My Diagnosis

A Look Back:

Hi everybody, It's Tuesday, Jan 4, 2004, the tree is down and the year is just beginning.

Today, I went to the Gastroenderologist, the gut doctor. They had all my blood work except the celiac work-up (THE IgA and IgG test) (?) (I now have added confirmation that my primary care physician is an idiot.)

Anyway, I called the other office and asked them to get their butts in gear and fax it over. Then the doc came in, looked over the rest of the stuff and observed me, through the eye of a guy trained at the Mayo clinic--specifically in celiac disease, he tells me.

"Thin, white, female, fair, even a redhead, you fit the physical characteristics."

I didn't want to butt in here to confuse him with the bottled red head thing, so I let him continue.
"No other serious issues, no constant bowel problems? no constant gut problems? Just on and off? How long have you been anemic? Since you were five? Serious family history of celiac though, and we don’t want to misdiagnose a problem that creates a life change of this magnitude. We want to really be sure.”

Maybe he decided I wasn't symptomatic enough... so he continued, "Right now, I'm diagnosing you with serious iron-tissue anemia. Could be colon problems too, so let's do both scopes, top and bottom..." (Trust me people, you don't want to know what that all means.)

After he described all the procedures and how it would be done and that I didn't need to be eating that much wheat... the damage would show up anyway... he thought they could schedule it this month... yada yada yada...

Just then, the nurse came in with the blood work from the other office. He looked at it, circled two amounts on the pages, handed them to me, said, "You are a celiac, We don't need any more tests. I usually see numbers elevated like 40. You are over 250. I'll get you with a nutritionalist immediately and see you in four months for blood work."

The end.

He went into more detail after I pressed him with questions, some people can be gluten intolerant their whole lives and not know it, and die of simple old age. Some have bad blood work but have perfect intestines. Some have every other symptom under the sun and no gut problems.

It was all very interesting, but the bottom line was get on the diet, feel better, avoid memory loss, exhaustion, osteoperosis, cancer, etc. His point was to get the blood back over the "threshold" levels.

For me, it isn't that serious because I have minimal symptoms, and I may never develop serious side effects. So, good news.

Love ya, and I'll let you all know how bad this stinks. Terina