#or it's allergies :( but I've never had them until literally two days ago :((

[beta-adjacent]

Brewing my tea for longer than the allotted time so I can absorb more of the healthy shit: >:D

It tastes like ass: >:(

[allalrightagain]

Get to Know Me Tag Game

Thanks for the tag @felixantares 💜 🤍 🖤 Relationship status - single. Still passively hoping someone will marry me for health insurance one of these days Favourite colour - depends on my mood, but dark army green, purple, or grey are usually top three Favourite food - if someone else is making it I will literally never turn down red curry + thai roti Song stuck in your head - I Don't Love You by MCR Last thing you googled - uhhh “beta blockers” to confirm that they’d cause more issues than they’d solve Time - 11:11! make a wish (did I write this at work and then wait to post until I got home? Yes. editing on mobile sucks) Dream trip - I’d love to do an extended Europe trip, either backpacking or, more realistically, rent an apartment somewhere and do weekend trips because I do not have backpacking stamina Last book/fic you read - book was still Gideon the Ninth despite being ages ago I still have hope to get to book two. Eventually. last fic has been mostly WIPs— I'm reading along with HPFC Power the Dark Lord Knows Not by @fantismal and Jormandugr, and keeping up with what's past is prologue by quiettewandering/ @wanderingdream, and snippets from seattle by @thesameoldstreets (which is... technically not a fic? but also not really a book? it's OF and I've been screaming about it all week) Last book you enjoyed - see above! I very rarely finish a book I’m not enjoying Last book you hated - nothing I’ve finished recently, but I do occasionally grab ebook samples of uh, questionable romance novels just for fun. Sometimes they’re very good. Sometimes they’re very very bad. Favourite thing to cook/bake - i love baking! I love tinkering with new recipes to make them better/allergy safe/vegan etc. Not sure I could pick just one, but I have very good vegan fudge, soft pretzel, and pie crust recipes (pie > cake, always) Favourite craft to do in your free time - ooh a bunch! Knitting or bujo, but also I own a Cricut and a lot of fancy pens because that's half the fun Most niche dislikes - I’ve been labelled a very weird picky eater, even without taking the allergies into consideration. I can’t stand spinach or eggplant, truffles (the mushroom), and when I could eat them, bacon and most non-mozzarella cheeses. I also only eat peas frozen or in peapods, or frozen blueberries (sorry this turned into just food lol) Opinion on circuses - I had a weird experience with an off duty clown a while ago that’s put me off of them a bit, but in general my opinion is it’s a very specific performance art, which I appreciate but also it’s not really my thing. Do you have a sense of direction and if not what’s the worst way you’ve gotten lost? - yes and no. if I’m actively paying attention, I can usually keep myself decently oriented, but it absolutely takes effort and intent. But also I can look up and realize I haven’t been paying any attention to how I got somewhere and have no idea how to get back 😅

Tagging: uhhh probably all people who have done it already but I don't care I'm gonna make ask you nicely to do it again anyway. @mkaugust @everythingbutcoldfire @lunapwrites @broomsticks @nanneramma

[party-lemon]

This month is Mental Health Awareness Month so I'd like to make a post talking about something that I don't actually see a lot of people talk about or address; health anxiety.

I have suffered with health anxiety/hypochondria for two years now and I suffer through it every day. Some days are worse than others.

When most people hear about health anxiety, the first thing they associate it with is "thinking a headache is a brain tumor." I've thought this numerous times but that's not the only thing I have to deal with.

Health anxiety makes you scrutinize everything or anything that seems even slightly off. It makes you hyper-aware of your heartbeat, your breathing, your thoughts, your speech. I keep track of bumps on my skin. I check my heart beat numerous times a day. I take deep breaths every once in a while to be sure that I am breathing correctly. It feels like an obsession.

And, of course, health anxiety is thinking that mild illnesses or symptoms are something more serious. I keep thinking my seasonal allergies are covid. I think stumbling on my words is a stroke. I think heart burn is a heart attack. I have thought that a headache is an aneurysm. I feel sick when I'm tired, it's part of being me, and I think I'm dying. The only reason I haven't gotten the vaccine yet is because I know I will worry about the side effects even though I know it will just be the side effects. Name anything that could have been slightly wrong with myself, anything at all, and it's highly possible that I have thought, at some point, that it is something serious.

