Found another family member with celiac disease.

[Lucy]

Hi all,

Long story how this happened, but I was looking through some of the local support groups in some other states on the CSA site, and came across a familiar last name in my dad's family.

Sooo..I e-mailed this gentlemen, and he wrote me a couple of nice e-mails back.
As it turns out, he's my dad's 2nd cousin.

He had given me his phone no. in case I had any questions, and because he's 82 yrs old and does the "hunt and peck" system on the computer keyboard.

Anyway, I called him up tonight, and discovered that he was in the same graduating class as my dad's younger sister.

He moved away a long time ago, and now lives just outside of Jackson. After he was diagnosed, he started a support group for the Central MS region after contacting an existing group down in Gulfport.

Apparently he's now turned over the presidency of that group to someone else, but I'm so proud of him that he was able to make such a big contribution in starting group for that region.

As you can imagine, we talked about the possibility of others in his family having had the disease without ever being diagnosed.

He also has M.C. and has had a small, self-contained cancer removed with the surrounding small bowel to make sure it didn't grow back. That's been several years now, and he's apparently doing very well.

What a sweet man he is, just like my dad was! He and his wife have been married for almost 60 yrs.

As I recall, Patricia of the former group was from around Central MS, and another one of the original group, Mz Catherine, the librarian, was from north of there, I think.

Patricia, if you are taking a peak in here and see this, be sure to check out that group.
I'm not exactly sure where they meet, but it would be in the Jackson vacinity, I'm sure.

I've also become sort of a pen-pale on the net with a second cousin of mine I've only met online recently, but I knew she was related because she was in charge of my dad's people's reunion this past weekend.
I am sorry that I didn't get to attend, but my sis and brother-in-law did attend.

Get this folks, she's a FOOD editor among her other Lifestyles Section editorial duties. I've been telling her some things about our illness, just in case she thinks there's a story in there somewhere.

I thought it would be cute to follow around someone in a grocery store trying to read all the labels for several hours. Seriously, wouldn't she have a unique opportunity to inform and educate in a light-hearted way her readership about celiac disease?

We are safe from flooding thus far, but the bands of heavy rain were north of Houston last I heard. They can pop up in any section of town without much warning, and dump lots and lots of rain.

The same type of training phenomenon occurs with these as it did back in Trophical Storm Allison, that flooded most of the city.

The high clouds circle above in a counterclockwise direction,bringing the zillion ton waterfall, but in this case, it appears that the only people who get the torential rains will be where the wind blows, and where, no one knows til it happens.

By the way, I'm inviting my newly found cousins to have a look at this site, particularly the introductory stuff at the beginning, so I hope they enjoy it, and learn a bunch.

Keep us in your prayers! Rain is supposed to be around a few days.
Yours, Luce