How in the world did I get here? Part 3

Our journey continued, with me in denial and all of us not feeling well. I was getting more and more ill by the week, or so it seemed. I finally felt like I could start the whole gluten-free "thing," but not until after Christmas. I just couldn't cut gluten out of our lives before Christmas and miss out on all of the wonderful foods we would never have again.

Just after Thanksgiving 3 years ago, I thought I had gotten a bad case of the stomach flu. It was the worst flu I had ever had and I truly thought I'd die at one point. For nearly 24 hours I kept nothing down and made more trips to the bathroom than I could even begin to count. It was horrible!

That night, I started having some serious pain in my stomach. I tried to get comfortable, but nothing worked and the pain soon got to the point where I felt I couldn't take another moment. That was when my husband decided he needed to take me to the ER. Not what I wanted, but I was in too much pain to fight him. I just wanted it to stop.

Now I have had four children, three of them with little to no pain medication whatsoever. I knew what real pain was, but this was worse than anything I had ever felt in my entire life! I honestly thought I would never live through the pain. I was scared!

To make a long story short, and to save you the nasty details of my visit to the hospital, I'll tell you what they found. I was told that I needed surgery to remove my gall bladder. Once I was out of surgery, I was told that my gall bladder was one of the worst they had seen in a very long time. I had a severe infection, my gall bladder had been gangrene and had been that way for some time.

While in the hospital, the doctors all told me that all of my stomach issues had most likely been my gall bladder. Even the diagnosis of acid reflux the attributed to my gall bladder! It was their opinion that I should be able to eat just about anything after my surgery. I had to watch my fats, but other than that, I was going to be fine!

What a wonderful bit of news! It didn't change my kid's issues, but I didn't feel like I had to change everything. For the time, all the pain had seemed worth it, I was given a clear license to eat what I wanted. What could be better than that?

I soon found that there was NOTHING I could eat, everything made me sick. Not eating made me sick. I was worse off than before. The toxins in my system needed time to work themselves out, I knew that, but I felt awful! I was not only having to keep my fats to a minimum, but I felt as though I couldn't even "think" about fat or I'd be sick! How could I live like that?

In time, I did get over my initial sickness from the surgery. It took me about a year before I felt "normal" again, but that was not before I was forced to make some major changes to our diet. I say "our" because I have never just changed one person's diet, we all changed for the main meals, regardless of our "issues" with food.

Not too much time passed before I realized that yes, some of my stomach issues had gone away. Living for a good 10 years with a diseased gall bladder was some of my issue, but it was not the only issue. The kids also continued to have problems.

My youngest son was having serious asthma problems plus his ever present stomach issues. My daughter continued to have stomach issues and also problems with her eczema. My middle boy was having stomach issues of varying degrees. None of us was feeling very well. The problems just weren't going to go away with me living in denial!

It was time to come to terms with what I knew I needed to do and just act on it.