continued...

From there followed months of doctor visit after doctor visit.

It all began when the Dr. examining my elbow (turns out I had a chip off the bone) remarked that I looked anemic.

Mom and I took this seriously, because for weeks following the accident I had been sleeping all the time and had become progressively pale and ashen looking.

I was afraid at the thought of bleeding inside or some strange disease as an alternative... but all tests showed up negative. I wasn't anemic, I wasn't experiencing internal bleeding, and the exhaustion wasn't from Mono or Limes Disease.

What was it? We decided it must simply be a phase I was going through... some trauma related to the accident which would eventually disappear.

But it didn't... I was still falling asleep anywhere and at any time... after struggling to keep my eyes open in school, even on 9-12 hours of sleep, I would come home and fall asleep on our hardwood floor. There was definitely something wrong - but what? I had no other symptoms.

Then, about 3 months after the accident, I became horribly sick - I couldn't keep anything in my stomach. I felt worse on certain days, and the migraines I had started having after the accident got so bad that I would often lie in bed for hours. I couldn't sit at a computer for long without either falling asleep or getting a headache, and I was so sick that I stopped running (if you know me, you understand why that is significant :))

What was wrong? Was it a virus? Something that couldn't be diagnosed?

The answer came through God's sovereign intervention in the form of my dear friend, Beth. Through a set of circumstances, we began discussing a condition she had - something I had never heard of - Celiac's disease/gluten sensitivity.

An allergy to bread that gives you headaches, makes you sleepy, and messes up your digestive system? I'd never heard of anything like that. And I loved bread! But... after recent and frightening episodes of falling asleep driving, being sick to my stomach all the time, frequent headaches and two serious incidents where I was so sick that I lay in bed for entire days, I was ready to try anything.

So I cut bread from my diet.
And felt better. Not all the way healed by any means, but better.
Then I found out that Celiac's disease or gluten sensitivity includes way more than bread...

I stopped eating all oat, rye, barley, whole grain, spelt, kamut, wheat, and so much more. I stopped licking envelopes, threw out my facewash (made with wheat extract), checked labels on toothpaste and mouthwash and salad dressing...

I felt so much better - it was incredible. I was almost back to healthy sleep patterns, I had no vomiting episodes and few headaches - no migraines - but I still had some digestive issues. I discovered that if the villi in your stomach have been blunted in relation to a gluten sensitivity, you can't process lactose.

So I gave it a try. I cut all milk products from my diet. And I felt incredible. I was rarely sick or nauseous and the headaches were almost gone. (At this point I had already realized I was additionally hypoglycemic - which entailed eating every 3 hours to keep my blood sugar levels correct and not eating sugar, which would spike my blood sugar, give me a headache, and send me cold and shaking to bed where I would sleep it off.)

I began to read up a little bit more on the triggers and complexities of gluten sensitivity, lactose intolerance, and hypoglycemia. I discovered a wealth of information hidden beneath a serious public ignorance concerning these issues.

And that's only one of my reasons for beginning this blog.