Celiac Sprue

After being in the hospital since Saturday night, series of blood tests, Xrays, CT scans (3 of them), endoscopy and a colonoscopy, Fred has been diagnosed with having Celiac Sprue aka: Celiac Disease, Gluten Intolerance.

This really came out of left field. I mean, from the research we have done online, (and boy! is there tons of stuff online!)  this can come on at any age. But, still, Fred has never had any problems till last Wednesday, and he didn't have any of the other symptoms that comes with it.

Now, when we were told he needed a colonoscopy because the dr saw a 'bumpy' small intestine during the endoscopy, that scared me. BAD.  The word biopsy=possible cancer to me. When the dr talked to me and told me Fred had Celiac Sprue, I almost started laughing. It was such a relief that he didn't have cancer. (I specifically asked, had to hear the DR say no).

So, really, the news was good. And we are grateful. We are.

But now that we are home, looking at our cupboards and seeing that Fred can't eat most of the stuff we have, it's discouraging.  We start to have a pity party, how are we going to do this? why did this happen?

This morning, we headed to town. Fred wanted to go find a salad for lunch. We went to Chilis. He starts to look at the menu and checking off all he CAN'T have. So we start narrowing down things. We look at the salads. BBQ chicken. It looks good, but it has wonton chips. So we ask if they are corn or flour (can't have flour) The waitress said it was a mix, but it could be ordered just corn. So we do, but Fred is worried that they won't do it. Then, the manager comes and talks to us. Wants to let us know they will actually make a new batch of chips to make sure there is no cross contamination.  How cool is that??   So what I learned is that we just need to ask. If we aren't sure about a food, ask. If we need a substitute, ask. 

We then went to Walmart to read labels. That was not great either.  EVERYTHING has wheat. Goodness!

We found a small section in the baking isle that had specific 'gluten free' items. We got some of the things to try them out: pancake mix, cookies, hot breakfast cereal.  Hopefully they will taste ok.  There are a lot of websites that we can order from, and recipes all over the place to make things that we thought we would have to give up. For example, chocolate chip cookies.   It's going to take a little while, but we will figure it out. I have connected with a couple of folks that have the condition, and I will be picking their brains. I think it will be easier to learn from actual people going through it than websites.

We will get through this. And we will give God all the praise. I know this isn't just something that happened. God has a plan. We just don't know what that is yet. But we don't need to. We just need to trust.