You think I'm faking the fact that I feel nauseous all the time? That i can't move without my stomach hurting? That when i eat something I'm allergic to, I stop breathing? That if someone has nuts near me, I also stop breathing? That I purposely lose weight?
Well, I don't. I have something called Celiac Disease and something else called Eosinophilic Esophagitis. Celiac is a disease that means that when I eat gluten and wheat (which is in bread, flour, cake, modified food starch, etc) it damages my small intestine, causing me to not absorb or digest my food. I was diagnosed with it when I was 5, weighing maybe 25-29 pounds. I was underweight, under the height average for my age, and I was not growing as I was aging. So for the past nine years, I've had to deal with not eating gluten.
It didn't get better when i was diagnosed with Eosinophilic Esophagitis. This is when the esophagus gets inflamed when you eat certain food. I've had to deal with this since I was eight, along with the difficulties of Celiac. I was diagnosed with it after my growing stopped again and heartburn, nausea, stomach pains, etc were keeping me awake at night. I also started loosing weight and began to have trouble swallowing. They had to do an endoscopy (when they send a camera to take pictures of esophagus) and saw how bad it was. I was taken into the hospital to have immediate skin tests done, in which I reacted to pretty much all of them. At that time, I was on of the very few in the United States to have Celiac and EE at the same time.
They took almost all the food out of my diet. It was more than 20 ingredients that are found in the simplest things. I couldn't have eggs or chocolate or any of that stuff normal people take advantage of.
They've only done three food challenges since then, resulting in me [finally] being able to eat eggs, soy and lamb. In the past 6 years I've gotten numerous endoscopic procedures and have had to go to the hospital because of an attack countless times.
But more recently, I've been nauseous even more. I can see myself loose my appetite and having trouble swallowing again. My allergist wants to put me on a formula diet to see if that will help. But it's more the emotional pain than the physical. I can't even explain how much it hurts when people tell me I'm faking. When people eat something in front of me that they know I used to love. When I start to cry in the middle of class because it hurts so much and I just seem invisible.
People just don't know your story. No one knows mine. This isn't even half of it. Why do people always look on the outside and then follow up with judging it? I just can't even contemplate that.
nothings_ever_built_to_last