Hannah is doing fantastic. I think we've only had one little tiny incident. She made some candy sushi and had a bit of the cand -- that night as we were going to bed, she doubled over with a small tummy cramp - lasted a couple of minutes and then she was off to bed. Next morning she asked me if one of her friends at school that has peanut allergies could eat it, so we checked. We were good with peanuts, but in reading the ingredients, come to find out, one of them had wheat. Hannah had picked up the candy, all of which she had checked out, but one of the was mini's, not the regular candy, guess they used flour to keep the candies from sticking -- other than that, we haven't had any issues with anything.
She seems to be feeling better and has a better outlook on life. It's amazing to me how many things I've read that relate to neurological and behavioral issue in children that have Celiac. Her outlook on life seems to be better, granted we still have some of our normal issues, but I can usually put a finger on what is causing them - usually hunger. Still haven't been able to convince her to eat any quantity. Her definition of a meal consists of about 1/4-1/2 cup of food. TOTAL. We're going to be working on it, next week we meet with an occupational therapist that is a feeding specialist. Can't wait to see how that evaluation goes.
We were cuddling the other morning and when I asked Hannah what she thought about how this lifestyle changed made her feel, she gave me an answer in the form of a most beautiful grin. Almost made me cry. Right now she's an awesome trooper!! I only hope it continues as we try to get her to eat a variety of foods and see what the OT has to say.
My journey - not quite the same. The first week I felt like I was covered with poison ivy or bug bites everywhere. My skin was crawling -- I just wanted to peel my skin off. My nerves were on end, not just physically, but emotionally as well. I wasn't sleeping well and was craving sugar all over the place. About drove me crazy. Lasted for about a week, still have occasional itchiness, but not so bad.
Then I got sick, nothing major initially, just sore throat, coughing, sinus gunk, etc.. Put up with it for 5 days or so and then went to the Dr. Turns out I had a sinus infection and an ear infection - antibiotic on board. I'm actually done with it tonight and can't say that it helped a ton. I'm still coughing and sinusy -- YUCK. Also feel exhausted all the time, I'll sit down for a bit and find myself falling asleep, except when it's midnight and then I'm wide awake. I even took to sleeping on the couch, so that I wasn't tossing and turning in bed for hours on end, let myself fall asleep whenever it happened.
I still feel like my body is reacting, I'm exhausted and just cranky. The physical symptoms of withdrawal I can handle, but I'm still trying to figure out the emotions involved. I find myself reading something and just tear up or I'm in the grocery store, usually with Hannah, looking for all the foods we can find, trying to tempt her to eat something, to pique her interest in something other than the 3 foods she'll eat, and I'll feel the tears welling up. I know she doesn't get the enormity of this disease, but at times it hits me and I just want have a pity party for her.
I try super hard to be upbeat and keep a sense of adventure for her sake, but right now I feel like I'm going at it alone. I really don't mind the cooking and experimenting, but sometimes I'd love to just look at the family and say let's order a pizza" or let's go out to eat without thinking of where and what we are going to do. Oh well, one step at a time and one meal at a time -- today we survived with homemade pita bread and falafel with gf rice krispies instead of bread crumbs. Part of it though, is the experimenting, I'd love to be able to just pull a recipe and know how it will turn out -- again, time will persevere.
If you are a praying person, my request is that I'll find someone that has been down this road and that I will connect with. I know there are lots of people that go gf, but I would love to have a connection with someone that i can just click with. Okay, enough whining -- off to toss and turn for another couple of hours :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment