, the corn tortillas we had for lunch on the second day were way better than the flour tortillas I’d been eating for the last 2 years. But still, I felt supremely guilty.

Something happened. I started to feel really good. I had a couple of days where I ate too many prunes (to counteract my reduced fiber intake) and crimped up my inside for a while. And then I took my vitamins before breakfast one day, and all the nasties of empty stomach/gelatin capsules mélange struck me and I was decommissioned for about 3 hours. Seriously, don’t ever do that. I really thought I was going to do an Alien stomach eruption. But once I stopped trying to destroy myself, I felt great. The teenage skin that has never left my face or my shoulders cleared up. I had this feeling of thinness in my tummy that I never had, even at my lightest weight. I was pretty tired, but we’re more active in Florida than at home and I figured the iron deficiency was working against me as well. I slept more than I expected to, but when I was awake and not poisoning myself, I felt awesome. Maybe gluten-free was the path to high energy health.

Celiac Treatment #2: Go off-program to prove illness
Seven days into the new diet, I found out that you’re not supposed to go gluten-free until after the screening test. Apparently the telltale sign of a celiac is a high level of gluten antigens. So if you stop eating gluten, the antigens will go down and you’ll look healthy when you’re not. So with only 2 days left to the test I sprinkled a generous amount of wheat germ on my dinner and then had some more in my cool whip-topped fruit for dessert.

And then I had a reaction. Not a doubled-over, wailing in pain reaction, but my face got flushed and kind of prickly. I was warm all over, and I had jumbling noises in my abdomen into the night. By morning the redness had lessened, but it was still there, and when I put more wheat germ on my eggs, it came right back. Freaked out and horrified by my face, I didn’t do any more wheat germ that day. I figured 2 large doses and a skin reaction would be enough.

My doc told me it would be a week or more before the test results came back. But, as is usual in the case of this new dude, I had results in 2 days. I still have anemia, but it’s improving. My celiac screen was clear.

Clear that I have celiac? Well, no. All antigens came back negative. I do not have celiac.

So what was all that noise back there? Clearly my body reacted to something over the weekend.

Celiac Treatment #3: Be Sick Anyway
I had another reaction at lunch today. I ate a bit of the mayonnaise (has gluten) and now my stomach is upset. So either I’m a complete goon-head and am mucking up my own health in my brain, or I really do have celiac and I hosed up my initial opportunity to uncover it. They should biopsy the crazy part of my brain. Though there would be no point-clearly I’m certifiable. No reactions at all until Celiac was suggested; now they are everywhere. And I still think I’m diseased even though the test came back negative. Sometimes it’s just exhausting being me.

The only real determinant of celiac disease is the small intestine biopsy. Apparently the blood screening is good for confirming the disease but not particularly reliable for an unqualified yes, especially if the disease is mild to begin with. Up to 30% false negative, if, like other celiacs, I am abnormally low in a particular gluten antigen. So even if it’s elevated it would show normal or even negative. I talked to the specialist’s office and they are clearly skeptical. Looks like I might get the periscope-down-the-throat treatment after all. Not my idea of a good time, but hey, if they give me Versed, I won’t remember it. And then I’ll know for sure. No more Psycho Brain posing as Doctor Know-It-All.

Stay tuned. And ask Howard for his Garbanzo Bean and Sweet Potato waffle recipe. I know it sounds hurl-worthy, but they were really good.

A the C(ranial Celiac)

Wheat The People

Every year in March, I go to the doctor for a check-up. I don’t particularly enjoy the paper dress/show me your insurance card combo, but it must be done and my birthday is in March, so it’s easy to remember. Every year when my odometer turns over, I go in for a tune-up.

My doctor drew my blood, listened to my lungs, complimented me on my weight loss, and said he’d call when the results came in. Two days later, he leaves a message on my voicemail. “Hi, Amy. Doctor Kirk here. I got your blood test results and you’re pretty anemic. Give me a call.”

When I reached him, he repeated his message. ‘Man, Amy, you’re anemic. I mean, really anemic.”

He goes on about how anemia can be caused by a number of things, including a simple iron deficiency, but he wants to check everything out on the inside to make sure I don’t have any secret bleeding going on. He gives me the name of a practice near my office and tells me to call once I have the appointment scheduled. Their name? Midwest Digestive Disease.

I’m pretty sure I hyperventilated the rest of the afternoon. Through it, I managed to stay at work (barely) and call the appointment desk for Midwest Disease (that’s what they call themselves). Magically, they had an appointment for the next day. Just an office visit; please have your doctor fax over the blood results. You’ll be here no more than 20 minutes, and there’s no need to fast or freak out.

That’s what they think—clearly they’ve never met me.

The “Midwest Disease” staff was really nice, and the doctor was friendly and incredibly forthcoming with information. He showed me my results on his laptop, pointing out that not only do I have low hemoglobin, but that my red blood cells are smaller than normal. He stands up and points to a poster of the human insides. “Anemia generally has 4 causes. The first, iron-deficiency, has 3 common sources.”

On he went, detailing every possible combination of reasons why this was happening. My multi-vitamin didn’t have iron, I had heavy periods, I was unable to absorb iron, I gave blood regularly; on and on. I’m pretty sure he has Asperger’s, because he was looking in my direction, but he rarely made eye contact. Oddly, the Asperger’s set me a bit at ease. I’m pretty comfortable with brainy, engaging males who are sometimes fleeting in their eye contact. Plus, it somehow made him really human, which reduced my blood pressure off the 4-alarm stage. He said good-bye, and then another very nice nurse scheduled an appointment 2 days later at Edwards Hospital.

The Edwards Hospital staff is other-worldly in terms of their service. In the 3 hours I spent at the hospital, I talked to no fewer than eleven people. Every one of them was friendly, engaging, and working to calm me down. I was freaked out beyond belief, and the procedure itself gave me the dry heaves in terms of its invasiveness and possible Bad News Outcomes. Even so, each nurse had something warm and soothing to say. There was no chit-chat between staffers, no pretending I couldn’t hear them while they gossiped, and no acting as if we were all sitting at a bus stop, except that one of us was wearing heated blankets and an i.v. They worked, they talked to me, and when the doctor came in, he gave a little intro. “This is Amy. She has anemia, and we’re going to check and make sure everything is all right with her.” Then, when it was time to begin, the nurse closest to me said, ‘This is where you’re going to start forgetting things.’
She was right. I had been told I’d be in ‘twilight’ sleep, but my mind is completely blank and black until I was in recovery and Howard was talking to Doctor Asperger.

One business day later, I was on the phone discussing results. No bleeding, no suspicious things, but evidence suggestive of celiac disease. Dr. Asperger wanted to run a blood screening test. I called Dr. Kirk, who responded, "Wow, Celiac". We agreed to screen me, deciding that we’d check my blood for anemia again, now that I’m on an iron supplement and eating spinach with every meal.

I’m not having the test until after I get back from Florida, but in the mean time, I’ve done some research on Celiac Disease. It’s like an armadillo: I’d never heard of it before, and then as soon as I typed it into my search engine, it was everywhere. Even Weight Watchers had a discussion board full of women who had had the disease for years.

Celiac Disease is essentially Gluten Intolerance, a condition where the body does not recognize wheat and its kin as nutrients. It views them as viruses or enemies and ‘flattens out’ the little hairs in the small intestine, refusing to absorb nutrients in or around the wheat. It’s apparently incredibly common (1 in 133 adults), wildly undiagnosed (estimated 97% of those affected do not know) and takes an average 11 years to uncover.

The disease used to be a childhood ailment and the unlucky youngsters diagnosed were doomed to a diet of bananas and baby food for their whole, stunted lives. Now, while gluten-free food is affordable only if you pay in gold bars, it is plentiful, especially if you are willing to cook for yourself. Low fat is tougher, but the closer you stick to the ‘ground’, e.g., eating whole foods, the easier it is to keep the grain out of your life.

Even with all that, going to the grocery store looking for gluten-free foodstuffs is a bit like running with scissors over broken glass while your hair is on fire and hoping you won’t get hurt. Wheat and its long line of aliases are the base metal of foods, the petroleum of the ingestible. Apart from the obvious places--cereal, bread, and pasta, wheat is in (nearly) everything processed, most soups, some make-ups and many vitamins (in the capsules). Moreover, even if you eat something that’s gluten-free, if it was cooked on a grill with wheat, the teeny gluten microbes can stick to the food and make you sick.

If it goes undetected long enough, severe anemia can develop, or significant bone loss, or even cancer. FYI, last fall when I got my mammogram, Dr. Kirk suggested I get a bone scan as well. I have thinning bones. It’s a common thing in tall, thin women, but I was 43 when the test was done, which is pretty young to show borderline osteoporosis. So even though I have no symptoms of celiac, I suspect that something is up.

So, insofar as I can, I’ve given up the Glute. I have found nothing that shows a detriment to removing it from my diet. Whatever I need in terms of fiber, roughage, grain or vitamins can be had from other sources. My carb intake is pretty low anyway, so the challenge will be to wipe it out entirely. I’ll need to take a magnifying glass to every vitamin capsule, every high-fiber wrap in the freezer, and everything that’s not in its original form. It will be tough, but Howard has already donned his Cooked Crusader Cape and declared himself up for the challenge.

The thing that concerns me is DS. Celiac disease is hereditary, and so if I have it, he may as well. Doing the de-glute on him will be much tougher. His favorite food is pizza, and after that is Cheerios. We tried gluten-free pizza last year and he picketed the front lawn. When I offered him gluten-free cookies in apology, he threatened to sue. But if he has it, then the wheat must go. Whatever the pain, I will do it. Anecdotal evidence suggests that children with autism spectrum disorders show a marked reduction in disorder symptoms and behaviors when the gluten is removed from their diet. It can take 6 months to pull it all out and get the small intestine villi back in action, but when they recover, they do so completely; so long the child remains free of the amber waves.

It’s a tough time to be investing in this type of food, but I guess we’ll just have to consider it part of our health insurance premiums. If it truly helps, then it’s worth it. No offense to Dr. Asperger and the cast of Zen Scrubbers I met at the hospital, but even with their terrific service, I’d rather not have to go through any of this again if I can avoid it.

By the way, in the first moments after discovering my anemic condition, I called Howard to find out how much iron was in my regular multi-vitamin. There was none. Zero. Zippo iron in a women’s formula multi-vitamin. I got a supplement right away, but are you kidding me? I’ll be really irritated if I went through all this just because I was too dumb to read a label.

But no, there were lessons here, even if my only illness is stupidity. I don’t need gluten, and we could all potentially be healthier without it. I can always find other ways to gum up my insides. After all, every time Howard travels, I have to cook for myself.

A the G(lute No More)