Facing Food Allergies with JOY

I choose joy.  That is my motto, my mantra, my decision.  I choose joy!  Every day, in good times and in bad times, I choose joy.

It is not always easy.  Some days it is downright hard.  But it is my choice.  I want to seek the gifts that are all around me: the gifts God gives me in each moment throughout the day.  It is the smile of a child, a dinner cooked by my husband, time to read a book, flowers blooming all around my lemon tree, a chance to catch up with a friend.  They are the moments that surround me every day.  When I look and find a gift and name it, it becomes mine.  It is now a gift for me.  But sometimes this is hard and I have to work with all my might to find the good.

Last night was a hard night for me.   I have been having many, many migraines lately.  I have suffered from these since I was a child so it is no new thing for me.  But my migraines are mostly triggered by food allergies (and lack of sleep and stress).  I thought it might be corn that I was reacting too, so I cut that out of my diet.  But then got a migraine after eating chicken, rice, tomatoes and nectarines.  I'm pretty sure that the chicken is what is causing these migraines.  Chicken?  Really?  We eat this all the time (which may be why I am getting so many of them).  Chicken is delicious and amazing and wonderful. This made me so sad.

Every since I was a child I have been sick.  No one knew why.  Migraines that started when I was in elementary school and continued on into adulthood.  After 10 years of daily migraines I was diagnosed with Celiac disease at 30 years old.  That was devastating at first since I LOVE BREAD!  But my 20 plus symptoms disappeared after eliminating wheat from my diet.   I discovered how to eat yummy food and work my life around being gluten free.  Then a year later, I found out I had an allergy to peanuts.  They cause migraine, brain fog and fatigue. 6 months later I discovered that garlic makes me very ill.  Garlic makes me so sick I can barely drive within 10 minutes-migraine, brain fog, fatigue and dizziness.  Then I was reacting to lactose, not too badly but enough to bother me.  This year I have had to stop eating eggs and tapioca flour since they were causing me to feel like I had the flu.  Almost all things gluten free are made with tapioca flour.  Again and again I have had to change all my recipes and figure out what to eat and how to prepare it.  Pretty much everything I eat I have to prepare myself or I run the risk of being sick in bed for the next 24 hours.

I have tried so hard to find joy through out this process.  There have been things that I have had to mourn the loss of: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Garlic bread, All bread, Cheese puffs, ect.  I am sad for a bit and then just have to let that go.  So many amazing and delicious foods that I can never eat again.  So many restaurants that I can't eat at.  All of this has changed my life and how I live.  Going on vacation is a bit harder when you have to bring all your own food.  

But I find joy in the fact that I can still go on vacation or hang out with friends.  I can still build relationships and make deep friendships.  It is worth the risk of going home sick or just bringing my own food to be able to fellowship with my friends and family.  I can still eat most ice creams and chocolate so that is a big thing for me.

  

But last night I was sitting there with a migraine and realized that every time I have eaten chicken for awhile I have ended up sick.  It was too much!  I sat there with tears pouring down my face.  I didn't ask for this.  I don't want to be sick every time I eat.  I don't want to eliminate one more thing from my diet.  I already can't buy any food in 2/3 of any store that I walk into.  For what ever reason, this really affected me. But again, I realize that I have a choice.  I can choose joy again or walk down the self pity road.  

I will not choose self pity and tears.  I will again CHOOSE JOY!  God has given me so much and has been my strength through this every step of the way.  I don't know why it is happening to me and I don't need to.  Go
d loves me and cares for me so much.  He is allowing me to find the joy He intended for each of us to have.  I will smile and laugh and find more recipes that I can make.  Food allergies will not define who I am and they will not hold me back.  

It doesn't matter what you are facing.  We all face trials and hard times.  Some much bigger than others.  But God will be with you with every trial.  He longs for you to find joy in Him and be able to trust in Him even when it feels like your life is falling apart.  Happiness is based upon how your life is going and if good things are happening.  Joy is different.  It comes from knowing that God is good and He is your salvation and mighty rock.  In all that you are encountering today, I challenge you to choose joy.  Cry and grieve and then find the gifts that God has given you.   Actively look for the gifts.  They are there.

Choose Joy!!!

What is wrong with my Little Girl?

I love my sweet little Hannah.  She is such a joy to have around.  When I need some one to hold the dust pan, wash or set the table, fold the towels or any other job she can handle, my Hannah is right there ready to help me.  I love how she is always ready to smile, laugh and give out a hug.

In between her happy, helpful times though, she is often whiny and complaining.  It is like there are two little girls at times.  She had been the perfect baby.  Hardly cried and was such a pleasure to be around.  When she was around 8-9 months old, I noticed that she began to get pretty grumpy and cried a lot.  She was teething and was started on table food around that time.  I saw that she had a big, round belly, but I thought that lots of little ones have a big belly.  So we really didn't think much of it and let her keep growing.