When my health anxiety first started two years ago, I am almost entirely sure that it was only so bad because I made myself feel more sick than I really was.

I've always been a healthy person. The worst sickness I have had is a common cold or a stomach flu. Two years ago, I started drinking iced coffee more and one thing led to another, caffeine didn't agree with me, and I started having some heart burn caused by acid reflux. It was nothing major but I had never had heart burn before so I convinced myself that something was horribly wrong with me. I was freaking out so bad one night that I went to the ER. They gave me some stomach medication which only made me feel worse.

For six months, give or take, I was convinced that something was wrong. The health anxiety got so bad that, in the summer of 2019, I convinced myself almost every night that I was going to die in my sleep. I would stay awake until I literally couldn't keep my eyes open. I took sleeping medication and I fought it's effects because I was scared. I was so terrified of anything that was slightly wrong. I checked my heart beat constantly. I was miserable.

I have gotten better but some days are worse than others. I've found that any sort of distraction helps. It makes me take my mind away from fixating on anything that I deem slightly off. During the summer, when I don't have many distractions, it's worse.

I don't talk about this much with anyone. I don't have a therapist. The nights that I was afraid to sleep, I dealt with it myself. My coping mechanism is writing down how I feel, and that doesn't even work sometimes. I've worked through everything by myself. I wish I hadn't.

So, I guess, the point of this post is to raise more awareness about health anxiety. I don't see many people talk about it and so I want to let the few people that do have it know that they aren't alone. One of the reasons I didn't get help was because I thought people might think I'm crazy. Your thoughts may be irrational and maybe you know they are, like I do, and you still can't keep them away, but you aren't alone. It's okay to get help.

Thank you for reading.

[chibisquirt]

You don't have to answer, but if you wouldn't mind. What are some things you've learned about ADHD from Tumblr that are applicable to you, or others you may now? I've been reading more on it and how it manifests in girls/women and was curious when I read your rb on that post about Grammarly

I don’t mind at all!  Fair warning:  this is gonna be LONG.

I’m going to start by repeating something I mentioned in that post:  I was diagnosed in third grade, which was over two decades ago.  I had my diagnosis halfway through elementary school, much less high school and two rounds of college.  So a lot of the old information about ADHD I learned as a young person, and those things are worth exploring, too.  

Example:  It’s not that I’m not listening, Mrs. Nock, it’s just that if I try to keep my hands still, then the only thing I will retain from the lesson will be keep your hands still and not the things you trying to teach, which are supposedly important! 

(Mrs. Nock was the one who said to me, “I believe you believe you’re paying attention.”  Yes, it’s been fifteen years.  Yes, I’m still mad.  If you can’t have basic respect for your students, don’t teach.)

I figured out half on my own, half because of the counselling that if I had a fidget tool that didn’t require words I would pay better attention than if I tried to sit still.  (I still remember being mocked by my dad for fidgeting well after making that discovery, though.  Apparently diagnoses should only inform compassion when they’re his.)  On the same lines, I also figured out that music in the background wouldn’t work for me if it had words, and television is too distracting for me to use at all.  (I have a friend, though, whose ADHD works the opposite way:  he has difficulty focusing if there isn’t a television in the background.  Yes, both are valid.)

So, the Classics:  

I always had trouble with organization and cleaning, had trouble with schedules and calendars and managing my time.  Those are the things they’ll warn you about, the things they’ll tell you in counselling are natural and normal things for people with ADHD to have trouble with.  Trouble paying attention, sure.  Trouble sitting still.  Procrastination.  Got it.

But if you turn those traits around and re-frame them, they become a new set of symptoms.  Adaptations for these new symptoms are more personal and universally applicable in my life, and therefore, to my mind, more useful.

Take Procrastination.  (No really: please take it.)  That just means “putting it off until tomorrow,” and there are lots of reasons to do it:  “don’t have the tool I need” is one of the biggies, “want to conserve steps” trips me up a lot, “I still have time to get to it” is HUGE for me...  But a lot of times, these are just superficial reasons.  The re-framed symptom is, Trouble making yourself do things you don’t want to do.  

