My hubby is one of those busy men that do not feel that they have a right to relax unless everything if fixed and neat - which means never. LOL. He would work himself to exhaustion on a regular basis if it were not for his more relaxed and fun loving wife of almost 19 years who presses him to consider his health as important as his surroundings and to do list.

With all this said, you will understand why we were so alarmed in 1997 when he began to feel so ill that just walking out to the mailbox on Saturday morning would have him near exhausted and he would come back in an lay down on the bed.

He began making comments about how he wasn't sure if he would be alive in another year. That was scary because he just doesn't say those kinds of things. We bagan the process, or maybe I should say ordeal, of going from one doctor to another to find the answers. His symptoms were so varied that we figured that it was several different things going on and the doctors seemed to take that approach too - each according to his own speciality. 

John had suffered from joint pain for years and so it was assumed that he had arthritis. The doctor's test showed that it was not rhumatoid. Funny thing was how it moved around from one joint to another and sometime it seemed that the pain was in the bone itself.

He never had a very quiet digestive system and often said that he thought he would feel better if he just didn't need to eat. On 4 occasions he became acutely ill after eating pizza, each from different places and once it was homemade - collapsing into a cold sweat, with not knowing which end to attend to first if you catch my drift. It was as if he was going into shock each time this happened. Yet other times he could eat pizza without a problem.

He had an incredibly itchy rash on his ankles that about drove him nuts which we attributed to his years around chemicals when he was a diesel mechanic. The dermatologist just gave him the lazy diagnosis of eczema and John applied cremes that eased the itching somewhat but never got to the root of what was causing it.

He never had a normal body temp. If a thermometer registered him at a degree below normal body temp we knew he was running a fever. Actually, he commented a time or two that when he ran a fever he somehow felt better than he did normally. LOL.

But in all, it was the extreme fatigue that brought him to a near breaking point. After a family practitioner, cardiologist, dermatologist, and internist/GI doctor, had exhausted all avenues to finding a cause we were left with the last doctor (the GI one) who sent him away with a slip of paper - a referal to a psychologist. John arrived home a completely broken man from that appointment. The referal to a psycholgist just smacked too much of 'it's all in your head' to me. I got my dander up after that!

I went out the next day to a health foord store. I had never set foot in one before. I bought a big book of healing that listed conditions, symptoms, and natural remedies. I scrutinized every entry and marked each one that had matching symptoms. I had a small handful of possibilities - food allergy, celiac, hypothyroidism, fibromyalgia, and irritable bowel syndrome. T

he timing was pretty intense as we were caught up in a whirlwind 2 week notice kind of move to a new state 780 miles away. Yet, despite the difficulties of trying to do a gluten free and allergy detecting rotation diet we did it. He improved dramatically. Now if it was all in his head (aka stress induced illness) a move like that, a new job, and the recent death of his mom from intestinal cancer should have done him in. But no, he actually was feeling better, a lot better. After a few months of the allergy rotation diet we found that indeed wheat was the primary culprit. Though at that time, we didn't really know if it was allergy or celiac we were content so long as we could control the trigger.

It wasn't until spring of 2000 when we got on the internet that I could get more information on celiac. Everything fell into place then. We discovered that celiacs quite often have a skin condition that is specific to celiac that was identical to what John had had before going off wheat. The low body temperature was another celiac related trait as often celiacs have thyroid problems. The thyroid regulates body temperature. Even the joint and bone pain is common in celiacs. It all fit perfectly together into a whole picture. We also learned about many hidden forms of gluten and had an explanation as to why the oat flour that we used as a wheat substitute seemed to be fine most of the time, but occassionally provoked a reaction. It was so wonderful to feel like we finally had a definitive answer.

My husband has been on a gluten free diet for 8 years now and his health has been very good. The skin rash is gone. His energy is typical for his age. He has normal digestion. He still has low body temp so I guess maybe that is not so much a response to gluten as it is just a coincidental trait that runs alongside celiac.

Occassionally gluten slips in by accident. Symptoms would return and I would double check an ingredient list and sure enough something slipped by me or a manufacturer changed their formulation. On one of those early Thanksgivings, I had been so careful. I didn't make a single wheat based dish even for the other members in the family. Even the pies had gluten free shells. Yet he had a terrible reaction. I went digging through the trash. Yuck! But I just had to know the source. I finally found it. It was the turkey. I absolutely never would have guessed the turkey. It should just be a big frozen bird! But alas it had been injected with "chicken broth and GLUTEN". There it was; not even the typical word 'wheat'. It said G-L-U-T-E-N in all its pure form. Argh! I felt like such a terrible wife.