As she has gotten older, her sweet and helpful spirit has blossomed.  However, her whining and irritability continued.  When I was diagnosed with Celiac disease 1 1/2 years ago, the girls both were tested and it came out negative.  I was relieved, but still felt that something wasn't right with Hannah.  

Before her 4th birthday, I decided to make her gluten free.  I wanted to see if it would make a difference.  She was constantly running to the bathroom, having diarrhea, still had a bloated belly, eating a little bit and then saying that she was full.  Twenty minutes later, she would cry that she was so hungry.  She was irritable and fussy.  I just felt that it was worth a try.

She was super excited about it and told everyone that she was gluten free and not a wheat (that is what she calls others who can eat wheat).  It went very well and I thought that all her symptoms improved a bit.  Chris wasn't fully convinced, but he was fully supportive of trying the gluten free approach.  

Before Christmas, I put her back on a wheat diet with no restrictions.  

She loved eating wheat again and enjoyed all the cake and cookies she could get her hands on.  However, over the past weeks since then she has been not feeling well.  In addition to the other symptoms I mentioned above, she is crying 20 to 30 times a day about her tummy hurting her.  She wakes in the night crying about her tummy. Last night as I held her while she cried, I could hear her little tummy talking and grumbling loudly.   Her head is hurting often as well.  So I finally put a call in to the doctor.  I don't know exactly what is wrong, but I know something is not right.  

So our pediatrician said that he was concerned about her big, bloated belly.  He wants to do a pretty thorough work up and see if we can figure out what is wrong.  This Friday we will take her in for extensive blood work (20 mls of blood and a whole lot of tests).   We are looking at a milk allergy and a wheat allergy, but more specific tests than were done earlier.  Possibly a food allergy panel as well.  He will look to see if she is processing fat or protein as well.  Please be in prayer that the tests will be conclusive.  If the tests show a wheat allergy, she will also have a biopsy.

I pray that if something is wrong we will find it now. 

 Then she can have a healthy and good life that is not filled with pain. 

 I struggled with my allergies since I was a young girl.  All the symptoms that she has, I had for years.  We knew something wasn't right, but we didn't know what.  I spent over 20 years dealing with tummy pain, headaches, fatigue, debilitating migraines, skin rashes, and a ton of other symptoms.  I was told that I was making it up.  I was told that it was just stress.  I was told that I was supposed to feel that way.  Once I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease and an allergy to peanuts, my life changed.  I am healthy and feel good for the first time in my life.  

I so want Hannah to not have to go through life thinking that she has to live with the daily discomfort of something wrong with her body.

Please pray for the blood tests to go well.  Having her temperature taken at the doctors office is a huge deal for her.  She does not deal well with strangers in her personal space, until she has decided that she likes them.  It took three of us to hold her down for the previous blood test.  Pray that they draw every test that is necessary and she will only be stuck once.  

After the tests, she will be put back on a gluten free diet as well as being taken off milk (not lactose-just regular milk).  She is really upset about that now.  She understands what that will mean for her and she cried all the way home from the doctors.  Please pray we can find something similar to chocolate milk that she will like.  That is what she will miss the most.

I would love to have my happy, loving little girl back and just be able to enjoy life with her.

My Journey to a Healthy Life Continues

Five months ago I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease. Overnight I gave up eating pasta, bread, cookies and most of the food that was currently in my cupboard. This really was the start of a new life. My body began to heal slowly as it was not constantly under the attack of gluten. Shortly after this, I discovered my body was not healthy enough to process most dairy, so this was cut out of my diet as well.

I am still on a quest to be healthy and to feel good. It didn’t just stop with a gluten free diet. I thought that it would, but it didn’t. This is my story.

On a gluten free diet I had to say no to so many yummy things, I thought that I should be able to enjoy all the other gluten free things that I wanted to. I was making cookies and treats and buying lots of gluten free candy so that I didn't feel deprived. I had some good GF (gluten free) bread, rice chips, GF crackers and other high carb, processed food. Life was good.

This fruit platter was for my kids. I now leave off the chocolate on my bowl.

I spend a lot of time on the intranet reading blogs and finding recipes. I found a bunch of great blogs written by others who have stopped eating all the highly processed, high-carb foods and have started eating healthy food. Most of these people did it for the health of them or their children. So many of their stories are similar to mine.

