Bye bye gluten...?

So, I'm not gonna lie... I'm having a hard day today.

This is the week of my colonoscopy/endoscopy, and I'm starting to get really nervous.

I have absolutely no appetite. In fact, food is repulsing me. I can't focus on school. My thought processes are disjointed, as if I had a ton of caffeine, only I haven't.

I don't know why I'm so freaked out. I genuinely don't think they're going to find cancer. I don't.

But I think it's the other spectrum of possibilities that is beginning to weigh on me.

On the one end of this spectrum, it could be absolutely nothing and they could send me home saying "You're fine, we don't know why you feel like crap all the time, too bad, good luck". And I'll have had a somewhat invasive procedure done for nothing.

On the other end (minus the cancer option, of course), they could find a ton of polyps, or precancerous lesions, or, I don't know, gremlins. I could have celiac's, or an ulcer, which would be perfectly deal-with-able if not slightly inconvenient. I don't know what other options are for what they'll find, and quite frankly, I'm purposely not looking it up because I don't want to scare myself.

I'm also full-on dreading the prep I have to do for the procedure. Namely drinking a gallon of disgusting laxatives and then... well... you know... dealing with that. *yay me!*

I just don't like the unknown, and this is one big unknown.

Having done a little research into celiac's, it is a fairly decent contender for explaining my symptoms. Apparently, 1 in 133 Americans have celiac's disease, and only something like 5 percent even know it. However, because the definition and diagnosis for celiac's is so narrow, tons of people have all the same symptoms and yet fail to technically have the full blown autoimmune disease. They're still working out the definition and diagnosis for gluten intolerance, or gluten allergy, or gluten sensitivity- whatever it will end up being called. Either way, avoiding gluten makes it all better for both groups of people, and I've been considering doing a trial run of going gluten-free, to see if it helps, even if I don't come back as officially having celiac's.

This of course poses a whole other conundrum of changing out my entire diet. I love me some bread and pasta, I've never been one of those carb-free girls. Carbs be good, dammit! But now I will have to switch things out and start researching foods and recipes...it could be fun! It's also adding to my stress though, because that's just the mental space I am in right now.

My husband's coworker has celiac's, and she's a total foodie and has a million cookbooks and recipes, so I think I'm going to hit her up for info and advice.

And until then... I'm going to try and eat something. An apple and two bites of oatmeal does not suffice!