Life ain't fair!

When I was in college, I had a terrible bout of illness that literally had me bedridden.  I don't remember if I ate anything, there was no-one to fix me meals.  I was so weak that one day I actually soiled myself and lay in the filth for several hours before I could move enough to clean myself up.

I was diagnosed with Giardia Lamblia which is a Rocky Mountain parasite.  I always thought you got parasites in South America or Africa or exotic places like that.  The doctor tested me for Giardia, by the way but never found any traces of them in my specimen.  For twenty-five years I dealt with the aftermath of Giardia Lamblia and everything that went along with it.  For twenty-five years I never went very far away from Pepto-Bismol or Immodium AD.

When I was a teenager, I was eating a celery stick and noticed that my mouth went numb.  No big loss, I could live without celery.  My sister Jolene also had a bad reaction to celery.  In total I have two siblings and my mother all allergic to celery.  Bizarre, I know.

I love shrimp, but about ten or fifteen years ago I noticed that every time I ate shrimp I got a headache.  I wasn't about to stop eating shrimp, so I combatted the problem by ingesting some Ibuprofen about twenty minutes before I'd eat, so no problem, right?  Well, about five years ago I performed my usual strategy, took the pills and then ate the shrimp.  They were butterflied and breaded prawns.  Delicious.  But then my throat constricted and I could no longer swallow.  Life just ain't fair.

I'm getting older, and more concerned about my health now, so I've been to the doctor and had tests done.  Turns out I have high cholesterol and am insulin resistant.  I also have sleep apnea, so now I sleep with a C-Pap machine.  Life just ain't fair.

Last July I went to the doctor to find out why I didn't feel good most of the time.  This doctor is unlike other doctors I have been to.  They are all interested in treating symptoms, but he goes for the source of the problem.  I like that.  He thought there might be a Cortisol problem, so we ran some tests to find out.  My Cortisol was just fine, but I found out that I am allergic to Soy, to Milk, and especially to Gluten.  That was one of the most discouraging days of my life.  Life ain't fair.

Turns out, I most likely never had Giardia Lamblia.  The doctor who treated me all those years ago didn't know anything about gluten intolerance, so he looked up my symptoms and came up with what he thought was most likely.  The cure was worse than the illness.  The horse pills I took for Giardia were horrible and did lasting damage to my guts.  That was another thing the doctor found out when he diagnosed me with the gluten allergy.

So in a nutshell:
High cholesterol-most meat is out
Insulin resistante-sugars and carbs are out
Milk allergy-even as an ingredient it hurts me (I knew about the milk allergy for a long time, by the way)
Soy allergy-it's getting increasingly difficult to find anything that doesn't have soy in it. 
Gluten allergy-almost everything is made with some type of wheat product.

So what can I eat?  Not very much.

The good news is I'm losing weight and I don't have the digestive problems like I used to.  Soy is a natural source of Estrogen, which would explain why so many men have man-boobs.