ADHD is an executive function disorder.  That’s a phrase I first learned on Tumblr, by the way; it may have been mentioned by one of my earlier counsellors, but it definitely wasn’t taught.  

This is why soooo many of us have struggled with the perception (including self-perception) that we’re lazy!  But no one tells the kid in the wheelchair he’s just lazy for not playing basketball.  (Okay, they totally do.  People are terrible.  Ignore that, stick to the point.)  I reframe this the way I do because acknowledging this as a symptom, taking the blame out of it, makes it easier to find adaptation.

Now, this is a personal post.  YMMV.  But I have an easier time managing my conduct if, instead of calling myself lazy a procrastinator, I say, “I keep not doing that --> oh it’s because I Don’t Wanna --> how can I con myself into doing it?”  (Strategies include bargaining, making it easier, powering through but then allowing yourself to stop afterwards, just acknowledging that I Don’t Wanna and allowing that to be valid...)  Procrastination is an action, but “executive function disorder” is a disease and “I Don’t Wanna” is its trigger, just as much as an allergy and a clump of ragweed are.  “Procrastination” is a powerful sphynx against which I’m helpless, but “I Don’t Wanna Disease” lets me start cultivating my metaphorical catnip and researching the answers to common riddles.

And while we’re talking about procrastination--and trouble with deadlines, and schedules in general--let’s talk about Time Insensitivity.  Missed deadlines and perpetual lateness (perpetual) are external actions, just like procrastination, and they can have all sorts of explanations.  

(Shoutout to Mrs. Pollack, who looked around a classroom containing thirteen-year-old me, and, knowing full well that I was chronically tardy, declared that “anybody who’s always running late, deep down, they just doesn’t care about anybody else’s time.”  Great job with calling the thirteen-year-old a heartless bitch, Mrs. Pollack!  As you can tell, I definitely forgot it very quickly, and didn’t at all have a self-critical breakdown about it, periodically revisiting the question of my own inherent selfishness for years!!!)

But ignoring the external actions, let’s take a compassionate look inside the head again.  Executive function includes regulation of, and awareness of the passing of, time.  Again: you can’t play the basketball with no legs.  We literally do not realize what time is doing.  Sometimes we do--if we devote enough of our attention to it, which may be a large amount for some, a small amount for others, or a variable amount for the same person.  But our brains literally don’t process it the same way.  

But hold on a minute--let’s go back to that analogy.  Because actually, people with no legs can play basketball!  It’s just that you have to use the adaptation of wheelchairs to do it--and that’s an adaptation for the game and for the players.  

I use alarms.  I’ve recently seen a post about audio memos as alarms.  There are people who just slap clocks everywhere.  When I was forced to work in a kitchen with no clocks, I used the multi-setting timer and set it for like four hours so I would know if I was keeping on schedule.  I also chose a job environment where much of my shift is the same as itself, and rigid punctuality isn’t enforced--that’s adapting my environment, instead of myself.  There’s all kinds of adaptations.  But you have to know you have the condition before you can compensate for it.

Here’s a fun little story:  when I was... oh, eleven?  Twelve?  My Quaker Meeting’s youth group (#7 whitest phrase I’ve ever written) went to the museum together.  One of the stops was in the children’s section, there was a... a pegboard, I think?  With some kind of problem on it.  A puzzle.  Me and a couple others sat down at it, and it took me a while, but eventually I solved it, and I looked up.  

I blinked.  “Where is everybody?” I said.

“They left,” said my mom.  “Half an hour ago.”  

I was stunned.  “Half an hour ago?!  But I couldn’t’ve spent more than ten minutes on this!”

“I promise you, it was half an hour.”

“Why didn’t you call me??  Why didn’t you say my name?”

“We did.  Several times.”

To this day, I will swear myself blind that I never heard a thing.

