When You Are Scared of Food Pt. I

I love food. I love to cook.  I do not take all the pictures of every thing I make and you all know I do not post recipes since I am a jazz cooker.  However the way I fuel my body brings me immense satisfaction.  I was fortunate to grow up pretty poor in America with a family that had enough common sense to know that we needed to cook to make our dollar stretch for our health instead of being trapped in a quickly evolving, nutrient-poor food system.  I am thankful to my father for helping me to learn to be savvy in the kitchen from an early age.  Knowing how to cook has been my saving grace with coping with adult-onset food allergies.

I had no known food allergies growing up then about 13 years ago things began to quietly shift.  I did not really notice the lethargy, or sallowing of my skin, however the “episodes” could not escape my attention.  Sometimes immediately after I consumed something, sometimes when I had not eaten anything all day.  The episodes started as breathing or digestive discomfort and eventually turned into not being able to breathe, vomiting, and eventually passing out.  It got to a point that vomiting and passing out became a welcomed sign that I would feel good for a couple of days.

I saw a doctor.  The doctor sent me to a lady bits doctor.  The lady bits doctor suggested I go back to the doctor and see a GI specialist.  The GI specialist dismissed me.  I moved after college and saw another doctor, lady bits doctor, GI specialist, then moved again for grad school with the cycle repeating.  When the 2nd GI specialist in my third location did an MRI, ultrasound, and colonoscopy that yielded no conclusive results he suggested we take out my gallbladder to see if it would help.  Surgery to see if it would help? At the time we could not pinpoint food triggers so it had to be physiological.

I was pulling at straws and doing regular Bikram yoga, acupuncture, anything I could think of. After yoga one night I went to a nearby Whole Foods for the salad bar as dinner.  There was a celiac lecture going on with a chiropractor and I asked if I could sit in the back as I ate.  He sat with me after to talk about my issues and I will never forget his kindness.  I was leaving the country for two months for the tropics with a grad school obligation and he offered to be email support if I had any episodes down there.  However after two months of beans and rice with no issues he figured it was gluten.  To be sure he offered to be a free contact if I wanted an iGe blood test done since results had to go somewhere.  That winter I took the blood draw kit to the school’s health center, they shipped my blood to a lab, and he called me when he got the results.

I was reactive all right… to sugar cane, oats, and coffee.  Sugar cane. Who in the hell is allergic to sugar? We toyed with elimination testing to verify and oh yeah, it was sugar cane.  Now that I knew what was screwing with me for five years you would think I would just avoid it… that is not how many people who have to go on restrictive diets feel at first.  The next few years proved that I was mad, scared, and foolish that I did not have control over what I could eat.  I was mad, scared, and sad over my new circumstance in life.  This is common.