It's always hard when there is a new change in your life. This blog, well hopefully it can be the change I need to cope with the unexpected. Let me tell you the story, imagine with me if you will.
You couldn't breathe. It felt like a dull ache in your chest and at the same time a tightness in the throat that meant the food wouldn't continue on it's regularly scheduled route of mouth, throat, and stomach. Swallowing water barely made a dent on the feeling of choking. It felt like heart burn and hiccups decided to date and made an ugly baby that cried for attention and nothing quiets it.
Suddenly the feeling passes and air rushes back in, breathing becomes regular again, the water and food finally passes down your throat. The fear though, the fear remains. The unexpected struggle of the most basic autonomic processes, swallowing and breathing. It happens every once and a while, enough that there starts to be a pattern emerging. Meal planning is just to have a drink with breads, rice, and pastas. It doesn't alleviate the symptoms or problem, but it can assist when it does arise.
The doctor gives a diagnosis of GERD, or acid reflux, based on the symptoms. Heart burn and the choked feeling, eating a handful of antacids can help. But the medications prescribed only do so much. The dosage continues to increase and changes three times. It takes almost three years of changes and increasing feelings of doom and anxiety when the food decides to take a pit stop in your throat before you go to another doctor.
Let's leave the imaginative story telling, and I'll tell you what happened. I found a great doctor who humored my request to test for Celiac Disease. Mainly because the issues I felt in my throat spiked with foods like bread, cakes, pastas, all those things that had a lot of wheat. The results came back, no Celiac but something was elevated. An endoscopy was scheduled, and I will admit I panicked about that. My first real surgery event to try and understand what was wrong with me.
Long story short, I did the endoscopy on one of the coldest days of the year as the Polar Vortex struck my town. I was referred out to an allergy doctor, who was the first one to explain what was going on. I was diagnosed with Eosinophil Esophagitis.
It's ironic that when I feel like I'm choking on food that the diagnosis is such a mouthful of words.
Eosinophils are a part of your immune system, specifically they are the allergy part of the immune system. The esophagitis part, just means that there is an over abundance of the eosinophils in my esophagus (read that as throat). You are supposed to have some eosinophils in your throat anywhere from 5-10 and I had about 80, which, simply put means I absolutely have got it. Yay for me. i have an allergic reaction to something that I am eating and when I eat drier foods like bread my throat constricts rather than expands. It means foods get stuck and well, go back about four or five paragraphs to see what that means.
There are two ways to find out what I'm allergic to, do the skin test and after what felt like 800 skin pricks. The second way is to do an elimination diet. A scary thing to contemplate on a diet.
This diet includes removing Wheat, Dairy, Soy, Eggs, Nuts, & Shellfish. While I don't eat a whole lot of shellfish, my staples are chocolate, pasta, and bread & butter. How am I going to eat without these staples? How can I plan a lunch when this is so different from everything I normally do?
So now we reach the reason for this blog. I have to reinvent my diet and meal planning for the next four months. While I never liked the bloggers that wrote long posts about their food, I feel like I might become one of them. I'll try to make a separate post that has Just the Recipe.
I am a traditional chef to say the least. I was taught by mom, who learned from her mom, and my recipes show it. My recipes are filled with a pinch of this and a dash of that. If someone likes to follow precise instructions this will not be the blog for them, rather you do need to know what is going on in the kitchen.
Besides this blog is for me. I know what my recipes are supposed to look like, and that can make the world of a difference.
You couldn't breathe. It felt like a dull ache in your chest and at the same time a tightness in the throat that meant the food wouldn't continue on it's regularly scheduled route of mouth, throat, and stomach. Swallowing water barely made a dent on the feeling of choking. It felt like heart burn and hiccups decided to date and made an ugly baby that cried for attention and nothing quiets it.
Suddenly the feeling passes and air rushes back in, breathing becomes regular again, the water and food finally passes down your throat. The fear though, the fear remains. The unexpected struggle of the most basic autonomic processes, swallowing and breathing. It happens every once and a while, enough that there starts to be a pattern emerging. Meal planning is just to have a drink with breads, rice, and pastas. It doesn't alleviate the symptoms or problem, but it can assist when it does arise.
The doctor gives a diagnosis of GERD, or acid reflux, based on the symptoms. Heart burn and the choked feeling, eating a handful of antacids can help. But the medications prescribed only do so much. The dosage continues to increase and changes three times. It takes almost three years of changes and increasing feelings of doom and anxiety when the food decides to take a pit stop in your throat before you go to another doctor.
Let's leave the imaginative story telling, and I'll tell you what happened. I found a great doctor who humored my request to test for Celiac Disease. Mainly because the issues I felt in my throat spiked with foods like bread, cakes, pastas, all those things that had a lot of wheat. The results came back, no Celiac but something was elevated. An endoscopy was scheduled, and I will admit I panicked about that. My first real surgery event to try and understand what was wrong with me.
Long story short, I did the endoscopy on one of the coldest days of the year as the Polar Vortex struck my town. I was referred out to an allergy doctor, who was the first one to explain what was going on. I was diagnosed with Eosinophil Esophagitis.
It's ironic that when I feel like I'm choking on food that the diagnosis is such a mouthful of words.
Eosinophils are a part of your immune system, specifically they are the allergy part of the immune system. The esophagitis part, just means that there is an over abundance of the eosinophils in my esophagus (read that as throat). You are supposed to have some eosinophils in your throat anywhere from 5-10 and I had about 80, which, simply put means I absolutely have got it. Yay for me. i have an allergic reaction to something that I am eating and when I eat drier foods like bread my throat constricts rather than expands. It means foods get stuck and well, go back about four or five paragraphs to see what that means.
There are two ways to find out what I'm allergic to, do the skin test and after what felt like 800 skin pricks. The second way is to do an elimination diet. A scary thing to contemplate on a diet.
This diet includes removing Wheat, Dairy, Soy, Eggs, Nuts, & Shellfish. While I don't eat a whole lot of shellfish, my staples are chocolate, pasta, and bread & butter. How am I going to eat without these staples? How can I plan a lunch when this is so different from everything I normally do?
So now we reach the reason for this blog. I have to reinvent my diet and meal planning for the next four months. While I never liked the bloggers that wrote long posts about their food, I feel like I might become one of them. I'll try to make a separate post that has Just the Recipe.
I am a traditional chef to say the least. I was taught by mom, who learned from her mom, and my recipes show it. My recipes are filled with a pinch of this and a dash of that. If someone likes to follow precise instructions this will not be the blog for them, rather you do need to know what is going on in the kitchen.
Besides this blog is for me. I know what my recipes are supposed to look like, and that can make the world of a difference.
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