Technically this is yesterdays post as well. I slacked off, I know. 
Yesterday for dinner, I decided I wanted spaghetti. yes, I was finally going to be able to eat it and not get sick!. I got my hopes up for nothing. What was not mentioned on the box of noodles was how bloody thin they are and how easy the are to over cook them where there is a nice film of crud on the top of the pot. It was gross to look at. Thankfully, I used my non stick pot so it wasnt that hard to get them out. I was so bummed I didn't even want to try again. I ended up eating homemade nachos. 
Today I started thinking about the 4th of July. That nice holiday to get together with my family to eat fried chicken, collard greens, and cornbread. Did I mention I live in GA? :) Then it hit me, no fried chicken, no cornbread, and no collards with all the fixings. I was so distraught. So had to tell my Grandma. She wasn't to happy either that I couldn't eat it, so she offered to fix me my own pot of collards and bake me some chicken. That sounded great but not quite right. Baked chicken just won't be the same in collards, and no cornbread. That sound be illegal. So while on break I was googling some recipes. Found a couple. Will have to see if I can find any of the ingredients, you know such a small town, so that I can let you know what I think and I can share. 
My thoughts about sharing are to help me keep track and also so that if anyone wants to try something new and a little healthier you can always try whats out here.
Well, gonna go play a little Xbox with the Love, Night!

Father's Day

Today is of course Father's Day. The day when us daddy girls get to show our dads how much we love them. With me being sick my Fathers Day gift sucked this year. My dad loved it just the same. Got him the Ghostrider and Ghostrider 2 dvd gift set. He was upset he had to work because he wanted to watch it. Gotta love dad :)
Then we went to the other parents house. I felt so bad. They offered to buy us dinner from McD's. I got fries. After I ate them, I regretted it. I felt even worse. I was hungrier and sick all at once. I told my love that I was hungry and he offered to go to TacoBell.  That is not going over so well either, though. Think I still have gluten from the other day in my system or maybe I got some in error in my food. Who knows. He's cooking me some chicken right now for my salad for lunch tomorrow. Breakfast will probably be eggs again. My late night snack is watermelon, because he just brought me some. Night!

Some food :)

Ok, So found some food around town.

Here is some pancake mix from Target. It was the last box, of course. When making it, the mix actually smells like cake and cookie dough. It is so much more filling than you would think. One cup of mix made almost 6 pancakes. 

I even found spaghetti pasta and spaghetti sauce at Fresh Market. Can not wait to try these :)

The disease and me

Celiac disease is a digestive disorder that occurs in reaction to gluten, a protein found in rye, barley, wheat, and hundreds of foods made with these grains. The body's immune system reacts to the gluten and causes damage to the intestine. As stated per WebMd.
What this is basically saying is that you are unable to eat bread, pasta or even drink beer. Yea, I know, it is just inhumane. 
All I could think last night while seeing all the Father's Day restaurant ads was that I couldnt enjoy anything. No breadsticks from Olive Garden, buttered rolls from O'Charleys, or a nice tower of onion rings from RedRobin. Even fast food chains are out of the picture. McDonalds, BurgerKing, Wendy's, and Sonic all out. Hardee's has some maybes. As long as you get the burgers 'low carb'. The will use a lettuce bun instead of bread. It is actually really good. And because all there burgers are angus beef you can pretty much eat any of them. 
I am still looking around for more stuff to eat in this town as I find more, I'll update. Im even going to apply links to recipes or any other websites i find. Hopefully someone else will get some use out of this. 
Small town celiacs we will survive :)

Hmm...really, now.

Ok, so several years ago I was diagnosed with cataracts. Yea, I know what a great thing to think about right before my 25th birthday. I ended up having to have the surgery on both eyes. It was annoying. The eye mask I had to wear to work made it worse. Thankfully my mom came up with a great idea.

 

This mask was so much better once we made it cuter. Even my daughter loved it more. I think this might have started her pirate obsession. 
I know this seems like something that came out of right field but while doing some research I found this. "People with celiac disease commonly have nutritional deficiencies that may leave them at higher risk for developing cataracts, according to a new study, led by Dr. Kaziwe Mollazadegan, of Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden." 

Just another thing to add to the urgh list. 

The beginning...

My name is Dominique. I am 27 years old, about to be 28, and turning 30 as my mom would put it.       Gotta love her. I've loved the same guy since high school. He's really amazing. We have a 6 year old daughter who loves to dance. We currently live in Columbus, Ga. A small city with a big city mentality. We love it, well kinda...
For the past several months, I have been really sick, like liquid diet sick. If I drank just gatorade, then I was fine. I tried adding potatoes and ramen because that is what I normally ate when i was sick. They made it worse. Nothing has been helping. I take nausea pills 3 times a day just for the chance to even function enough to get up and try to take my daughter to school, just to come home and spend an hour in the bathroom because moving made it worse. I would take my morning pill after that ritual. I would take my afternoon dose when I was able to move enough again that afternoon to get a drink. My evening dose I would take after my daughter went to bed that way I could try and get some sleep. That didn't even help, I would still wake up in the middle of the night and spend hours in the bathroom hugging the toilet. 
I was put on bed rest at the worst part. I was losing between 2-5 pounds a day. I lost over 25 pounds in about 3 weeks. I hated it. All of it. I hated being so weak that I couldn't play with my daughter. I hated that just walking across my house made me so dizzy that I would fall down my 2 short hall stairs. Yes, I fell down them several times. I couldn't avoid it, there wasn't always someone there with me. Other people had to work. But let me say I love my family.  They were there and helped as much as they could. 
The doctors thought they had it figured out. I have gastritis. So I tried following the diet they gave me. That was not working either. It was getting better, but not by much. I was still living off my nausea medicine and gatorade. Driving to work after I was taken off bed rest, now that was interesting. My first day back, I had to stop several times on the way just to calm my stomach down enough to finish the drive. 
I tried to keep going to work as long as possible but my body just could not take it anymore. I was put back on bed rest. More tests were run and more were scheduled. I started monitoring what I was eating. Even my family got into looking to see what they could find out. Possibly my gallbladder, or this, or that; lots of ifs but nothing was right. 
Then I was diagnosed with celiac disease. That means that I am unable to eat gluten, basically wheat. Which means no bread, pasta, or even beer. This disease is completely new to the family, but now that I know about it I'm learning a lot...