Hyperfocusing.  They’ll tell you about the problems focusing; oh yes.  They’ll tell you allll about that one.  But they won’t tell you about the flip side of it.  They won’t tell you about the times when the rest of the world falls away, and the only two things in the world are you and whatever problem you’re trying to solve.  

D’y’know what, I bet that’s the reason I test well.  I just realized this now, phrasing it like that, but--I’ve always tested well, even when my actual practical applications of things are mediocre I do well with the classroom testing on it.  I scored a 39 on the MCAT, back when it was out of 45 and not whatever it is now.  (To those with the plain good sense not to want to be doctors:  that’s pretty good.)  And I just bet it’s because, once I get focused on solving the problems, the other problems--nerves, intrusive thoughts, anxiety--just don’t have room to get in.  Hyperfocusing can be a superpower, if you can harness it.  

But it can also blind you to everything else.  And it works in smaller ways, too:  once I think I understand something, it is very difficult for me to perceive information that contradicts that understanding.  I still get the map of the Elflands backwards every time I read The Goblin Emperor, just because I pictured it one way, and every indication in the text that it was the other way just fell on deaf ears.  

And this one leads right into the next, which is Rejection Sensitivity Disorder.  RSD is hyperfocus, but it’s hyperfocus on how everyone must hate you.  It’s delightful!  I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety and depression, as well, and I do have both of those things, but for my money, I think that this one symptom of ADHD--which no doctor has ever even mentioned to me--has hurt me more than both of those conditions combined.  

The last one I’m going to bring up is Auditory Processing Disorder.  Now, I’ve gone and gotten re-diagnosed twice in my life, and the last time was just a few years ago, so they actually used this one in the test.  The psychologist told me about it, she just didn’t use the phrase Auditory Processing Disorder, and she didn’t tell me that it was its own symptom--she just used it for the test.  

What she did was, she gave me two hearing tests, one to test whether or not I could hear, and then the other a list of words that all sounded alike, and I had to mark which one I was hearing.  The second part of that was very long, and very boring, and despite scoring perfectly on the first test, I got several wrong on the second.  I was actually surprised by that; I at no point suspected I had heard any of them wrong.  When she gave me the test, told me this was proof by contradiction, that we were ruling out hearing loss as an alternative explanation for my difficulties.  It was only after the test was done that she explained that the pattern I showed was actually part of the diagnosis of ADHD; that we get bored, and stop really paying attention, and that we don’t even know we’re doing it.

...Okay, but you couldn’t have mentioned the part where I also do that every day in real life, lady?!?!  It’s not just when we’re bored, it’s not just for long processes.  I do this all the time.  I actually tell people now that “I actually have a neurological condition that makes it hard for me to hear; I can tell that you’re speaking, but I can’t tell what you’re saying.”  

This is 100% true.  It is a neurological condition.  

We label this a condition, but as a society, we don’t treat it that way.  Society treats it as yet another excuse.  It’s not.  You’re not lazy, stupid or crazy.  Neither am I.  

I have a condition.  Acknowledging that is the first step of treatment.  Not five thousand sticky notes, not binders or filing systems or even taking all the doors off the cupboards (although I definitely plan to do that one as soon as I possibly can).  Not counselling sessions with so many different people I can’t even name them all, for the love of god please understand that you can’t just fix it with pills.  

(Although mad props to the people who thought Concerta would magically solve me at the age of nine!  Spoiler alert:  it did not do that!  But it did mean that my parents felt comfortable blaming me for all my failures again, so it did at least some of what it was designed for, I guess. :) )   

I have spent the last few years re-understanding my ADHD it as is:  a neurological condition, a disability, and a simple fact of life.  A starting place, instead of yet more proof of my own inherent insufficiency.  And you know what?  When you take the blame and self-hatred out of the diagnosis--when you stop cursing it as the cause of all your problems and start trying to work with it, instead--it gets a lot easier to manage. 

[abby-studies-art]

I was tagged by @alinastudies and @studyfeather so I am answering both sets of questions here!

Rules: Post the rules, answer 11 questions, ask 11 new questions, tag some friends!

