spelunking daily news

[the_siobhan]

Saw the specialist this morning. Don't know what the hell I was thinking, booking an appointment on a Saturday morning. Getting out of bed this morning was brutal.

While I was there I ended up dropping $200 on four blood tests. Apparently celiac disease (or whatever it's called) can be detected by looking for antibodies in the blood, but OHIP doesn't cover it.

All the Americans on my f-list can point and laugh at me now.

Apparently I have developed Barrett's Esophagus. Annoying because I'll have to get scoped regularily to keep an eye on it, but otherwise not a big deal. I look upon it as a fair trade for all those pap smears I don't have to get any more.

An interesting tidbit of info came up over the holidays, when I was explaining the whole stomach pain/acid reflux thing to my sister my mother piped up and said, "Oh I've had acid reflux since I was pregnant with you. I just take (X drug) for it and I'm fine." Something I hadn't known before. So whatever this is, it's probably hereditary.

I am currently on day 6 of no grains whatsoever. I haven't had a single peep from my stomach. Another useful piece of data.

Comments

[miss_squiddy]

I have a friend with that. He watches what he eats, steers clear of spicy foods and sometimes he jumps up and down after he's eaten because he finds it helps to shake all the food down into his actual stomach. He has also found that cutting down on booze has helped but I expect it's one of these things that affects people in different ways.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

He has acid reflux or Barrett's?

I'm not likely to give up my spices or my drink. But I really like the idea of jumping up and down.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

It would be fun in a restaurant.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

"Doctor's orders! I swear!"

[miss_squiddy]

Sorry - Barrett's. I think. It sounds like the same thing: he starts digesting food before it's properly in his stomach...

He was super-careful for ages but then discovered that what he ate didn't matter as much as how much he ate in one go.

[metalana.livejournal.com]

I got the celiac blood test for free. It was ordered by a gastroenterologist at St Michael's Hospital, and apparently the test was done at McMaster. It was called TTIGA.

Between hearing "might be celiac" from that doc, and getting the "celiac negative" result, I found my body was sensitive to eating wheat. Apparently gluten-sensitivity can be psychosomatic!

All that being said, I would have gladly dropped $200 to find out for sure whether I can eat wheat.

Good luck with your tests!

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I'm debating whether or not a positive would be good news or not. At the very least gluten-free products are easy to come by.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Harder to eat. While gluten free bread is better than it used to be, it's still pretty much what Terry Pratchett describes when he writes about Dwarf Bread.

A while ago we ran out of pasta (clearly in one of my more brain dead stages) and ate the gluten free stuff we keep in the cupboard for when our friend with coeliac disease stays with us. Even baked in a nice casserole thing, it was practically inedible.

The cookies and cakes can be really good, if a bit dry, though.

wild rice pasta

[metalana.livejournal.com]

I once made some wild rice pasta, which tasted fine when just fresh. As leftovers, it was disgusting - the stuff does not last. Perhaps the casseroling had a similar effect.

In any case, living a guaranteed-gluten-free life is a big challenge/annoyance, made only slightly easier by its current popularity.

Re: wild rice pasta

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

That sounds marvelous. I love wild rice.

I have some alternative flours in my freezer that I tried to make into things like flatbreads so I could still have wraps. But I'm having trouble getting the hang of this thing where you turn raw ingredients into actual edible food. (I think that people commonly call it "cooking".)

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Well that's not encouraging.

I used to circle with a celiac. Somebody brought in cookies made of pea flour so he could eat them and they were the nastiest things I have ever tasted. (Our coven had two lactose-intolerants, a vegetarian, a vegan, a celiac and a peanut allergy. Feasts were challenging.)

[billyname99.livejournal.com]

I am SO glad I'm only allergic to shellfish!

[inulro.livejournal.com]

I am a vegetarian & allergic to eggplant (or intolerant, anyhoo it makes me vomit for hours), but as I otherwise can and will eat anything, I still have a wider diet than most people I know.

YMMV

[inulro.livejournal.com]

You gotta remember I'm biased - all of the foods I actually like contain gluten in vast quantities. Having watched a close friend get diagnosed with celiac and then develop dairy intolerance through the stress of Family Drama, I live in the fear of it happening to me.

