Not Celiac after all, possibly IBS

I still had occasional gut episodes after eliminating gluten from my diet; I studied hidden gluten from many informative websites and read labels closely to make sure I didn’t eat hidden gluten by mistake. Since I had already ruled out the biggest diseases: colon cancer (colonoscopy), ovarian and uterine cancer (pelvic ultrasound), diverticulitis (CT scan), cervical cancer (pap smear), Celiac (bloodwork), and bladder infection (urinalysis w/ culture). I never saw signs of bleeding (fresh blood, tarry stools, or coffee-ground stools), so it probably isn’t ulcerative colitis. I decided it was time to do more research.

 

Feeling better, and still have ‘some’ garden

No official diagnosis yet, but feeling almost better. The steroid pills made me feel tense and anxious for about two hours after taking them, so I didn’t get any sleep until last night finally. But with the sleep, steroids, and antibiotics, I feel almost chipper today! Enough to actually go into my teensy garden that I had such big plans for 8^(

 

GF: Back to back gut episodes

I’ve been extremely bloated for over a week; my gut episodes last between 24-36 hours, then start up again. My husband, who won’t do an elimination diet and loves packaged and junk food, has also had a few episodes this week.

The only new processed food we’ve recently added was Quaker Rice Cakes. I ate some as recently as this morning, but now I’m going to skip them a few days to see if that helps. I found a thread about Quaker Rice Cakes at Gluten Free Forum, and it seems many people there can’t tolerate Quaker Rice Cakes either.

 

Gluten free store south of Houston

I did an elimination diet after suffering from severe gut pain, and the OB and GI doctors ruled out many things after doing bloodwork, ultrasound, and a CT. I found out that eating wheat products is what’s triggering the gut pain, so it seems I probably have Celiac disease. The CT was done after I went to the ER because I thought I might have had blocked intestines (I’ve had a few patients with that in the past, and it seemed I had all the symptoms except for stuff coming up green, but the massive amounts of disgusting belches had me thinking it might happen soon).

Once I realized that wheat equals pain, it was easy to avoid wheat products the first few weeks. But after a while, I started craving baked foods like bread and muffins, and also pasta. So I had to find a store that sold gluten-free food.