Celiac Disease Doesn’t Go Away
There’s no outgrowing it. It’s not a childhood disease. It’s for life. If you have it now, you will have it tomorrow, and next week, and next year, and next century – should you be lucky enough to live so long.
I’ve had several people tell me, now, that they had celiac disease when they were kids, but they outgrew it. And it drives me bonkers. I try to tell them, no, you should get checked. But they don’t want to hear it.
They are absolutely confident, in a way only the blindly faithful can be, that they do not have celiac disease (and I have been guilty of this, too). And meanwhile they have any of a dozen different symptoms that can result from celiac. I feel like I’m watching someone drowning, and I’m reaching out to grab them and drag them back to shore, but they keep telling me, No, no, the water’s warm.
Did you know AAA got prescription discounts?
Because I sure didn’t. That was a nifty discovery. Of course, you have to be a AAA member. I should tell my folks about this; they’ve been members for years, and not all of the meds my mom is on for her cancer treatments are covered by insurance.
There. Just texted my father. And made the interesting typo of Rxpensive in place of expensive. Fitting, don’t you think?
Here’s the link to search in your area for participating pharmacies.
(Man, does that entry sound like an ad. It isn’t. I get nothing from AAA for this.)
Explaining Celiac Across a Language Barrier
It’s after my Wednesday evening acupuncture session, and I’m trying to explain to my acupuncturist that, while I’d really like to take the herbs she’s giving me, I need to make sure there isn’t any gluten in the pills.
I kinda figured this would be problematic. Her English is good enough for most things, but there have been times when she’s had to call in the man working the front desk to translate (I’m assuming he’s an acupuncturist in training, because he seems to know his stuff pretty well). In this case, he was at a loss, too.
Gluten Free Pound Cake
I am crazy busy today so instead of a detailed, well thought out post, I give you a recipe for pound cake. My friend Wendy and I made this in early October (or was it late September?) At any rate, it was incredibly popular with my gluten eating friends, to the point that one of them says it’s the best pound cake he’s ever had.
It’s very dense and moist, and goes beautifully with whipped cream and berries or ice cream or chocolate sauce. It doesn’t taste like the Sara Lee frozen pound cakes that I grew up on, so don’t expect that. But it does have a great pound cake crust. I snagged the recipe from The Happy Tummy.
Sleep Tracking Poll
I am curious about how other people think about this sort of stuff. Do you find it interesting? Boring? Of value? Problematic? Indication of societal decline and the end of days?
Sleep seems like a problematic area for most of the people I know. I wonder if this extends as far into the general population as I think it does. From all the articles and websites dedicated to the topic, you’d think so. But then, you rarely hear from people when they’re happy; you most often hear from them when they have a complaint (if nothing else, working in video gaming has taught me that).
At any rate, I’m curious to see how many people find tracking of value.
Fitbit & Zeo Graphs
Because a picture is worth a thousand words, and, honestly, because I am feeling too tired to do much of a write up on anything today… The sleep graphs from last night, starting with the fitbit.
Fitbit Graph for 10-27-2010
And now the Zeo:
The Day After Turbinate Reduction
Turbinate Reduction (snagged from Atlanta Snoring Institute)
It felt very weird. Not painful, but weird. The whole process took less than an hour.
Step 1
The doctor’s assistant numbed the inside of my nose using lidocaine on a q-tip.
Step 2
The doctor injected a local anesthetic twice on both sides. That’s when I started feeling light headed. It’s apparently very common for patients to faint at that point, since the injections are taking place in an area with a lot of nerves.
Dr. Robson Capasso (who introduces himself by his first name, which I like) tilted the chair back for me as soon as I said I was feeling light headed (which nicely prevented me from falling out of the chair, yay). He had a resident shadowing him, and so he was explaining as he did things (and you know how awesome I find that).
Step 3
Turbinate Reduction, Because Breathing is Fun
Today at 3:00 I’ll be sitting in an exam room at the Stanford Sleep Clinic, essentially getting the inside of my nose cooked. Sounds awesome, doesn’t it?
It’s called radiofrequency turbinate reduction. My boyfriend got it done, also, as part of his general sleep apnea surgery four or five years ago (his surgery worked; sadly, I am not a candidate for that same surgery since I do not have the same structural cause).
But back to the procedure itself. To quote obstructednose.com:
All of these methods aim to shrink the underlying turbinate by applying heat to the surface lining of the turbinate and creating a lesion. A probe is inserted into the turbinate tissue between one and six times, while the needle is heated and the underlying tissue is shrunk.
The Zeo Arrived
Zeo arrived today. I haven’t even opened it yet.
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