Questions from @alinastudies

1. What’s your favourite book?  My favourite book right now is probably the Great Gatsby? I read it a few months ago (finally) and it was the most graceful, terrifyingly sad book I’ve ever read. 2. If you had to have a last meal, what would it be? Thai food. I can’t get enough of it seriously? I go to the mall and buy cheap take out from Thai-Express and it makes my day every time so probably that. 3. Do you prefer travelling at sea or sky?  I love travelling by sea: Sailing, cruises etc.... I never get seasick! Although I don’t get airsick very often, it still happens on long flights and it sucks. 4. Which three countries do you want to visit most?  I would love to visit: Italy, (because I dated a guy from there and he made it sound so cool!) Iceland, (because the Northern lights and on my bucket list and I've heard there are some pretty incredible mountain trails you can hike) And probably Singapore or Japan? Can I have four??  5. Do you like jewellery, and why?  I like some jewellery, I have a small collection of meaningful items that I wear daily; A teacup necklace, a snowflake quartz point, and a ring I got from my parents the day I graduated. 6. Do you believe in new years’ resolutions?  I do, I try to keep my resolutions but I also don’t beat myself up when I slip up because hey I mean, everyone has forgetful days and as long as you keep trying after you slip up I think that's what’s important 7. What did you want to be when you were little?  When I was really little, I wanted to be a pop star.  8. Do you like horror films?  I like some of them? Nothing too gory but the psychological thrillers are where it’s at!! 9. What’s your best personality trait?  I am very good at listening and knowing when people need to just vent, and knowing when people want advice. 10. What cheers you up whenever you’re sad?  Does anyone remember those Picture songs by nicepeter on youtube? I usually watch those when I’m mad or upset lol 11. Do you enjoy outdoor activities or prefer things you can do at home? Oh my god at Home..... This sounds terrible but I literally hate going outside here in its always cold and windy where I live so I avoid it as much as possible.

Questions from @studyfeather

1. What is your favourite/ideal kind of weather and why? I love rain, driving in it, reading in it, walking in it, all of it.  2. If you could learn 3 new things, what would they be? to play the violin, speak french and probably to play chess? I've tried but damn I barely get checkers so I might be out of luck. 3. What has been your highlight of 2017 so far? The highlight of my 2017 has probably been visiting Mexico and swimming in a cenote and climbing a ruin and taking all kinds of polaroids. 4. What is your favourite card game? SLAP!  Step one: Get like three decks of cards Step two: deal them out evenly to all the players until there are no cards left. DONTLOOKATTHEM!!!!!!!! Step three: one by one, everyone flips down one card at a time. if two cards land in a row that match, slap your hand down on the pile as fast as you can. If your hand is the first one down, CONGRATS! You get all the cards! That’s the object of the game! Well done!! Collect all the cards!!  If you run out of cards, you can’t put any down but you can still slap to get back in the game and VANQUISH YOUR ENEMIES. the perks? it's aggressive, violent, and never has to end! We used to play it middle school at lunch (bc most other forms of cards were banned for being close to gambling? this one just involves slapping your friends) 5. Favourite and least favourite drink? favourite: tea or coffee. least favourite: Aloe water (wtf is this lumps in ma drink) 6. If you could suggest any book or book series to me, what would it be? I just read milk and honey and it was lit so yeah that one 7. Truth or dare? Oh my god truth!! Just me over here oversharing and shit like that! 8. How would you describe your aesthetic? That blurry feeling in the early morning when the sun is coming up when your half awake but you can still hear the things you were dreaming and you can hear them clearly but you're rapidly forgetting what they meant or why they mattered.  9. Any allergies? I used to be allergic to pollen but I grew out of it when we moved into the country, I think my body got used to it from being exposed so much. 10. Any pets (in the past, present, or future)? I used to have fish, I have a dog, I want a cat I think but like its gonna have to be a cuddly cat. 11. Do you have any holiday traditions you look forward to? Christmas morning, my sisters and I can’t go downstairs until 7 am (which is also when we can wake our parents up). Since most of us are so excited we can’t sleep, we have a tradition of cutting out paper snowflakes and throwing them everywhere at like 3 am lol. 