One site I was on was really interesting to me. It is called Lexie's Kitchen. This is about a mom who made some radical changes to her families meals in order to help her toddler live a healthier life due to medical challenges he was having. I started reading stories that were shared on her site by others that had made the switch from processed to whole foods. Since I had made major changes to my diet in order to become healthy, I submitted my story. A bit ago I was hosted on her site as a guest blogger. Here is a link to my story and her website.

http://www.lexieskitchen.com/lexies_kitchen/2011/11/10/making-the-switch-sarahs-story.html#comments



I was feeling good most of the time, but still not all of the time. I had tasted what it feels like to be healthy and I wanted it all of the time. I have been on a path to change my life style so that I can be as healthy as I can. I want to feel good and to have energy to do what ever I want.

My diet had changed in some radical ways, but I could tell that I was still eating things that made me feel sick and sluggish. It wasn’t until after Halloween that I finally figured out what it was. We had made delicious home made caramel apples and caramel popcorn. I was loving the great tasting gluten free food that was supposed to make me feel good, yet I was still feeling so ill. After the second night at work (I work night shift in the NICU) I finally decided I had had enough. I wanted to get healthy. I wanted to feel good.

As I said before, I really liked Lexie’s Kitchen blog and enjoyed reading other people’s stories about how they made the switch from processed to whole foods. About this time I read a story of a lady who had made a radical switch to her diet three years ago. She talked about how and why she tossed out all the processed food and started buying things that she could recognize. Her energy level increased and she started feeling so much better. Her story and the others on this website truely inspired me.

So much so that I began a new phase of getting healthy. I finally decided to stop eating most processed foods and I have now cut out almost all sugar. My diet is mostly veggies (though I do need to work on eating more of them), fruit, meat, safe grains and some dairy.

This was really, really hard to do at first. I love sugar and chocolate and anything sweet. I ate something sweet every day. My body craved it. I couldn’t say no. But I finally got to the point that I wanted to feel good more than I wanted the sweets. So I stopped buying candy and cookies that were safe for me to eat and were tempting me. That night I decided to make the switch so I took my two little girls and my sweet sister in law, Shonna, to Trader Joes. I loaded up the basket with veggies, fruit, nuts, dried fruit, eggs and salad. I started eating these good things instead of the processed food I used to eat.

For those of you who are interested here is a glimpse of my current diet.
Breakfast: GF Oatmeal with raisons or craisins and a touch of honey. Corn tortillas with eggs and cheese. Fresh or frozen fruit smoothies. Occasional GF cereal (mostly GF Chex). And of course hot cocoa (Lactaid milk) with a bit of sugar and cocoa powder.
Lunch: Left over dinner. Chicken tacos. Salad. Fruit. Smoothies.
Dinner: Home made dinner every night. Mostly lots of different chicken recipes. GF pizza crust with my toppings (super yummy), Beef-any way you can make it, Rice, veggies, fruit, salad. Occasionally we have GF pasta with pesto, alfredo or spagetti sauce (all home made).
Snack: Fruit leather, nuts/seeds, fruit, chips and hummus, carrots, celery with peanut butter, dried fruit, mozzarella cheese stick.

It has been four weeks since I changed my diet to a truely healthy one. The cravings are gone. I don’t want or need sugar every day. My body has more energy and the sugar highs and lows are gone. I love feeling like this. It is amazing! I truely wish I could go back and do it all again.

I would really love to hear your story. What changes have you made to get healthy? How have they impacted your life? Your families life? Feel free to share it in the comments or with a link to your own blog.

My Gluten Free Journey

I am so thankful to God for letting me be diagnosed with Celiac disease. My diagnosis has changed my life so completely. My body feels so different, so free and so healthy for the first time since I can remember. This has not been an easy journey to say the least. But God has used it to draw me closer to Him. I share my story with you to encourage you to find the right answer when you don't think you have the right diagnosis.

Let me start at the beginning. I have always had digestive issues since I was a little girl. When I was at home eating home made healthy meals, normally I was fine. But ever time I was away from home on a missions trip or vacation I would always get sick. I dealt with constipation, diarrhea, fatigue and I felt aweful. I never knew why, I just dealt with it and moved on with my life. During nursing school I was diagnosed with migraines that got increasingly worse. When working at Children's Hospital in Oakland I would often barely make it home before throwing up and collapsing in bed with a severe migraine and fatigue. I lost so much weight and was down to barely 100 lbs. I had such fatigue all the time along with anemia that the doctors couldn't figure out. I was hospitalized in 2004 for two weeks with horrible stomach pain and non-stop throwing up. Every thing I ate made me sick. Since the doctors couldn't figure out the problem, they told me I was under too much stress and that was the cause of my sickness. Some implied it was all in my head. I went to doctor after doctor for years for my fatigue. I had to nap for 2-4 hours EVERY single day or I couldn't make it through the day. Most days by 10 or 11 am I was so fatigued I could barely feed the kids and make it to nap time. I was so irritable and snapping at them at times. I knew that food could make me feel better or worse, but couldn't figure out what food made me feel horrible. Little did I know that wheat (which is in everything) was making me feel so aweful. Five years ago I started gong to an amazing chiropractor multiple times a month to help control my migraines.

