Dear Bread, How I Miss You
By: Beth Bruno
Tags: Health, Cooking, Gluten Free, Lifestyle, Food

Dear Bread, How I Miss You

Navigating gluten sensitivity in a gluten-rich food landscape

Photo by Kate Remmer on Unsplash

My husband and I are in our favorite Greek-Italian restaurant. The waitress has taken our drink order and gone to retrieve our basket of warm, crusty bread. This has always been my favorite part of eating here — tearing hunks of bread and dipping them in a puddle of glistening green oil that’s sprinkled with herbs. Yum. Only now, I dip my finger in the olive oil while my husband apologizes (yet again) for eating the bread in front of me. I smile and say it’s ok, please enjoy it for both of us, as I peruse the menu for something that is safe for me to eat.

I discovered my non-celiac gluten intolerance the long way around. I had been having abdominal discomfort after meals for about a year. Sometimes that discomfort morphed into blinding pain in the base of my sternum that brought on nausea and made me unable to stay upright. I had almost begun to dread eating because I never knew when I was going to have one of these episodes.

It turns out I was having gallbladder attacks. I read everything I could about how to prevent gallbladder attacks and discovered that fried and fatty foods are a big culprit, so I cut those from my diet. Unfortunately, the pain did not go away. I finally went for an ultrasound and the Dr. confirmed that my gallbladder was full of stones. I was referred to a surgeon.

When I met with the surgeon, the first thing he did was pull out a poster with a picture of where the gallbladder is and subsequently pointed out all the things that can (but rarely do, he emphasized) go wrong during a gallbladder surgery. One of them could result in permanently needing to wear a colostomy.

I did not hear anything else that Dr. said to me that day. I scheduled the surgery in a fog, and went home. The next day I called and cancelled the surgery. There had to be a way to resolve this without risking my colon being permanently damaged, no matter how minute the chances. So back to the internet I went.

What I discovered is that food allergies (or sensitivities) can aggravate your gallbladder. One of the culprits is gluten. I decided to try eliminating gluten to see if it would help. The long and short of it is, it did. No more abdominal discomfort, no more severe gallbladder attacks. A big plus was no more inflamed joints, which I had also been experiencing for some time. I was ecstatic that I had found a solution that would keep me off the surgery table.

Photo by Kirsten Drew on Unsplash

Then the reality hit. No more bread. No more celebratory cake. No more cookies, muffins, breakfast croissants, hamburgers and hotdogs with buns. No more pizza and pasta. (Yikes!) No more donuts!

The list was growing and I was beginning to feel overwhelmed with the fact that most of the foods I had been eating my whole life were now my enemies. How could I possibly do this? I waded into this new world and I would go along pretty well for a while, steering clear of the obvious sources of gluten, but then I would think, just one slice of pizza. Just one. Maybe a little gluten won’t hurt me. It always did.

The last time I remember testing this theory was when I was working late and was starving and there were donuts in the staff work room. I had not had a donut in so long and I was tired and hungry and thought “What the hell”.

I picked one out of the box and walked across the building eating it. I have to admit, it was divine! So divine that I circled back around as soon as I swallowed the last bite and got another one. I love donuts and had missed them so much.

I lost two days to that indiscretion. I woke the next morning feeling like I had been hit by a truck and all I could do was crawl back in bed. It took another day to completely recover. Those donuts were my Waterloo. I was done with gluten for good. No more “Just a little won’t hurt” thinking for me.