Medical Update

Well, the short answer is "yes," I have Celiac Disease. Color me glum. On the plus side, living my life as though I'm permanently in Phase II of the South Beach diet should result in me fitting back into clothes that have been mere memories for the past decade. And that's the only plus side.

So I went in for my second "Is this or is this not Celiac Disease" snoop around, which was an endoscopy, which is a biopsy whereby the medical team puts fairly horrible light rock on the stereo (something Phil Collins-y whiney), gives the patient a heaping helpin' of Valium (to offset the horrible light rock, I assume), and then threads a tube with a camera and snippers down the patient's throat. Which, oddly enough, was not that bad. I was afraid that I would choke on the tube or gag violently or something, but nope, after that Valium hit I couldn't have choked or gagged even if they'd put Celine Dion on the stereo. Hmmm. Perhaps that explains the Phil Collins...

They asked me to open my mouth, said please swallow, said thank you and we were off to the races. They went for a stroll through my upper GI tract and I dozed. I probably drooled, too, but they were too nice to make fun of me. They took their biopsies, woke me up, and sent me on my rather drowsy way. David took me home, for obvious reasons.

I rescheduled my follow-up appointment a couple of times but there's only so long that one can put it off. My doctor was all bright and chipper as he gave me the handout about my new life-time annoyance. And (I love Google) I already knew most of what he was about to tell me, although he was able to clear up the whole oats mystery. Oats are considered risky for people with CD, not because they have gluten, but because they are often grown near or with or on top of (or something) wheat which leads to contamination. I guess I can have oats if I grow my own.

Do on your own activity for the Reader: the next time you are in a grocery store try to find gluten-free processed food. Remember, "malt" counts as gluten.

Starting in January food containing wheat will have to be labeled as such, but "gluten-free" and "wheat-free" are not the same things because there's gluten in rye, barley, spelt, kamut, and triticale.

Oh, and another on your own activity: Get tested for Celiac Disease. It's a simple blood test. Finding out that you have it is not much fun, but not finding out until you have lymphoma and osteoporosis is much less fun and 1 in every 133 Americans probably has CD. Most of them don't know it. If you have any Irish ancestors, go get tested. Apparently, the hugely-potato and almost-no-wheat diet of the Irish for a couple hundred years helped create the problem.

(I gave that last little speech to my neices, Cheryl and Angela, at lunch today and once again proving that our family leans towards high intelligence/low wisdom, they said that if getting tested means not having pizza anymore, they'll just skip the test, but thanks. We'll see.)

And it turns out that different counties have different gluten-free guidelines. The Canadians, a wise people with their priorities straight, have decided that 12 years in an oak cast renders whiskey a gluten-free product. The US isn't so sure. I'm going with the Canadians on this one, she types, with a tot of Dewars in front of her.

I bought a book called The Gluten-Free Gourmet because it actually had some recipes for things that didn't call for "guar gum" and "xanthan gum" both of which sound like something that comes from Monsanto instead of something that comes from my kitchen.

But in the meantime, if you drop by my place any time soon, you're likely to leave with lovely parting gifts ~~ a box of Bisquik, a cereal bar, or maybe my highly valued jar of Wheat Germ.