Celiac Symptoms or Something Else?

For any gluten free and celiac persons that have experienced significant symptomatic reactions to gluten exposure, you probably have your own stories of health incidents that you perhaps can not fully attribute to either Celiac Symptoms or Something Else.

This happens to be the case with me right now. Last night I awoke at about 5am with my stomach feeling bad. First I had dull pains in my abdomen, and then it escalated quite a bit. One minute I am thinking to myself how this upset feeling will pass, and a few minutes later I am having sharper and more widespread abdominal pain coupled with a general feeling of nausea. Now, I am lucky in that I rarely ever get this type of feeling to the point I feel like actually throwing up - in fact the last time such an incident came to fruition was over 10 years ago (pre-CD period). But, what I get in return for this lack of tossing seems to be an oversensitive vaso vagal response system that makes me experience a sequence of 1) tingling all over and ears ringing, 2) blood pressure drop, 3) approaching or exceeding the passing out threshold, and finally 4) I will be utterly dripping in a cold sweat.

Yep, that was the sequence last night. I attempted to stand up and get something to drink when my stomach pain was increasing. Bad move. Precipitous BP drop. I quickly return to lying position with the edge of unconsciousness quickly taking hold of me -- and, I absolutely HATE this feeling of self control. There is this bizarre balance between the nunbing feeling of nearly being completely out, and the pain in my abdomen and associated feeling of nausea. This time, I felt luck when after lying there right on the edge of this painful delirium, the cold sweating broke and my consciousness had returned with clarity.

Today I have a fair amount of residual intestinal and stomach discomfort, a bit of a fever, and the more the day wears on I feel increasing muscle and joint pain.

As I contemplate writing this gluten free blog entry in the midst of all this, I find myself stuck pondering a question many a gluten free and celiac disease sufferer has in these circumstances. Simple, is what I experienced Celiac Symptoms or Something Else? I would swear that most everything I ate yesterday should have been gluten free. But, I just do not know. And, I see many others (on various celiac / gluten-free forums) wondering the same thing after developing such symptoms seemingly out of the blue.

I do not want to simply blame the presence of gluten in some food I consumed for the cause of my current malady, since it could just be a stomach bug or something else. It was not food poisoning, since my wife consumed all the same basic things I did without issue (she is not GF/CD). I have not been anywhere around sick people any time recently either.

So, that is one absolutely sucky thing about this gluten free lifestyle and celiac disease. Sometimes you just do not know where to point the finger of blame -- is it contaminated food, is it a virus, is it an ulcer, or what? At least the non-CD person can quickly eliminate the gluten issue from the possibilities. And, that is what I can not do easily. And, I can not easily confirm, or not, that gluten was responsible for my symptoms, so I do not know if there is something tainted that I consumed and should avoid. I do not want to avoid foods just for "suspicion" of guilt, as I would soon end up with nothing to eat. I will just have to deal with it, like we all must, and hope not to experience this hell again any time soon! And, I can just hope for a speedy return to feeling normal and healthy.