Hey Jill,
I know your situation with your husband is really stressing you out...He sounds like he's probably a great guy in many other ways. Sometimes it helps to accept that that is the situation as it is, and as much as you can, ignore it until you can get better and get to a better place healthwise, when I think you'll feel a lot more able to cope with whatever else life throws you. Do you have anyone around though (a good friend maybe, or your mom?) who you can talk to about this and who can be supportive of you on your journey back to health? We do everything we can here, but sometimes it means a lot to have someone you can physically lean on, and I'd like to know you have a person like that in your life.
One silver lining in this, though, is that if you do all the household tasks, you probably do the grocery shopping and cooking, right? So you can begin to take care of yourself by purchasing and preparing foods that will be good for you. If you're doing the GF diet, you can make a basic meal of meat or fish(just make sure it's not injected), white rice (infinite varieties of that alone), and some well-cooked veggies (if your family likes theirs more al dente, just leave yours in the pan longer). Dee's Kitchen on the Forum Index has some great meal ideas! I bet they wouldn't even notice it's GF! (and you can go GF before you do the Enterolab tests, because the tests are so sensitive they can pick it up even if you've been GF for months).
I started having autoimmune symptoms in high school. The fall of my senior year, I started falling when I stood up, and I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia. I ended up seeing any number of specialists over the years (started with a reproductive endocrinologist of all things, bc I did not menstruate for a year--I think probably as an effect of not properly absorbing nutrients--he said I had PCOS, though I didn't match the diagnostic criteria, then I saw a urologist--she said I had interstitial cystitis, and a regular gyno for pain--he said I had endometriosis and did a laparoscopy, which came back negative except for adhesions attaching my lower sigmoid colon to the abdominal wall). I think most specialists just diagnose whatever they deal with a lot of, whether you have it or not. That was all before the D started, but I think my symptoms can all be related to MC or Celiac. When the D started when I was 21 I saw several GIs over the years, insisting that D
all the time could not be stress or IBS, but they said of course it could. Finally, about 2 years ago I started having D accidents, and decided they were going to do a colonoscopy no matter what. So I saw one doc who was incompetent and just did an endoscopy, and then finally last July I found a GI who is better than some at least, and he said "Wow, you're really sick, aren't you?" and I was like "Duh!" So he did an endoscopy (from the top) and a colonoscopy (from the bottom) at the same time, and I came back positive for celiac and MC. I started the GF diet in August and found the PP in September, and the rest is history. I tried Entocort as well, but it didn't work for me either, so I am doing this by diet alone.
I tend to have most of my D episodes in the morning or at night, although I sometimes have them during the day as well. I cannot imagine what it must be like to have it 20x a day. At my worst, I don't think I ever had it more than 10x a day. I'm a full-time grad student right now, so I teach English 101 and take classes. This semester, though, I'm lucky to be done with coursework and now I'm writing my thesis, so I can be at home a lot and near the bathroom and the kitchen to prepare my own safe food. And to rest up from those D episodes, which I know take it right out of you (in many ways
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Hope that info is helpful! Take a look around Dee's kitchen! You will get some great ideas for getting started.
Love,
Courtney
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Great insight! 