Sunday, June 14, 2015

12 Weeks In - DHwRF

Yesterday was 12 weeks into my elimination diet!

I haven't done any update posts for the last three weeks, because life's been a bit busy.  I've been working more than twice as much as normal (almost full time) and we traveled one weekend and had friends in town another weekend. Keeping up with all that plus my diet and my son's diet and the normal-life stuff left me with about, oh, zero minutes for writing a blog post.

So, I'm finally sitting down on a Sunday morning before church to record an update.

The last three weeks actually haven't provided a whole lot to report.  First, I waited until the end of Week 10 before I felt like my bout with headaches was completely resolved.  Week 11, I either got a stomach bug or food poisoning or had a violent reaction to some cardboard-esque grean beans from Trader Joe's. Whatever it was, I was bed-ridden and throwing up and had diarrhea and almost passed out at one point.  No one else in the family ever got sick, thank goodness.  Then, a couple days after I was healed from that episode, at the beginning of Week 12, I got glutened.  It was totally my fault; I allowed friends to bring bread and cereal into the house and wasn't careful enough with instructing them to wash hands, clean the table, put dishes directly into the dishwasher, use a separate dish cloth, etc.  I know I'm an insanely sensitive celiac, and yet sometimes I just get lazy and I guess I want to feel like a normal person for a little while.  And then I always pay for it.  I end up with abdominal pains, bloating, and brain fog that comes and goes for days.  It's a week later now, and I'm still having daily issues.  It's so frustrating.

I did have a couple reintroductions.  First, I reintroduced potatoes, which went fine, hurray!!  I expected they would, as they reintroduced fine the last time I did the elimination diet.  Since potatoes are a nightshade along with tomatoes, I'm really hopeful that I'll be able reintroduce tomatoes next without any issues.  Fingers crossed.  I miss my tomatoes.  However, before reintroducing them, I need to get rid of my headaches.  Which leads to my next reintroduction...

After my headaches went away the end of Week 10, I tried reintroducing milk again.  I was fine with one serving, but more than one serving in a week resulted in another headache.  But here's the catch: I was consuming this milk through raspberry Starbucks lattes. (Yes, slap me on the hand, that's one of my few indulgences in life and I want to know if I'm able to have it.  I am able to differentiate celiac symptoms from other symptoms, and I do not get glutened from these lattes, so I want to know if they're safe otherwise digestively and for autoimmune issues so I can have a treat and a way to socialize.)  I assumed that the headaches from the lattes were a result of the milk, but then yesterday I had a raspberry latte with coconut milk, and this morning I woke up with a returned headache.  So now I'm wondering if it's actually the raspberry flavoring causing the issues, not the milk.  It seemed so unlikely to me that the flavoring would cause the autoimmune reactions, but now I really don't know.  I think I'm going to have to wait for this headache to go away and then try plain lattes with milk and no flavoring.  This is what I get for reintroducing several things at once instead of going step by step.  I should have done plain lattes first, and then added the flavoring.

Alright that's it for now.  I gotta get to church. :)

If you'd like to catch up on my past weeks, you can find them all below.

Digestive Health with REAL Food - Take 2
One Week In - DHwRF Update
Two Weeks In - DHwRF
Three Weeks In - DHwRF
Four Weeks In - DHwRF
Five Weeks In - DHwRF
Six Weeks In - DHwRF
Seven Weeks In - DHwRF
Nine Weeks In - DHwRF