ScrAlex

As of 2021 I'm 31 years old and was diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia in 2016 and doing all kinds of tests while discovering a swollen lymph node in my back and not discovering flattened villi and diagnosed with symptomatic celiac disease until summer of 2017. Was having dizziness, shortness of breath, and weakness because lack of iron and needing to take 4 iron supplements daily and do protein shakes with my meals so I can get the proper daily amount because that's how much was passing through and not getting absorbed.  Was instructed to start a lifelong diet of gluten-free which I faithfully started after eating ramen noodles for the last and final time!😋🙈 I was raised in a family that hates taking the time to cook so we would eat out a lot and do fast food a lot while still cooking instead sometimes too. It wasn't until two month's into my gluten free diet that I consumed Wendy's french fries that said was gluten free but not! So immediately sharp stomach pains and stopped the fries and didn't eat the rest of them. Following symptoms were weakness and fatigue and stomach aches and bloating lasting until the third day where all symptoms ceased. Kept checking the status of my stable swollen lymph node regularly for a year where it finally went down to its normal size. And around this time I was having weakness, and muscle pain and sometimes nausea but never vomiting. I went back to my GI doctor to see if she could give me an endoscopy again because I wondering maybe I was healed but we had to figure out why I was having these symptoms when I should be doing better because of my lymph node. And the endoscopy showed my villi 100% healed!!!! So now I realized since I was still doing the protein shakes with my meals it was absorbing every single protein and so was overdosing resulting in that weakness, muscle pain, and sometimes nausea. Was also no longer anemic!! So I was happy to stop the protein shakes and shortly felt better. However I never was strong like I used to be before getting celiac until probably a year after stopping the shakes and working out and built all that strength back! I was also able to cut back on the iron supplements too! That's pretty much my celiac origin story. As to how or why I got it? Well I'm the only one in my family who has it except my maternal grandfather who passed away from a stroke shortly after I was born. I however had a stressful time growing up and getting through school. I was born with ADD; then OCD at 9 years old, developing an anxiety disorder in middle school which only got so severe in high school that I was able to graduate a year early and 5 months later developed bipolar disorder and had to go to the hospital for a crazy psychosis. Several years later my job was getting stressful and my girlfriend broke up with me in 2014. I can only imagine it was a given I would get celiac disease since my grandfather had it and I found an article a few years back that a study had been done that showed severe prolonged stress may send your immune system into overdrive and could develop auto immune disorders. I'm a Christian and my faith and my psych meds have saved me time and time again and I can't imagine living in a world where such wonderful successful medicine doesn't exist. I'm a lot happier, optimistic and peaceful now and do everything in my power to not get so stressed ever again and firmly believe high prolonged stress has massive impact on immune system. I joined this site to learn more about this disease and to share my journey with others so that they too can be inspired and prevail.