A year ago he kept encouraging me to get tested for a gluten intolerance. He was convinced that something was wrong with my body. My muscles were back to where they should have been-the spasms were gone. However, anything (2 minutes of working out or lifting something) would send my muscles into horrible spasms. They were not healing right. My chiropractor was concerned that I was not absorbing nutrients and so my body could not heal itself.



I didn't want to go on a gluten free diet-especially if I didnt' really need it. I didn't want to have something like that wrong with me. So I continued to eat the food that was poisoning me.

Two months ago I called my GI doctor and set up an appointment. On June 21st I saw him. He thought I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome and gave me some meds to take to feel better. (So many doctors diagnose Irritable Bowel Syndrome when they don't know what it is. Most Celiacs have had this diagnosis before actually being correctly diagnosed) I had to ask him to test me for Celiac disease. He looked very doubtful but finally ordered the blood test. I also discussed starting the gluten free diet. He said that I could try it to see if it helped at all. He had no info on gluten free diets. He told me if I could find a nutritionist, that he would refer me. He said, "I only deal with organs, not nutrition." Wow! I was kind of taken back that the doctor who dealt with the organs that absorb nutrients has no idea how to help support people that need help with nutrition. I was on my own. I am so thankful that there is sooo much information on the internet to support Celiac disease and starting on a gluten free diet.

Two weeks later, I got a call saying,"You have Celiac disease. Call back in a month and let us know if you feel better." That was it. No further testing to make sure it was Celiac (you should have a small intestine biopsy done). No tests run for nutritional deficiencys. So I got on the internet and started doing my research. I am so thankful that there is so much out there to support those with Celiac disease. I have a 5 page typed list of things that have gluten in them that I have to stay away from. I got a list of tests to run (which I had to ask my doctor to do). I have read lots of articles regarding the research out there and peoples testamonies.

It was a scary world to be thrown into at first. It was daunting trying to fix gluten free meals for the family that weren't just the same thing every night. Trying to come up with snacks that I could have on hand while everyone else had cake or cookies was a challenge too. Little by little I am getting an arsenal of my own. I now have a couple of cookbooks that are gluten free. I have emails from friends and family that have had to go on this diet (Thank-you so much Jaymie, Trish and Christine). I have a few lists from grocery stores and restaurants that have things that are safe for me to eat. Life is getting easier and so much better all the time.

It is amazing the change I feel in my body. My head is clear. I don't feel a "foggy brain" any more. I have tons of energy every day. Even going to work is different. I worked a 12 hour shift with a very, very sick baby. At times there was a doctor plus three nurses working on him to save his life. This normally would have given me a horrible migraine and I would have had difficultly making it through the shift. After 10 hours, I felt like I had just arrived and was still refreshed. My stomach pains, nausea, diarrhea, bloating and loud stomach noises are gone. My muscles feel different now. They are relaxed and healing well. The migaines are gone. A rash I had for seven years is gone. My irritability is gone. I feel so peaceful now. My whole body is different!! I am praising God for letting me be diagnosed and for taking me on this journey.

Once in awhile I eat something that is contaminated with gluten. Normally I can't even tell what I ate that was contaminated since all it takes is one crumb, one molecule, to make me sick. Last night I was enjoying a nice evening around the fire with my family. We were making smore's. I made one for each child using regular graham crackers. Then I made one for Chris. He didn't want a smore, just the marshmallow. So I cooked a marshmallow for me, made a smore with the chocolate and graham cracker set out for Chris and started eating it. Whoops! I took two bites before I realized what I had done. I gave the rest of the smore to Bekah (who was thrilled) and made a gluten free one. With in half an hour I had diarrhea, a splitting headache, tummy ache, and fatigue. I was too sick to even check facebook. It takes just about a full 24 hours to feel normal again. I certainly learned my lesson. i can never be too careful.

I really want to encourage you all to get tested if there is anyone in your family that has been diagnosed with Celiac disease. It runs in families and so you have a high chance of having it too. If you have digestive problems that are not clearly diagnosed you should also get tested. The key is that you have to be tested (blood work and biopsy) before you start a gluten free diet. Any test done after you start the diet will be negative since the tests look for damage caused by gluten. You may not have celiac disease, but a gluten intolerance. This is much more common but the blood test for Celiac disease would be negative. They have new tests out there that are way more specific that tests for intolerances. You must be your own advocate. So many doctors will just tell you it is this or that without doing any tests to make sure it is. Get a diagnosis and don't stop until you do. My whole life is changed and I will be living a much healthier life from now on. I praise my Lord and my God for allowing me to feel good and enjoy my time with my family.

I am so thrilled that I feel better and can really enjoy this time with my girls while they are young.