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

[antinomy.livejournal.com]

What were the tests, ooi? Did they just diagnose on bloods or have you had repeat biopsies?

Some of the reading I did suggested that blood tests alone are fine as a screening tool but not terribly useful for diagnosing individual cases.

[simont]

Indeed, that was what the guy I saw said too. They did an endoscopy and took biopsies.

(I'm not sure what you mean by "repeat" biopsies. I get to go back in six months' time after not eating gluten, and then they take further biopsies to see whether things are going back to normal in my duodenum.)

[antinomy.livejournal.com]

That's what I mean by repeat, yes - that you take them again after a period of gluten exclusion.

Good, that seems to be the gold-standard for diagnosis.