Bah, bah and thrice bah

[simont]

I've just come back from Addenbrookes, where I was told I had coeliac disease and recommended to go on a permanent gluten-free diet.

Looks as if I won't be going to Monday evening geek pizza any more then. Bah. Or eating Chinese food with the Gallery crowd on Sundays (despite the main carbohydrate being egg fried rice, I'm told soy sauce and such things tend to be problematic). Bah. Or drinking beer ever again, which is at least three bahs all by itself.

It almost wouldn't be so bad if I'd had perceptible symptoms at any point; at least then I'd have some reason to hope that something would improve in return for all the aggro. But no; I only got checked out because my sister (who did have real symptoms) was diagnosed coeliac, and on the basis that it's partly genetic I was told I ought to get checked. So now a bunch of gastroenterologists have stormed into my apparently perfectly good life and told me to stop eating lots of nice things.

BAH.

Comments

[simont]

I do need to cut everything out if I'm going to do it at all, he said. It isn't worth (say) avoiding meals whose main carbohydrate is wheat, but not worrying about the occasional sauce that might be flour-thickened; if I did that I might as well be pigging out on pizza and beer for all the difference it'd make to my digestive system.

I've actually seen ready-made gluten-free pizza bases in Sainsburys, so I don't have to stop eating pizza completely. I just don't get to go out for social pizza in pizza restaurants with gangs of my pizza-eating friends; I have to sit on my own at home and eat pizza instead.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

What about the salads?

[atreic.livejournal.com]

All the salads come with dough balls or similar. I mean, you could just ask for no dough balls, but then they're remarkably food-free. And you'd have to worry about the ones with croutons, or what the sauces are based on, etc

[deborah_c]

Well, if it would help, while I'm not part of the geek pizza circle, I'd be more than happy to come around and be sociable over sitting-at-home pizza from time to time? Actually, I'm quite sure a lot of us would.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

I've been told that in Italy, a lot of restaurants will cook you pizza on your own gluten free pizza base if you ask them. Might it be worth trying that in England? Or generally agitating pizza places to provide (Pizza Express used to do one with a potato base, but I don't think they do any more.) Are you sure they *don't*? As I said, Bella Italia had an entire gluten free menu, but there was nothing on the main menu or anywhere else to say that. (They didn't actually have any gluten free pasta when I was there, so it was a bit academic, but at least the thought was there.)

Asking pubs to stock gluten free beer might also work.