I Will Not Suffer In Silence

My ma has been told for years that she has hypoglycemia and is borderline diabetic.
After I had pancreatitis at the young age of 21, I began to also exhibit hypoglycemia. I was told that this was due to the pancreas being forever weakened because it had become acutely inflamed. The cause was never determined, though one doctor speculated I must be an alcoholic because I was 21 years old and in college, so OBVIOUSLY I was a rabid partier (bugger the fact that #1 I commuted to college and also worked full time to help my ma pay off her debt, #2 I was still quite naive and under the influence of my Christian Fundamentalist mother and #3 I was working as a daycare teacher in a Christian daycare).
A nurse speculated that the acute pancreatitis was likely the result of being put on Cipro (very strong antibiotic) for recurrent sinus infections during my first couple years working with children in a daycare setting.

I’ve always gone with the nurse’s idea of how the pancreatitis happened, because I certainly wasn’t a fracking alcoholic.

Many years later, in 2006, I was doing diet elimination to try to see what foods might be making my Endometriosis pain worse. I took out wheat and 2 weeks later, added it back in.
My body let me know wheat was NOT okay.

When people ask me what my reaction is to eating wheat, I always say it feels like hypoglycemia. I get irritated, I get a headache, nausea, eye pain, tunnel vision…these are all the things my ma says she gets with hypoglycemia, so I’d assumed for years that I too had hypoglycemia.

The problem with that theory is that once I cut wheat out of my diet for several months, I stopped getting ‘hypoglycemic’ attacks. So I’ve been trying to convince my ma that she doesn’t have hypoglycemia or borderline diabetes. If she just cuts wheat and yeast out of her diet like I did, she may find that she too recovers from this affliction. But she won’t have it. And other people I’ve talked to can’t seem to see the connection.

In 2006 and again in 2008, I was tested for Celiac, and it came back negative both times. But I’m told I present classic for Celiac. I’ve been urged to do an endoscopy but why go through that when I can just abstain from the foods?
Then again I guess it’s best to know for certain if I have Celiac, cuz of what I’m about to show you.

Here comes the HA! I TOLD YOU SO part…

Researchers believe Diabetes and Celiac disease linked
LONDON, U.K.– Scientists at the University of Cambridge and Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry confirmed Type 1 (juvenile) diabetes and celiac disease appear to share a common genetic origin.

Their findings, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, identified seven chromosome regions which are shared between the two diseases.
The research suggests that type 1 diabetes and celiac disease may be caused by common underlying mechanisms such as autoimmunity-related tissue damage and intolerance to dietary antigens (foreign substances which prompt an immune response).
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder which causes the body to attack the beta cells of the pancreas, limiting its ability to produce the insulin necessary to regulate blood sugar levels.
Celiac disease, also an autoimmune disorder, attacks the small intestine and is triggered by the consumption of gluten (a protein found in wheat, barley and rye) and cereals. The development and anatomy of the small intestine and pancreas are closely related, and the gut immune system shares connections with pancreatic lymph nodes, which have been linked to an inflammation of the pancreas and the destruction of beta cells.
The researchers, were funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and Coeliac UK, believe that these regions of the chromosomes regulate the mechanisms that cause the body’s own immune system to attack both the beta cells in the pancreas and the small intestine.
Their results suggest that type 1 diabetes and celiac disease not only share genetic causes but could have similar environmental triggers as well.
Type 1 diabetes and celiac disease together affect about 1% of the population.

Good times.

I experienced pelvic pain within an hour of being intimate with my husband on Saturday. The pain was dull and continuous, but if I sat down fast or sat on a hard chair, the pain would be immediate, severe and knifing. That only lasted for a moment, then I returned to the dull continuous pain.

Saturday night, we had plans to go out dancing. Even though I was having pelvic pain, I wanted to go out, so off we went.

The pain became moderate within the first couple of songs, and spread to my lower back. And at the same time, my knees began complaining a lot. I have congenitally misaligned knees, which over time have become quite crunchy and arthritic. Normally I know before I go exercising whether I need to wear my knee braces, but this time the pain came on without warning.

Still, being the stubborn person I am, I continued dancing to songs I liked all night.Towards the end of the night, my husband was still boogyin’ on the dance floor and my body just had enough. I tried to walk gracefully off the dancefloor but staggered a bit because my knees were giving out and the pelvic pain was so bad. I felt faint. I had not drank any alcohol tonight at all. The pain had me staggering. I had to go down a set of stairs and holy crap, I thought I was gonna collapse, mostly because of the pain and weakness in my knees though.

I was able to collect everybody (there were three of us) and get us to my car. The drive home was pretty painful for both my knees and my pelvic region. And I realised that now the bulging disks in my neck were joining in the chorus. When we got home, I could barely get out of my car because my knees were so weak and painful.

My question to myself is, is all the pain I’m having stemming from the pelvic pain? Is there a full auto-immune response going on? I have arthritis in my cervical spine cuz of the bulging disks, and also in my knees which are congenitally misaligned.   That’s something for me to research, cuz right now, I gotta get myself medicated and in bed.

Happy New Year!

Today we slept in til 11:30am, got up, ate smoked salmon w/ cream cheese (B had his w/ baguette, I had mine w/ rice crackers), drank mimosas and also had some Peerless pumpkin spice coffee, and we watched Gonzo.

This year, I will:

• Become more of an advocate for Endometriosis awareness and humane treatment for those of us who suffer from it
• Put my life’s worth (1985 - present day) of diary entries about my chronic Endometriosis-related pain all in one place publicly on the Internet
• Travel to the U.K. for the first time
• Buy my first ever kitchen table
• Finally stop consuming alcoholic beverages because I know it will kill me based upon the medical condition that I have, and it’s time I started loving my innards every minute of every day instead of cursing myself for an illness I was born with
• Learn and practice yoga
• Live my first year of many decades under the new title of WIFE to my superhero
• Re-read every book I have on Tibetan Buddhism, and seek out more, because that more than any other belief system still really speaks to me 14 years after I found it
• Begin pardoning people who have incurred my wrath in years past (I’m not talking about small tiffs here, I’m talking full on silent treatment for years or decades)
• Generally start to practice true forgiveness on a grand scale

And I’d also like to quote my friend. This is second-hand as I do not recall the words as they were spoken last night, but Damion says that Chase said something last night that is so full of awesome, that I shall put it as my signature file in email…

“Let’s not hope for a better year, let’s MAKE a better year.” - Chase Worthington

Love and hugs and all that mushy crap,
steph