I have celiac disease. The blood test for it came back positive. I was shocked when they called and told me, but then I guess when you put it all together--the anemia, the weight loss and malnutrition, it makes sense. I have to go for an biopsy of my small intestine in two weeks. I'm supposed to keep eating gluten everyday until then. Ugh, but it's because they want to make sure that any damage that's been done shows up on the biopsy. I am on a wait list for cancellations so I might not have to wait that long. Fingers crossed. I have never been so grateful that I kept my health insurance. These bills are going to add up.

Ya...

When I was going through my thing, it was lose things, like health insurance, house (by then he came after me after I had rebuilt myself) and keep fighting/showing up, basically if you don't they win automatically.

He had unlimited resources, me? Just working while my daughter went to school.

Anyway, you go without. I finally have health ins. through my husband's work and there's like a five hundred spending something. So, I can actually go.


Up until then, you go without. I refuse, lol, to just ring up hospital bills when I know I can't pay them.

But anyway, what's celi-something disease?

It's an autoimmune disease where eating gluten (a protein found in wheat, rye and barley) causes inflammation, which damages the lining of your small intestine and interferes with its ability to absorb nutrients. The only treatment is to permanently eliminate all gluten-containing foods from your diet.

I'm going in tomorrow for the biopsy. I have to go under sedation for it. Really nervous about it. Like, if my dad hadn't taken the day off work to drive me, I'd be backing out. My counselor said a lot of DV survivors feel that way; we have a hard time giving control away to someone else again. I'm sure everything will be fine, my nerves are just on end.

Well, yes.

Skimming...just it's what I have to do to read posts. But TAKING CONTROL, is probably one of the hardest things a DV survivor (sp) can bring themselves to do.

I'll tell you what. This is a true experience.

I had a Victorian home, a pond, a garden, pear and apple trees. My daughter grew up in diapers picking and eating cherry tomatoes off the vines while I did the gardening in the same row as she. I called it, "Natures Candy."

Well, when I got sick. All the blood tests would say is elevated lymphosites. I had bone marrow taken and not very nice dr's. I guess women found ways to get rich quick by saying this or that. But mine was real.

I fainted while feeding the fish and watering the plants. I fell on the blacktop. Uncannily, or whatever a phone call comes in from a friend of mine. He shouts from the doorway, "Call for you..." and tosses the phone on the porch.

I was going in and out and I only had one friend then. So I knew who it was. It was a girlfriend from highschool.

The screen door shut, he walked away and I crawled, not on hands and knees, but w/my elbows just to get to the steps.

The line was dead by then, but from there I made it to my bed and called her back.

That was the FIRST STEP - Asking for help, not rejecting it.

This is an added note to the previous post -

If you're listening to anyone telling you, you've got a problem w/giving up control for getting yourself OUT of a DV situation?

Cut your loses and walk away. You can rebuild again and again and again. That's what surviving and finding helpful individuals are all about.

If you perhaps "ARE" or have a person feeding you this line of thinking - if it were me, just leave it behind.

Basically it's a negative strain or line of thinking in lieu of removing yourself from probably one of the harder things to detach yourself from.

It's cyclical. So basically you have to go against all you believe and want, which is usually for it to turn around, and risk it all for something better.

Hi Elleise, I don't think she meant it that way at all. I was just telling her that I was super nervous about going under sedation for the biopsy today, and she said it might be because having a doctor and radiologist--complete strangers--working on you while you're pretty much unconscious can be (more) scary for DV survivors. We have taken our control back by leaving our abusers, and once we've done that, it's scary to give it away again (even on a much smaller scale). Same as getting into a new relationship. A woman in my support group said that she was a year out of her DV when she met her new husband, she thought she had it all together, but she was so determined not to get hurt again that she became a control freak herself to the point that he was afraid to make a move. It almost destroyed them. She had to learn to let go and relax around him, to trust that he wasn't going to hurt her. So maybe saying we have trouble trusting would have been a better way to put it. But like I said, I definitely don't think my counselor meant it in a negative way.

I really wish I knew how to make this into a separate topic There are so many, just such good points and "Touch-stones?"

I have to skim. That's just what I have to do, to keep doing something that for me is a challenge.

Currently, I'm watching, lol, my basil die. We had a quick frost out here. But my husband couldn't understand why that would make me sad. So, I had to explain it to him like this:

"Imagine in the middle of your "levels" of an X-box game you might be playing, all the sudden, your blue-"something" gives out and the one thing you really loved to do, dies on you.

I have a hard time w/whatever, agoraphobia (but I try and overcome it). All of my jobs, even at the brokerage firm I managed, I had my own office. So, small-quarters.

Dv'rs (the success stories) it most likely took everything they had, just to breath in and out each day or wish to God to put them out of their misery.

Where I used to have a farm and garden freely outdoors? I now work w/one of those indoor-lights to garden.

Trust sure that's in there, it took me 3 yrs., just to begin to trust my own husband.

Still, for the men or women trying to or recovering from DV, "control" is usually the very last thing on their minds.

Each day is a step forward, no matter how small. But DV-er's I'd love to actually head a support group or something, because it's like layers of an onion...

Each one, that you (don't have the right words) but maybe conquere (sp)? is a step in the right direction.

As far as surgery or sedation and anxiety...I don't know how to properly or the "protocol" I can write this.

But, most DVr's are in a relationship of some type. And they are, even after all else, especially walking on eggshells, are expected to preform sexually and simply want it over as quickly as possible.

Each situation is diffeent...some even co-dependant. But the surgery and such, that area - there might be something along those line in there.

I'll tell you what though...as deep as this stuff can go, depending who has the most money, records disappear and in my case even the officers who said they would testify if it came down to it, were all transfered out of the town completely. Every one of them.

The rest testified on my ex's behalf...ya, I think trust is in there. Thanks for clarifying It helps...all of us who've had the misfortune of going through it. Not discounting their strenghts - if that makes sense?

Hi, Elleise, I understand what you're saying. I can't imagine having to go against someone with the money to buy testimony. :( As for the surgery, the doctor made me feel better about it. Enough that I stopped feeling sick anyway. Within a minute of them injecting the sedative I was out and I don't remember a thing. I am glad I went through with it. Another step forward, as you said! And as it turns out, my celiac disease is advanced--almost no villi visible on my intestines. To put it,simply, villi are hair-like projections that help absorb nutrients. With Celiac, gluten causes inflammation which destroys the villi and, so you have malabsorption. So as of today, no more gluten. I meet with a nutritionist tomorrow.

Hi Faith,

Sorry I haven't been on lately, and I am SO sorry to hear what all you have been going through. I am glad things are beginning to be okay.

Luckily there are tons of websites and books out there on Celiac's to help guide you along your journey. They thought my Mom had it before they finally dx her with Chrohn's. So she went gluten free for quite a while, and my daughter's boyfriend is gluten intolerant (not quite as bad as Celiacs) so we have learned to cook gluten free around here, too. It is not as hard as it first sounds.

Just hang in there!