Birthday Surprises

Whew! Once again it’s been ages since I posted here. I’ve had a rough month healthwise so I’ve just been hiding in my room trying to get schoolwork done. BUT today is my BIRTHDAY! So I had to post something, lol.

I was all set to go to the local Greek restaurant in town and eat a giant slice of chocolate cake, but after some more tests last week to try to figure out why my digestive system hates me my doctor called me with some surprising information. Everything else was normal, but the biopsies they did of the lower end of my small intestine came back positive for celiac disease. So apparently I do have celiac? After negative blood tests and biopsies in the past I had ruled out that possibility so our phone conversation ended up with a great many exclamations of “Oh my God!” Really, that was the last diagnosis I was expecting to hear. She told me that it might take six months until my symptoms go away, which is a bit overwhelming. I keep worrying that they’ve got it wrong and I don’t have celiac but something else that causes the same damage to the small intestine, but six months seems like a long time to wait. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m going to be one of those people who feels better after a few weeks or days, but then I keep reminding myself that it took me awhile to get into this mess so it stand to reason it will take awhile to get out of it. I haven’t let myself hope that if I stay away from gluten someday I’ll feel like a healthy human being again because I’ve been given so many diagnoses that never went anywhere and I don’t know if this means I don’t have Lyme disease or not. I guess only time will tell. And, of course, it will probably be awhile before I successfully weed every last milligram of gluten from my diet.

Sadly there are no gluten free bakeries around here so I searched around for some recipes and with the help of a friend made my own gluten free chocolate cheesecake (which I may have inadvertently contaminated by using the same flour sifter I use for regular flour *head desk*). It is enormous and beautiful and delicious looking! I haven’t tried it yet. It has a chocolate brownie crust, chocolate cheesecake, chocolate ganache on top and raspberries to decorate.

Here’s to being 26 and to a healthier future!