I can't imagine anything being made with pea flour being edible, but you can make some really good pancake-type things with chick pea (gram) flour. Purchased wherever you get your Indian food supplies (the shop in Manchester used to comment that I was the only white person who ever bought the stuff). In TO you can probably get it anywhere, though.

Re: YMMV

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Probably in Kensington Market. If not there is a big Indian district in the east end of town.

Your the second person to mention chickpea flour, which I hadn't even known existed. (I just discovered potato flour. Be still my Irish heart!)

[tristam08.livejournal.com]

$200 for blood tests?...holy shit!!!
Yet another hole in the health system.
I'm glad to hear that your stomach hasn't bothered you, but it kind've sucks that you've had to cut out grains to get to that point. Good luck the rest of the way.

P.S. It was good to see you & Axel last night.
What kind've shape was he in this morning?

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

$200 for four tests. In the States I suspect it would have been closer to a grand. So I can't really kvetch too loudly.

I had fun last night! Axel is eating Advil today. I think the wine had it's way with him. :-)

[http://users.livejournal.com/cincinnatus_c_/]

Apparently I have developed Barrett's Esophagus.

Drag. :(

my mother piped up and said, "Oh I've had acid reflux since I was pregnant with you. I just take (X drug) for it and I'm fine." Something I hadn't known before. So whatever this is, it's probably hereditary.

Could be ... it's certainly common. A lot of people in my orbits have ongoing acid issues. There were over 22 million prescriptions for lansoprazole as Prevacid in the US in 2005 (that's more than for fluoxetine/Prozac), another 7+ million for omeprazole, another 12+ million for ranitidine. And that's not even counting the regular OTC acid-reducer and antacid gulpers.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, not the best of news. Apparently cells are traumatized by being bathed in hydrochloric acid on a regular basis. Whodah thunk?

But also not the worst news. If I can fix the digestion problem it's unlikely to get any worse.

Prevacid is what my doctor put me on. Nasty stuff. Gives me headaches.

[individuation.livejournal.com]

Woah - why did you have to pay so much to get the bloodwork done? Isn't that supposed to be the benefit of socialized medicine, that the gov't pays for it? That blows.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Politics.

The cost of health care keeps going up - more expensive life-saving procedures, aging population, etc. People don't want their taxes to go up, but they still want everything to be paid for. Governments hate raising taxes, it threatens their chances of re-election. To contribute to the pressure, we have two terms of a Conservative provincial government who actually cut taxes, therefore leaving a big deficit.

As a result of this thhey've de-listed a lot of stuff they used to pay for. Mostly stuff they can get away with arguing is non-essential. Apparently tests for non life-threatening dietary restrictions fall into this category.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

To contribute to the pressure, we have two terms of a Conservative provincial government who actually cut taxes, therefore leaving a big deficit.

That should say had two terms.

When the tax-cutting started resulting in things like, oh, people dying from contaminated water, they lost their jobs. And to be fair the Liberal government that replaced them instituted a new income tax specifically to go towards the health care system. Problem is that's it's just not enough yet.

[mathochist.livejournal.com]

If you're completely off grains, the celiac tests can fail to catch it. (They're like most allergy tests: you have to actually have had recent enough exposure to still be showing some level of chemical reaction.)

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

The specialist is of the opinion that two weeks isn't long enough to make a difference in antibody levels.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

An interesting tidbit of info came up over the holidays, when I was explaining the whole stomach pain/acid reflux thing to my sister my mother piped up and said, "Oh I've had acid reflux since I was pregnant with you. I just take (X drug) for it and I'm fine." Something I hadn't known before. So whatever this is, it's probably hereditary.

i'm sure i was told that the reflux is hereditary. my chronic coughing is apparently down to reflux, where my mum mainly suffers heartburn, so i'd never really made much connection.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Reflux/heartburn runs wickedly in my Mom's side of the family, so hereditariness is definitely a thing with it. (I've been meaning to go and see a doctor about it at some point myself.)

nice blog for gluten free food type stuff

[nimrodiel.livejournal.com]

http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/

written by a woman in Seattle who has all sorts of helpful links there as well for celiac sufferers

Re: nice blog for gluten free food type stuff

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link!

[kest]

$200? psh. I think instead of pointing and laughing, I'll just sit over here and sigh in a melancholy fashion.