Fatigue

My husband has banned me from volunteering at church. Why? Because my life is full and there is nothing more I can add to it before I crumble into pieces. I am a full time working mom to 3 young kids and I home school. Enough said. On top of that, I am writing a novel, I try to help out around the house, I have a vegetable garden to provide fresh produce and to save money, and I take time out to spend with my husband. Yes, one more thing and I will tumble over.

I have recently learned that I have some kind of intolerance or allergy to something called gluten, which causes me a whole host of medical issues. Fatigue and depression are two of the biggest issues that have prevented my life from moving forward. No matter how much sleep I would get, it never seemed to be enough, and I would drag myself out of bed and stumble about the house. Saturday mornings were the worst because I did not have to force myself to go to work. The mental fog often chained me to the couch, and no matter how hard I tried I never seemed to catch my bearings.

Truthfully, I felt like a failure. I couldn't be supermom. I couldn't keep the house clean, do the homeschooling, go to work, and be ultra organized like my friends seemed to be. And we were always running late to church because I found it so hard to climb out of bed. That is, if we even made it at all. As the weeks passed, I fell further and further behind with everything. My husband began to think that the family had lost their importance to me because I had nothing left to give at the end of the day.

But in particular, homeschooling has been hit or miss lately because I just haven't had the energy or the patience. Sure, it's summer, but we are unschoolers, really. Unschoolers live learning, and life does not end just because the days grow longer and hotter. However, an unschooling parent has more work to do in research to prepare for lessons because they don't depend upon someone else's lesson plan. I have done so little preparation, and once September begins, I have no way excuses anymore.

I have been struggling with a steady weight gain since Christmas. Prior to that I was on WeightWatchers and had hit a year long plateau after losing 30 pounds after my 3rd child was born. I have just regained about 17 pounds of those 30, and nothing I did seemed to stop the steady gain. Sometimes plateaus are caused when you become lax with your familiar routine, so I started doing research, looking for a new diet plan, something to spice up my routine.

I discovered a book called UltraMetabolism that mentioned that some people have an intolerance to certain foods that react as toxins within the body, causing inflammation and weight gain. Hmm, it sounded very familiar. For years, I had been saying to my husband, "I feel toxic, like something is just wrong with me." So I tried his three week diet that cut out foods that could be triggers, like dairy and gluten.

I never knew how awful I felt until I knew what it was like to feel great. Suddenly I had boundless energy, and my husband, who had at first thought this was just another diet plan, turned his head to actually hear me giggling again or to see me running around with the kids at the end of a long day at work. And not just my husband, but other friends as well began to notice the change in me. Symptoms that I had never even noticed because they had become a part of my life went away. To me, it seemed like a miracle.

Then I did some research, trying to know more about gluten, what it is and how to avoid it. I learned about Celiac Disease and its symptoms, of which I seemed to have a plethora, and I learned about all the things one has to do to avoid gluten. Did you know that gluten is in makeup, toothpaste, medicine, vitamins, low-fat dairy (no wonder why I couldn't lose weight!), ketchup, mustard, salad dressing, and even Popsicles? Gluten comes from the Latin word, meaning "glue," and it is found in wheat, rye, and barley. When you mix water and flour, it is gluten that gives the dough its elasticity that helps it rise to make perfect bread, and because of gluten's doughy nature, it is used in everything processed to fill it out and give it texture.

According to the blood test, I do not have Celiac Disease, but the doctors informed me that the test is not always accurate. They wanted me to continue with further testing, but I would have to eat gluten for 3 weeks. Who wants to purposely poison themselves? I wanted to be about the business of getting well rather than wallowing in sickness. I already know gluten makes me sick, and I already know that I need to avoid it for the rest of my life. Do I really need to know whether it is an allergy, an intolerance, or something more sinister?

So here I am, slowly recovering, slowly learning what I can eat, and looking forward to a new school year with more energy, passion, patience, and joy than I had the year before.