wellness Archives - Mary T. Wagner

It’s been three and a half years since I went “gluten free.”

I remember the timing, because my first grandson was born three and a half years ago, and the idea started as a simple experiment while my younger daughter and I hung out at home and then at the hospital, waiting for her big sister to finally have the baby.

Going “gluten free” wasn’t exactly a lark, but it hadn’t been high on my bucket list either. Still, a friend with some auto-immune problems had switched her diet in that direction, and noticed some dramatic improvements in her health months before, and so it was somewhere out there on my list of stuff to try…one day. I had health troubles of my own to deal with, including pervasive exhaustion and fibromyalgia, and anything seemed worth a try.

That “one day” finally came, as noted, while we marked time waiting for the delivery date. My daughter also had health issues to deal with–Crohn’s Disease to put a familiar name on it–and so we thought, “why not?” We figured we could at least give it a try and be each other’s “diet coaches” for a few days. Also…it’s nice to have two pairs of hands ready to cook.

Within four days, we’d both noticed positive changes in how our bodies worked. In my case, I noticed more energy, a stomach that was less touchy, and the glimmerings of less pain from my fibromyalgia. This last was such a tenuous development that I even hesitated to claim with certainty that it was happening right then. Wishful thinking can be such a tricky placebo! But we both stuck with it for our own reasons, and now years later, we are converts. And YES, I have been able to say with certainty for QUITE a while that I live with less fibromyalgia pain on a daily basis. It’s been lovely.

In the “ripple effect” department, my sister-in-law, hanging out with us at the hospital and spurred on to try the gluten free diet by our own experience, tried it herself and noticed an improvement in her energy level and her diabetes soon after. Particularly, her A1C level plummeted. And it wasn’t for want of finding every tasty gluten free substitute pastry within a 50 mile radius for a while. Her health improvements happened while muffins and donuts continued. So she too has come over to this side of the divide and absolutely embraced living in what I call “The Gluten Free Zone.” And she now needs far less medication.

Folks sometimes ask me whether I feel “deprived” about my food choices now. Well…not really. I find that the things that I can eat without thinking twice about are still the things I’ve always liked…meat, fish, eggs, potatoes, rice, veggies, fruit, ice cream, potato chips, and, of course, chocolate. I need to look a little farther to find items like gluten free pasta and bread and cookies, but with the food industry embracing the gluten free trend with a vengeance these days, those are no farther than my local grocery store. Yes, the gluten free stuff is generally more expensive than the breads and pastas and cookies I used to eat. But the ability to turn my head from side to side while driving (or bending over to pick up the cat) and not think first about whether it’s going to hurt is priceless!!

I suggest it sometimes–gently–to folks I know who struggle with a combination of diabetes and obesity, since I’ve seen and heard just how much this change in eating helped my own family member. But some folks seem to have an automatic, nearly violent push-back to the idea. I’ve known a couple of people tell me flat out that they’d rather be thrown off a cliff to their deaths than make the switch. OK…to each his or her own!!

There has been a flip side to all this good news, which I absolutely had not anticipated. Within weeks of taking gluten out of my diet and my body, I found out the hard way that I couldn’t go back. Literally. For me, at least, “cheating” on eating gluten free and sneaking in a regular chocolate doughnut or a Cinnabon would start a downward spiral of misery that–in less than an hour–would commence with stomach cramps, and then get worse from there. Who knew?

For the record, my daughter and my sister-in-law have also experienced this, and so of out both determination and necessity (and a tremendous dislike of stomach cramps and worse), we forge cheerfully on in our gluten free lives. In past years, if a co-worker brought in a box of several dozen pastries to celebrate an anniversary or a birthday (we love to celebrate with food at my office!!) I could be counted on to eat two or three before noon. Not anymore. Now I walk into the break room and easily right past the box as if every sumptuous frosted long-john or Danish was branded with a skull-and-crossbones.

Three and a half years ago I got two great gifts at the same time–a wonderful grandson, and better health from going gluten free. And I am just so happy to have both!!!

There are times when you think you have a major complaint…and then reality, and a sense of a “near miss,” can completely undo your pity party.

I came face to face with a reminder of my profound good fortune today while I sat in an impersonal examining room talking with a specialist about severe pain in my hip that had set in a week ago. While we sorted through the twists and turns of my medical history and medications and exercise and stretching routines, we looked at a diagnostic X-ray of my lower back that had been taken just days before. Viewed from behind, things looked pretty good. Aside from a slight, longstanding torque to my spine, the vertebrae all looked appropriately sized and spaced, perky even. Squarish, like marshmallows. What innocent imagery.

And then we looked at the side view. And twenty years of life-changing decisions and growth and new directions came swimming into view.

“Where’s my T-12 vertebra?” I had asked. He counted up from the bottom, and let his finger rest on the screen. “Right there,” he said. And there it sat, not square and perky like the rest of them, but crunched down on one side. As though someone had taken a fluffy marshmallow and pinched it between their fingers from top to bottom. “Oh,” I said. “I am SO damn lucky.”

In August, I will mark the 20th anniversary of the day I took a long, hard fall from a tall horse as we navigated a fence in a riding lesson. It started with a warm summer morning and the smell of saddle leather and green grass, and ended with a diagnosis of “you have a broken back.” A backboard and an ambulance ride from the riding arena where I lay on the sand until the EMTs showed up to cart me off filled out the day’s dance card. Three months of being locked into a fiberglas body cast–rigid, unremovable, horribly uncomfortable–followed, along with years of weakness and setbacks due to muscle spasms that would set in without warning.

That day provided the dividing line in my life. Before the fall, I was a full-time soccer mom with four children, a professional niche as a former journalist and freelance writer, and a stay-home housewife in a marriage that was already unraveling. After, cognizant of how close I had come to dying or living out my life in a wheelchair, I took the road less traveled and went to law school. I became a criminal prosecutor, bought my first pair of spike heels, and started writing again, this time from my heart instead of as a contractor paid to meet a deadline or fill a magazine column. And so I flourished in this second act. Became braver, bolder, less willing to stifle my voice or ignore my instincts.

Every once in a while, if I started to whine that I had too much on my plate–family emergencies, assorted medical problems, difficult pets, general all-purpose crabbiness due to TMS (“too much s–t”)–I would remember that day in the riding arena and try to suck it up.

Somehow, in this past week though, the temporary pain in my hip was so severe that I had forgotten all that. And so I contacted my primary doctor, and went in to see the specialist to try to solve the immediate problem and fix “poor me.” And then we looked at the X-ray together, and my immediate aches and pains took on less importance.

I’m back home again, with a renewed sense of gratitude. Yes, we’re still working on solving the immediate hip problem though some ibuprofen has brought me some relief for the moment. But the bigger “take away” from this morning is that I’m alive. And I’m still walking under my own steam. I can see the sky, and hug my children and my grandson, and smell the flowers in my garden, and listen to the birds from my patio in the evening. Things could have turned out much differently.

And you can be damn sure that the next time I walk into a courtroom, even if I’ve taken the elevator to get there, it will still be in spike heels.