Don't mind me: just trying not to bleed internally.
I ate potatoes. It was as simple as that.
During my summer abroad, I ate potatoes for lunch at the dining hall. About an hour later, I was curled up in a ball on my twin-sized bed crying and wincing in pain; my intestines had swelled to almost double their size. The nearest doctor was in the town over. It took a day, but I finally got to the doctor, a German war doctor who decided to settle in the Provence country side in his older age.
“What brings you in here today?”
“I have Celiac disease, and I believe I ate something with gluten in it.”
In what seemed like half a second, I was on the operating table, pants unbuttoned, and the doctor pressing on my abdomen; he was looking for bubbles of fluid or pulsating from internal bleeding. If I was bleeding, I would have to be airvacced to Avignon to undergo emergency surgery; if I didn’t get there soon enough, I would die. I’d been close to death before, but never this close.
It was over a year ago that the inner lining of my intestine tore, and since then, the reality of the disease I was diagnosed with at 16 has been ever present in my daily life. Celiac disease, in addition to numerous other allergies, has made me the worst person you could ever think about asking to dinner. (Not that you were going to, but just a heads up).
Eating at restaurants is the most anxiety filled-activity I do. Let’s say my friends want to meet up for lunch. I spend at least 20-30 minutes researching different restaurants with different cuisines. I google the different restaurants that are gluten free, then the ones that are vegan, then cross referencing, and lastly, getting rid of all of the ones that are over two dollar signs in price. After I’ve picked 5, I send it to my friends; they pick the one they would like to go to.
Upon arriving to the restaurant, I have a routine conversation with the waiter that can go one of two ways. The waiter can 1) know what Celiac is and understand that it is a disease not another white girl on a diet fad or 2) assume that I am a white girl following a diet fad and am going to be the worst thing that happened to them. My conversation either plants a bead of hope or fear that my dish of choice might be safe.
As I eat, I start very slow. I use each nook of my taste palette to try and detect traces of flour that may have snuck into my food. If I’m lucky, each bite slowly but surely relieves the anxiety that I had been building up since I sat down. If I’m not, I order a big glass of water and quickly go home.
Crying on the inside? Try almost dying on the inside. I take an anti-inflammatory pill that German doctor prescribed me and curl up in a ball while preparing myself for the worst. An extreme stabbing/collapsing pain takes over my intestine as my lungs do not work as well and my heart slows down. The villi of my intestine destroy themselves while my intestines swell to the point of potentially bursting which can lead to an internal bleeding session that can kill me very quickly. I pace my breath as I prepare myself for the long, drawn-out pain that plagues my future. Twenty-four to thirty-six hours later, the reaction will be over, and I will spend the next two days attempting to re-nourish and recover.
Every day, I am constantly in a state of worry that rogue barley grain or an escape dash of flour has escaped into my food. Every day, I am worried that the food I am eating will eventually cause my intestine to burst. Every day, I am worried that an intestinal flare up will lead to my final goodbye.
And every day, I keep eating food. Because I am always fucking starving.
PS: If anyone ever needs some good gluten free, vegan, or both recipes to impress your new girlfriend/boyfriend, I’ve got you.