Bodies are weird. All that blood pumping around, miles of intestine, bile, brain and hairy bits. Even the whole pregnancy business is like something out of a sci-fi film. I mean, growing arms, legs and a penis inside you? It doesn’t seem natural.
So I live in awe of doctors who have dedicated their lives to fathoming us out and fixing us.
I was lucky to have an amazing doctor in London who packed me off for coeliac tests as soon as I complained of tiredness and the trots. A bit of blood and an endoscopy later and I was an official member of the coeliac club. Problem solved. Only it wasn’t. Because bodies are weird.
Four years after I was diagnosed, having moved north and had a child, the left side of my face went completely numb.
I figured I must have slept in a strange position – possibly curled up on the floor next to my son’s cot. It would get better. Only it didn’t. It got worse.
I went to work, where my editor studied me and suggested it might be Bell’s palsy or, cheerier still, a stroke.
I was only 30. But I’d seen doctors George Clooney and Hugh Laurie diagnose stranger things. I called my GP.
At the surgery, the doctor ruled out my boss’s theories. But he still looked concerned. He asked if I’d forgotten anything recently. And I had. The day before, I could not remember my PIN number – for a bank card I’d used for years. I still can’t remember it, in fact. (The memory of having to leave all my shopping at the till at Co-op and shrink away from a queue of annoyed customers will stay with me for ever, though.)
The doctor made some calls and booked me in for an MRI scan but said it might take a month to get an appointment. I asked him what they would be looking for in my brain. He told me MS. I felt sick.
The wait was agony – and tied in with Christmas. Would this be my last one as a fully functioning adult? I was in pieces but resisted the urge to Google ‘multiple sclerosis’ and ‘how long have I got?’ I considered going private to speed the process up but it was going to cost upwards of £1,000. I figured I’d need that money for adapting my home for the wheelchair I would need, so decided to wait.
Some days, my face would feel normal, then on others I’d wake with the same numb sensation. Always on the left side and often with pins and needles around my nose. It was bizarre.
Finally I got the MRI scan, something akin to being trapped inside a coffin in a techno club. I was called back a few days later to see the brain specialist. I took my boyfriend and wondered if I would be stoic in the face of MS or crumple into his arms and tell him he should leave me in a care home eating lunch through a straw (I still hadn’t googled what MS actually was and just assumed it would be a death sentence).
However, you can find fast relief from male levitra canada pharmacy sexual dysfunction. This ingredient works almost the similar to the cialis viagra generico. Today many important and essential functions can be performed using an internet-enabled cell phone such as internet banking or cialis price australia even trading the financial markets. These net based mostly applications were created to assist teens acquire their license however additionally to help aged people meliorate their driving a car capabilities as well as for drivers who are worried in dismissing just lately accumulated viagra cheap india http://djpaulkom.tv/flashback-friday-dj-paul-kom-now-im-high-pt-1-from-vol-16-original-masters/ traffic solution. The specialist was terrific – a silver-haired woman whose room was filled with a reassuring mix of weighty tomes, plastic brains and framed photos of toothy grandkids.
But you didn’t need to be a brain surgeon to see I was terrified.
“Don’t panic,” she told me straight away. “It’s not MS.”
I felt like ripping my top off and running around the room as if I’d scored a goal.
But then… if it wasn’t MS, what was it?
“I see that you’re coeliac,” she told me. “I’ve seen a few coeliacs presenting with this same condition. There’s a lot we don’t know about coeliac disease. But it can have this type of neurological symptom if you do not stick to a strict gluten-free diet.”
And it was true, since the birth of my son, my diet had not been top priority. Surviving on four hours’ sleep can do that to a person. I’d been happily gorging on Cadbury’s chocolate and Walker’s crisps from the office vending machine that warned ‘may contain wheat’. I was taking chances eating out, when I could read from the waiter’s face they had no idea about cross-contamination. I’d got sloppy.
I’ve cracked down since and don’t take chances – no mater how desperate I am for chocolate. But one of the first symptoms I get if I have been accidentally glutened is the face numbness. I’m tuned in to it.
And who’d have thought eating cheese crisps would make you square up to your own mortality?
Then again, bodies are weird.
By Kay Harrison
Journalist and director of Safer Eating, mother of one and chocoholic
Coeliac disease