OKAY TIME FOR MY QUESTIONS

1. Have you had your first kiss? 2. What is your best memory? 3. Where is your favourite place to study? 4. What would you call the biography of your life? 5. Describe something about yourself the way that Lemony Snicket (or your favourite author) would. 6. Mac or PC for school work? 7. Describe your favourite outfit for school/work. 8. Juice or Soda? 9. Facebook or Twitter? 10. Do you have any buttons or pins on your backpack? 11. What is your favourite show on Netflix that you recommend to everyone?

I am so terribly sorry for this long ass post, as usual, you don’t have to do this if I tag you and you aren’t interested, And THANK YOU FOR TAGGING ME GUYS I LOVE THIS STUFF!!

I shall tag: @plants-before-people @busystudyign @rhubarbstudies @toomanysubjectstudyblr @scholasticus-medicinae @justgetthroughtheyear @themedtimes @studyh and anyone else lol just say I tagged you and I will back you up if anyone disputes it you tell me and I’ll fight them, okay?

[consulting-celiac-in-the-tardis]

I Was Given Gluten While Hospitalized For Celiac Complications

New blog post! Lying in my hospital bed, I had an IV in one hand and a feeding tube up my nose. I weighed 83 lbs at 5'3"...as a college freshman. Celiac disease was literally killing me, even after I'd switched to a gluten free diet. Yet, my hospital lunch - with "Gluten Free" written in big letters on the top of the box and "no wheat" neatly checked off on the meal order request - contained a chicken sandwich with a bun that seemed far too soft and fluffy to be gluten free. I sniffed it. I even tore off a small piece of the bun to try. But, in the end, I called my nurse to ask if this sandwich was really gluten free like it stated on the package.

The answer? There had been a mistake. My "gluten free" hospital meal contained a large serving of the very food that landed me in the hospital in the first place: gluten.

Have Celiac Disease? The Hospital Challenges You Could Face

True, the quality of care that patients with celiac disease or food allergies receive will vary by hospital. It's also true that, in recent years, many hospitals have made huge improvements in their cafeteria menus. I've even heard of hospitals with a full gluten free menu, complete with desserts! This progress, however, is not universal. In fact, stories of celiac or food allergy patients struggling to eat safely while hospitalized are still far too common.

You only have to Google "hospital gluten free" - or spend a few weeks in a gluten free Facebook group - to learn what I mean. For the sake of this post, though, here are a few examples:

One Thanksgiving several years ago, Celeste Clevenger's gluten free husband ended up in the hospital. She was thrilled to read the hospital's menu and see that the cafeteria offered "gluten free options." She was less thrilled when the cafeteria staff didn't seem to know much about the gluten free diet and sent up a "regular" Thanksgiving dinner instead of the promised gluten free alternative. 

More recently, Debbie Simpson's gluten intolerant son was in a horrible car accident. Due to his injuries, he couldn't eat for several days. One of the first meals offered? Chicken broth that contained wheat, which Simpson thankfully noticed before her son drank the broth.

In Helen Fletton's experience, hospital food can be especially dangerous for celiac patients when they're groggy from anesthesia and potentially unable to advocate for themselves. In one incident, Fletton was offered a wheat-filled muffin even while wearing a bright red wristband that clearly said, "WHEAT ALLERGY."

The even more worrisome aspect of these stories? They're only the experiences that have been published online.

Maybe a shirt like this would help?

Want to Increase Celiac Awareness? Don't Forget the Hospitals

The purpose of this post is not to vilify hospital teams who don't know how to safely feed celiac patients. Despite the cafeteria issues I had during my own hospitalization, I am grateful for my doctors and nurses every day. They didn't give up on me, even when my body wasn't reacting to a gluten free diet like it "should" have. They kept trying formula after formula to find the liquid diet that would heal my damaged intestines. They literally gave me my life back. (Not to mention that, when my gastroenterologist heard about my "gluten free" lunch, she seemed even angrier than I was.) However, as the anniversary of my of my hospitalization grows closer, I've been thinking more and more about that hospital lunch. And I've realized that, for all the gluten free community has done to raise celiac awareness in the common public, we need to educate doctors, too.

