Autoimmune: This Is My Story

Something I'm Eating

Some time mid way through the winter of 2017, I started to notice something wasn't quite right with my body. There were times when I'd eat and I'd feel sick shortly afterwards. My stomach would bloat and I'd belch excessively. For a few weeks, I mistook it for being heartburn, for, now and again, I'd get a sharp pain to the left of my rib cage and it'd often shoot across to the right. 

At the start, it wasn't too bad. The belching would come and it'd go and I just thought I'd have to wait for it to pass. Gradually, however, the bloating in my stomach started to worsen. My mother and I kept an eye on it to see if it'd go away. Roughly one month later, my symptoms still hadn't subsided. In fact, they had gotten a little worse, now that I think about it. 

I took a look at my diet and decided to start eliminating things. To see if that'd make a difference. I assumed I had developed some kind of food intolerance and this was the effect it was taking on my body. First of all, I cut out dairy. I stopped eating yogurt, which was one of my favorite snacks and I bought almond milk for my cereals. The almond milk was dire, it tasted horrible, and a day in to this new diet, I was willing for the food intolerance I believed I had not to be a dairy one. I got what I wished for. A week in and I was still getting these painful fits of belching, with which, a burning sensation of acid would start to rise somewhere from my stomach and travel all the way up to my throat. My stomach was continuing to swell and bloat and I felt frequent pangs of discomfort in my abdomen. 

I ditched the dairy free diet, as it didn't seem to be taking any effect. The next thing I had always ate a lot of which I decided to eliminate for a while was eggs. I don't need to be repetitive and rehash the list of my symptoms, but let's just say, cutting eggs out of my diet didn't work either.

The next thing I gave up for a while was strawberries. After that, tomatoes. Then, bananas. No relief followed cutting any of these foods from my diet. Nothing. By this stage, it was Spring of 2018. So, then, I eliminated gluten from my diet. I had saved this as a last resort, as this would be the most difficult thing to cut out completely. But, considering that I have a number of family members with coeliac disease, I went for it. 

Almost instantly, it seemed to work. Within a week, the belching had stopped completely and I was feeling just fine again. For the time being, I decided to stay on a strictly gluten free diet. A month later, things were still going great for me. I assumed that I was coeliac and that I'd just have to avoid wheat to remain at my new level of wellness. But, things were just not that simple. It must've been coincidence that at the same time I had weaned off gluten, my progressing illness had died down for a brief period of time. 

My symptoms would soon relapse however, more aggressively and more frequently than before. For me, this was just the beginning. Little did I know at that moment in time just how huge of a battle I would have on my hands for the next eight months. Just how huge of a role it would come to play in my personal, social and school life, especially with the upcoming year of school I was due to start soon, whereby I'd be sitting the most important exams of my life. The effects it would have on my mental state. And little did I know, just how much I would come to wish that everything was as simple as just having coeliac disease, in comparison to what would come next.