An Array of Maven Haters

I was catching up with a friend by phone this afternoon - and by "catching up," I mean stealthily sneaking into Gutsy's room in a (quickly foiled) attempt to get away from my sugar-spun gremlins so I could actually hear said friend on the phone.

Anyone who says sugar doesn't make kids hyper has never been to my house after a family party involving heartily-iced cupcakes.

"I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to talk lately," said I to my friend, and proceeded to list off my regular excuses of too many responsibilities and not enough birth control. "It's not you, I swear. I ignore everybody the same."

"It's okay, Maven. I get it," She said reassuringly. "You're an equal opportunity hater."

At last, someone really gets me.

It's true, I do hate on - or at least simply can't find the time to get in touch with - the vast majority of people in my life. I have a lot of patient and understanding homeys in my posse. Thank goodness, or I'd have lost so many Facebook connections my friends list would be in the negatives.

I've been busy, true. That's a given. But worse than that, I was feeling so run down and very, very stupid - like more than usual. I was forgetting names of people, things, events.  I couldn't read an entire article without getting antsy and distracted. I felt gross and bloated and and gassy and anxious and miserable nearly all the time. It took every ounce of strength I had to get up in the morning and get through the day without falling asleep. I wanted to exercise, but couldn't bring myself to go for even a short walk. I wanted to play outside with the kids, but didn't even have the patience or energy to play on the floor with them. My menstrual cycles were wonky, my acne was getting worse, and when I got a virus of any kind, it was kicking my ass. And let's not forget the unexplained mystery rash on both my hands and my strangely pitted, ridged fingernails.  The Maven was a not-so-hot mess, and it was getting worse, month by month.

Something was wrong. I wasn't just a hater anymore; I was an unwell hater.  The worst kind; We can't even enjoy hating on everyone.

And then, one day, when I was feeling particularly shitty, I was on Twitter. I'm not a regular Tweeter, as I find it far too distracting while I'm trying to do paid work on my computer (which is quite often the only time I'm online these days). But when I do go on, I grab a little bit of info here and there from those people or organizations I follow. Sometimes, it's just about who slept with who on what hospital equipment on last night's Grey's Anatomy, but other times it's something important.

And just once, it's been something life-changing - possibly even life- saving.

@EarthCafe - makers of vegan cakes I only wish they sold in Canada - tweeted something along the lines of "If you have symptoms a, b, c, x, y and z, you could have a gluten intolerance."

Interesting.  I had all of those symptoms. And when I checked out the link they provided, I realized I had not only the main symptoms, but practically the entire alphabet.

Gluten intolerance is the baby brother to big, bad Celiac - an auto-immune disease that afflicts about 1 in 133 people, including my mother-in-law, one of my best friends and her mom, too. It means that foods containing gluten act like toxins in the body, killing the villi in the small intestine and potentially causing everything from serious vitamin and mineral deficiencies to cancer. And now I could have this lovely disease, too. Or maybe just a gluten intolerance, which isn't as bad. Or maybe neither - I just don't know. The only way to know for sure is to have a piece of my small intestine biopsied, which is not high on my to-do list. Thankfully, there's a somewhat less-conclusive blood-test that checks for gluten antibodies and is often good enough for a diagnosis. When I see my doctor in the spring, we'll order the test.

In the meantime, this Maven is strictly gluten-free.

The first week sucked. Do you have any idea how many things contain gluten? It's the stuff found in wheat, barley and rye, so you can imagine the joy I felt at avoiding those and the vast amount of products that contain them. It's enough to make my frail thread of sanity unravel far faster than anyone in the "When is The Maven going to finally lose her shit?" pool could have anticipated (I bet on July 12, 2011).

I went through what could best be described as withdrawal. It was so weird that I Googled it - and you know how I hate Googling medical stuff. As a former hypochondriac, any kind of health inquiry is best not typed into a search engine. Whether you have yellow fingernails or stink eye, all symptoms to the possibility of death. I learned that the hard way.

But search I did as my bones and joints ached for three straight days, and I expected I'd get the flu at any moment but found nothing but a strong craving for french baguette. This is common, apparently. What the body craves is often bad for it, and I was paying a most uncomfortable price for depriving it. Moreover, gluten can have an opiate affect in sensitive people, which could explain my carb addiction and how hard I was "coming down" off the junk.

Since I decided to put Gutsy on the gluten-free train as well to see if it would help his anxiety, I gave away over $100 worth of groceries and replaced them with a multitude of expensive, pre-packaged health foods and wheat-less flours. I put aside the old recipes and have figured out how to make pizza crust, cupcakes and bread.

Bread. Can we talk about that for a minute? Gluten-free bread is a bitch. The first one tasted like sawdust and the second looked like someone shat in my bread machine. I was about ready to cry because a nice slice of toast is really all I want in life sometimes. But I sucked it up, put my big girl panties on and tried it a third time. It was delicious, and I suddenly felt a little more hopeful.

My friend with Celiac had me over last week and loaded me up with supplies from her pantry. She gave me a lot of advice on what to buy, what to avoid, and how it's not the end of the world (so no need to contemplate a bridge dive? Good. The water and spiky rocks are really cold in October). She also listened to my list of symptoms and basically told me that she's suspected I have issues with gluten for a long time, but didn't want to say anything.

Funny; my mother-in-law basically said the same thing. But they know me well enough to understand that I had to come to this on my own terms. Denial courses amply through this addict's veins.

Anyway, I feel so much better. I can't even put into words how much more awake, alive and alert I've felt since those aches and pains stopped. I feel like myself again. The cravings are gone, the rash on my hands is gone, the anxiety has lessened dramatically. I no longer feel bloated and sickly. I can go a whole day without needing to lie down, and I have a lot more patience and focus to deal with unruly little gremlins.

Gutsy, however, is far less unruly in the last week. In fact, this is the best few days we've had in ages with him. I'm hoping it's not just coincidence, and that maybe his body just needed to detox along with mine. It sucks not eating wheat, but it sucks more to feel out-of-control.

We'll get tested, but in the meantime I will be 100% gluten-free, Gutsy will be about 95%, and the rest of them will eat primarily gluten-free, even though it would be rather amusing to watch me run around making two separate meals at at once.

It's a good thing, too, because that would definitely drive up my full-fledged insanity date to mid-winter and none of us would win the pool.