What celiac disease really "looks like" - from Gluten Dude's "The Faces of Celiac Disease"

Compared to years ago, celiac disease and the gluten free diet are thankfully more well-known. However, there are still far too many myths flying around. For instance, the myth that people with celiac must be skinny. (Yes, I've heard of a doctor who actually rejected a woman's celiac diagnosis because she is overweight). Or the misconception that having a little gluten "won't hurt." (News flash: even a little gluten will hurt someone with celiac disease, in more ways than one). We need to improve more than general public knowledge, though. I want to be able to trust doctors and the food they give me. When I was hospitalized, I'd only been diagnosed with celiac disease for a few months. I didn't know if gluten free bread could look as "normal" as the bun on my chicken sandwich did, but it sure looked tasty. And after dealing with a lack of appetite for weeks, it suddenly took a lot of effort to keep myself from biting the bullet (or the bun, in this case). The only reason I called the nurse instead of digging in? I trusted my gut. I decided that even doctors couldn't be trusted with my food...and that paranoia turned out to be true. But I don't want to live that way. Does anyone want to have to be on high-alert for the rest of their lives, unable to trust any food they don't prepare with their own hands?

This story doesn't have a happy ending per se. It's happy in that I eventually healed on the gluten free diet, as I've shared in detail in this post, and that I didn't eat the gluten-filled meal that mistakenly landed in my lap. However, even four years later, I don't have a solution to the bigger problem: the lack of celiac awareness still found in some hospitals and medical communities. What I can offer? A few reminders. First, know that our work as celiac advocates is not done. It's not enough for celiac disease to be diagnosed more often or for gluten free food to be more accessible and widespread. (Although those two goals are still important, and steps made accomplishing them should definitely still be celebrated.) We also need to make sure that celiac disease is included in common medical training, and that doctors see beyond common celiac stereotypes.

Like this post? Tweet me some love by clicking here: "Read why this #celiac wants safer #glutenfree hospital meals + tips to follow a #glutenfreediet in the hospital. http://bit.ly/2vYlEKH"

Members of the celiac community have their own lessons to learn, as well; mainly, to never be afraid of being your own advocate. You may not know everything that a doctor knows. However, depending on your doctors' familiarity with celiac disease, they may not know everything you know about celiac disease. So ask questions. Request more information. If you need to, request a second opinion or another doctor. You are in control!

How to Eat Gluten Free in the Hospital

And what if you do end up in the hospital and are worried about eating a safe, gluten free diet? Here are a few tips from the Gluten Intolerance Group and the Northeast Ohio Celiac Network on how to eat gluten free in the hospital:

If you know about your hospital visit ahead of time, contact a hospital dietician or a food service supervisor and talk about their gluten free options and celiac protocol. You might also want to contact any of the departments (pharmacy, pre-op surgery, medical surgery, etc) you will be treated by.

If you have an emergency visit to the hospital, contact one of the hospital's registered dieticians as soon as possible to discuss food options and hospital procedures.

In the case of a long-term, planned hospital stay, you can also ask if the hospital's dietary team could special order some gluten free pasta, baked goods, etc. to be used during your stay.

Learn how your hospital handles allergies, such as using a medical wrist band. Although celiac disease is not an allergy, an "allergy" warning can help alert hospital staff to your dietary restrictions.

Request that a phrase like "Celiac Disease: All foods and medications must be verified gluten-free" be written in your chart or placed on your hospital door.

Ask if you can bring food from home, and prep safe meals (like these 19 easy gluten free dinner recipes!) to be brought my friends/family members or stored in your room. You could also bring gluten free freezer meals to be warmed up by your nurse(s).

If something doesn't look "right" or "safe," ask!

One day, I'm hopeful that all doctors will be well-versed in celiac disease...and that all hospital cafeterias will know how to safely feed their celiac patients. Until that day, though, I'll try to keep my "gluten free" hospital lunch in the back of my mind. And, any time I feel uncertain about my own health or safety but don't want to "be a bother," I'll remember that chicken sandwich, take a deep breath and say, "Can I ask you a quick question?" Have you ever been hospitalized while following a gluten free diet? What was your experience? Tell me in the comments below!

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