Ok, this is the last part of the epic tale of my bowels.
After the colonoscopy and the discovery of my tortuous colon, I intermittently ate a gluten-free diet. I would do it for a week and then eat bread, etc. The Miralax seemed to be working and I figured I was in the clear. Then a few days before my graduate program began I got really sick. The symptoms looked a little bit like the stomach flu, but I had some additional symptoms such as uncontrollable shaking and really achy joints. I knew what I had and it wasn’t the flu. When I spent the summer in Tanzania I contracted a relapsing strand of malaria and I was having a relapse. I was just hoping it didn’t land me in the hospital like it did the last time. I suffered through it for a day and then it let up. I still felt awful, but a functioning kind of awful. I went to my classes and just tried to make it to the weekend. Come Friday I had a lot of pain in my side and in my back, combined with diarrhea (which is a rarity for me) and I was still vomiting every time I ate. I went to the doctor and she said I may have pulled a muscle and she gave me muscle relaxers and told me if the pain got worse to go to the ER. By Monday the pain was intolerable. I should mention that the pain was not in my left side like it usually was; it was in my right side.
That evening I spent 7.5 hours in the ER before I was even seen (they were packed with standing room only). Finally they took me back and put me on IV fluids, gave me morphine and took an X-ray. The morphine didn’t touch my pain and the X-ray revealed nothing. Then they did a cat scan. A day passed by at this point. Finally they came and told me that I had a case of colitis and that it is caused by 1 of 3 things… a parasite, a bacteria or an auto-immune response. The doctor said colitis is very painful and gave me Percocet (which also didn’t work, I hope to never have colitis again). He also put me on an anti-biotic in case it was bacteria and an anti-protozoa in case it was a parasite.
When I returned home I began thinking about what it could be that caused colitis. I knew it wasn’t something I ate because I had shared all meals consumed that weekend with 4 other people and no one else was sick. Then I thought about it and I consumed a ton of wheat and gluten when I was sick the week before the colitis incident. I ate toast, crackers, pasta, cereal, etc. Wheat and gluten was I all ate the week leading up to the ER visit! UREKA! It’s wheat and gluten!
I stopped eating wheat and gluten about 3 weeks ago and since then, I haven’t had constipation or diarrhea, I haven’t vomited, I haven’t taken gas-x once because I haven’t been bloated, I have only had one headache and I have lost 8 pounds! I am so happy to finally know what is wrong with me. Now I am left to figure out how to be a gluten-free vegan. It is really difficult.
No comments:
Post a Comment