Peanut Butter M&Ms

Yesterday Nate and I woke up to Memphis's first snow fall.  I decided to embrace the day, skip work, use a vacation day and hang out all day with Nate.  He made coffee and gluten free Mac and Cheese.  Then we played games, took Polaroid photos of the cats and the snow, watched movies, and took an unscheduled couch nap. When we woke up around 5pm, we decided to embrace our day of laziness.  We walked over to Walgreens and picked up frozen food, 5 hour energy, Swedish fish, and peanut butter M&M's.  Everything we purchased appeared to be gluten free via ingredient list inspection.

At 10:30pm I began to feel nauseous so I laid on the bed and watched Nate play Grand Theft Auto V. Within 30 minutes, my abdomen started to feel uncomfortable, full, bloated.  It quickly looked like I was in my 3rd trimester of a pregnancy.  The bloating made me so uncomfortable that I couldn't lay comfortably.  I took a gas-x in the hope that it would help my bloating.  The effect is usually minimal. I finally decided to let warm water soothe me until I was sleepy, and sat in the shower for an hour.

During my shower, I started the investigation.  It was time to determine what poisoned me. I start first by looking at the time line.  Bloating reliably appears 4-6 hours after I've ate gluten.  If I was cross-contaminated, bloating is the only symptom I'll really notice.  The items that fit into the time line were: swedish fish, Amy's frozen gluten free meal, and peanut butter m&ms.  Since I've ate 2 of the items many times without a reaction, I determined it was the peanut butter m&ms.  The final step of my investigation is to search celiac forums and see if other reacted too.  Even though Mars says their peanut butter m&m's are gluten free, the celiac forums didn't seems to agree. I wish ingredient list inspecting was all I had to worry about.  But to be healthy I have to ingredient list inspect daily, question cooks, explain to wait staffs, turn down restaurants, skip eating at pot lucks, google foods on celiac forums, and pay almost twice as much as others for my food.

Waking up the morning after being glutened is the worst.  If I ingested enough gluten, I'll wake up with a killer migraine.  Regardless. I always sleep as hard as a rock and for 12 hours.  When I woke up at noon, I felt so drowsy I spent 15 minutes trying to open my eyes, speak, and clear out my sinuses.

Too bad being glutened isn't just a 12 hour reaction.  The rest of today I'll be fighting nausea, bloating, full body aches, and extreme exhaustion. I'm very confident I'll have to take a 2-3 hours nap, and I'll be back asleep at 9pm.  The bloating will last up to a week, and the aches and exhaustion for at least 3 more days.

How can you plan your week? When your body makes the calls?

Update 4 days later: My body is still bloated, still tired, still nauseous, and I've had hives sprouting up since the incident.  I awoke the next morning with a puffy face covered in hives.  Not only are they uncomfortable, unsightly, but they're also unpredictable.

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