My Life as a Gluten Free Tart

I hope you had a chuckle at my title. One of the first group events I attended after being diagnosed with Coeliac Disease was a friends 50th Birthday. There was another Coeliac attending also and the birthday girl is gluten sensitive. She had made all sorts of delicious treats and put little labels on them. For some reason while chatting with the other lady with coeliacs the "Gluten Free Tarts" label caught my eye and I we had a laugh - thinking perhaps we should open a cafe with that name.

I am a 48 year old mother of 3 awesome grown kids. I have suffered with irritable bowel for many, many years and have just learnt to live with it. However, I have also been struggling with chronic anemia in the last few years (it has also been any issue for many years and I have been taking iron pills for ages and having 3 monthly blood tests to monitor levels.

5 months ago I had enough. I had been talking to my sister in law who is a nurse and she said "This is ridiculous - you need to find out WHY you are anaemic - go back to your Doctor and insist he does more tests to see what is causing this." I thought to myself "What a good idea - why didn't I think of that?" I have been living in a vague haze for as long as I can remember - just getting through each day. Anyway, when I saw the Doctor he was horrified at my iron levels and prescribed a course of intramuscular iron injections and did a barrage of blood tests. After the 4th injection (which by the way, are NOT as bad as people would have you believe!) I felt amazing - after the other 4 - I was a new woman. When the doctor got my results he called my husband and I in and told me that I had Coeliacs Disease. I was amazed - I had not idea he was even testing for it! Of course I freaked out a bit at first - I DO NOT DO DIETS AND I DO NOT READ LABELS!!! Well.that changed fairly quickly. My Coeliac Antibodies we extremely high and there seemed to be no doubt that this was a definite diagnosis. However, a few weeks later I had a biopsy which confirmed the bloods and my Gluten Free journey had begun.

I have had wonderful support and encouragement from a mum at the school I work at (I call her "The Gluten Free Goddess".) She gave me just enough information to get me started and answered my questions as they came up. I think we are very fortunate to live in the time we do - there does seem to be a real awareness of the GF issue and because there are so many Gluten sensitive people around - GF food is readily available and so much information on the net. One of the most valuable things someone said to me early on was - too many coeliacs and Gluten sensitive people eat too much processed food and not enough fresh fruit and veges - I took this on board and try to eat heaps of fruit and veges and not so many of the delicious GF cakes and pies that are around (gotta have those Gluten Free Tarts tho! :)

I have had a pretty positive GF journey so far - and I feel SO MUCH BETTER! Symptoms that had been attributed to irritable bowel for so many years ceased almost immediately (well, within weeks!)

I could go on and on - but will stop here and have a read of some others experiences. Thanks for the site!

Sally J