i hate your guts!!!

2025 was... a year. it wasn't the year i became celiac - at least i'm pretty sure it wasn't - but it was the year i put the pieces together. it was the year a very stressful a&e trip, or coming off of testosterone, or a myriad of other possibilities, gave me symptoms that i actually recognised. not a lot of people know that most of my education and career ideas until recently were in health and social care. i remembered being seventeen or eighteen and learning about the mechanics, diagnosis, and diet for celiac disease for my physiology exams.

[if you need the revision: celiac disease is an autoimmune disease which causes the immune system to attack the villi - little finger-like structures which help with absorbing nutrients - of the small intestine, whenever gluten is ingested. gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley, rye, and oats. it isn't an intolerance, nor an allergy, and no, not even a tiny bit. yes, forever, it's the only treatment.]

i don't know why, then, i decided to listen to a stupid ass GP who told me to try a gluten free diet over the summer whilst i was away, then reintroduce gluten for testing. i knew you can't diagnose celiac disease if a person is avoiding gluten - the tests will show up negative, since there's no immune response to be seen in the blood, and, eventually, the intestinal damage heals.

i think it was desperation. it was a pretty miserable experience, early 2025. i was constantly exhausted, couldn't put weight on no matter what i did, and i looked about four months pregnant at all times. for someone who has some weird kind of emetophobia for... let's just put it kindly, both ways, it was pretty torturous. eventually, the anxiety, the "what if i get sick here" was so debilitating, i would have panic attacks about going to the supermarket a fifteen minute walk from my flat. you don't want to know about the panic attacks i had flying to/from the EU with no health insurance card. you don't want to know what happened in the netherlands, trust me.

i listened to the GP a little bit too well. i stuck to the diet, and never came off for testing. it's an unsurprisingly common story amongst celiacs; get a stupid doctor, get better, no time to make yourself sick again. after all, you have family members with it, you have every aching twisting stomach issue imaginable, and a collection of things anyone else would think are unrelated.

[hey, did you know that i nearly went blind in my left eye because of celiac? or that i ended up in a&e with migraines so bad i couldn't see? or that my sciatica, of all things, could be related?]

what other assumption is there to make? is there any point in them shoving a camera down your throat after you torture yourself with six weeks of bread and pasta? you feel better than you have in years.

of course, there are some benefits to a full diagnosis. disability, doctors take you more seriously (... debatable), but there's no medicine. there's nothing being gatekept behind white gowns and blue gloves that can fix you. only you can fix you, so, i did.

it took a few months, and a lot of fuckups [my favourite seasoning? wheat and barley! double homicide!], but i did it. i've learnt how to read an ingredients label in three seconds flat, how to scan the aisles with "yes, no, no, no, hmmm maybe" in my head without standing there like an idiot who's experiencing his first day on earth. the first times, though, it really did feel like my first day on earth. no one prepares you for the prices, or for just how many things you can never have again. if i'm honest, i did feel like something cruel had snatched the last few things making me happy from me.

what i didn't realise about that, though, was that i was at my lowest already because of these things. getting rid of them would be hard, and it was, i still miss them. but their absence gave me so many more things that make me happy. quantitatively, i'm limited, but qualitatively, i'm way better off. there might only be two restaurants in town i can eat at, but my god are they good. i can finally enjoy food again! maybe my bread is tiny, and people don't like it, but i make a great salami and smoked cheese toastie with it. you don't want my fake bread? oh well, more toasties for me.

[side note, i miss toasties so bad rn. first thing i'm eating when my tooth socket is healed fr.]

is it annoying to have to extensively google places to get food while i'm out? yes! is it tiring to constantly clean up peoples' crumbs just so i can cook safely? yeah! is it boring and a little bit embarrassing having to lay my cards on the table and ask the same questions to the server every time i take my chances with a restaurant? absolutely!

i get to go to restaurants again. i left my house to do something fun. i'm cooking a nice meal for myself instead of relying on ensure and nutrient-complete drinks just to not drop dead because i can't keep anything down.

that's the point - people often say to me, "i couldn't go gluten free," "i'd die if i had to give up ____." [okay, so don't.] i'm the healthiest i've been in a long time. you couldn't handle the symptoms, either, trust me. you'd be begging for my tiny, crumbly bread, and my pasta that falls apart if you cook it a minute too long. you don't realise how miserable of an experience an autoimmune disease is until you get one [and you might! 1 in 100 people are celiac, but around two thirds of us don't know it!]. you think that my life must be miserable because i have to live differently to you to feel well, but did you give a shit when i actually was miserable? when i was in bed all day, couldn't leave the house, lived on ensure and pepto bismol?

of course not - as a society, we don't care about disabled people until a 'typical' way of life gets challenged, and someone actually feels better for it. remember, you're supposed to act like them or be miserable. don't smile about it!

anyway, i feel better for it. i'm rarely bloated these days, i need pepto bismol maybe once a week. i'm finally gaining weight, and people notice [god forbid someone's happy about that, either]. i'm much less anxious to travel, and i love going for walks and doing little tasks outside of my house. i've eaten at some great restaurants i never would've tried if it wasn't for being restricted in my diet. i've gotten pretty fuckin' good in the kitchen. i like to think i've helped at least one person, and she knows who she is. maybe more, in some way, i hope. and, no one will ever hate my guts more than my own immune system, so, checkmate.