How to Avoid What Caused My Years of Suffering
By: Joe Graziano
Tags: Suffering, Pain, Doctors, Illumination, Secrets

Fourteen years ago, my health issues were remedied after thirty years of suffering, believing I had a disease that I didn’t, in fact, have.

Sometime during college, I started having digestive issues. I would have severe pain very low in my intestines. The pain felt like a candle was burning deep inside me. This pain and the resulting urgent need to get to a bathroom make for very uncomfortable and often embarrassing situations.

I also started losing weight. I looked awful. I’ve always been slim, but this was an unhealthy look.

My parents took me to different doctors. I had test after test. Finally, a diagnosis. Crohn’s disease. You can look up all the gory details, but basically, Crohn’s disease causes inflammation of the intestines. I had most of the symptoms. I was put on some medication and told to eat a bland diet. I was told to avoid anything that caused symptoms. Try something. If it bothered me, then don’t eat that. Nothing more sophisticated than that.

That was in 1976. Evidently, that’s the best they could come up with at that time. I basically ate boiled chicken, rice, potatoes, bread, etc. Bland at it’s best!

Over the next thirty years, I learned to live with constant symptoms. I would be in a meeting when the pain would start. I would be driving when I’d get pain and an urgent need to get to a bathroom. This can be excruciating on long highway stretches.

The symptoms became a part of my life. I always had to know where a bathroom was. I would get those burning pains at the worst times. I had acid reflux on most days. Antacids were my friend. I developed Rosacea. I was seeing a dermatologist for that. It was embarrassing. My face had red blotches on it. That doctor gave me creams and lotions, but nothing seemed to work.

It’s difficult to explain, but I got used to it. I actually felt blessed because I knew others who had Crohn’s disease, and they had much worse symptoms. Most had all or part of their intestines removed. Some were on infusion therapies because their intestines didn’t do the job they were designed for.

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

Throughout all those years, I went for regular annual physicals. I had three different doctors over that time. Every time I went for a physical, I would explain that my symptoms were still there. Every time the doctor would say, “well, Joe, you are on the positive side of Crohn’s disease. Consider yourself lucky there’s no intestinal damage yet.”

When I would start with a new doctor, I would have to fill out lots of forms. One of those forms always asks about your history. When the form asked if I had any diseases or operations, I would dutifully write that I had an appendectomy in high school, and I have Crohn’s disease. The new doctor would repeat what the old doctors would say. I was a lucky guy.

This continued for those thirty years until I scheduled my first colonoscopy at 50 years old. I chose a new Gastroenterologist. I had an initial visit with him. I filled out all the usual paperwork, just as I have always done.

During that initial visit, he listened carefully to my symptoms. I will never forget his words to me. He said, “You can’t have Crohn’s disease. You would be far sicker than you are now. You have something else, but it’s not Crohn’s.”

I was elated! I wasn’t cured, but could there be hope? He scheduled blood work, Colonoscopy, and an Endoscopy.

Photo by Olga Guryanova on Unsplash

I arrived at the hospital for the tests. After going through the preliminaries, they placed me on a gurney to await the doctor.

He came into the room. I’ll never forget his words. He said, “You have Celiac Disease. We’ll talk after the tests.” I remember thinking, “what the hell is Celiac Disease? What do I have to look forward to now!”

After coming out of the anesthesia, he came in to speak to me. He said all was clear. He had taken a biopsy of my duodenum to confirm the Celiac diagnosis from the blood test.

All I had to do was never have wheat gluten again, and I will be fine. He gave me pamphlets on it, and that was that.

In case you’ve forgotten my name, I want you to know that I’m of Italian descent. That means pasta and bread! I could no longer have any of that.

It wasn’t easy, but I stopped all wheat gluten cold turkey. Guess what happened? Yes. All, and I mean, ALL of my symptoms went away. No lower intestine pain. No more bathroom trips. No more acid reflux, and no more Rosacea! I wanted to kill that idiot dermatologist!