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.
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Dirty burgers from questionable sources, late-night pizza dripping with cheese, sticky toffee pudding swimming in custard. For 27 years I stuffed my face with the lot.

Then a doctor dropped the coeliac bomb. And my diet  changed overnight. Imagine Ronald McDonald waking  in Gwyneth Paltrow’s body. Or if Hannibal Lecter was put on a raw juice diet.

I missed so much. Cake, obviously. But the biggest loss – the one that felt like a punch to my world-weary guts – was beer. Sweet, foaming, nut-brown beer.
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It took 22 gut-wrenching years until I was finally diagnosed with coeliac disease. And knowing any children I would have had a one in 10 chance of being coeliac too, I was on high alert with my baby girl. I didn’t want Megan to have to endure years of horror and being told it was “just IBS”.

So I was very sensitive to how she was responding when we started weaning her at 6 months old. I repeatedly asked at nursery if her poos were normal, as they seemed pretty damn strange to me. They said they did not have any concerns. They should have – and we later changed nurseries.
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Remember when ordering food was easy?

Now, it can take me three or four awkward conversations with staff before I can be fed. Sometimes, I have to educate staff and alter their menu completely.

Sometimes I am brave and just go for it straight away “Hi. I am a ridiculously awkward person to feed, unfortunately. I have coeliac disease and so can’t have gluten. But it gets worse…. I also have lactose intolerance so can’t have dairy either.’’

Cue silence. Blank looks. “I’ll see what the chef says.”

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Usually people get stressed-out by using the toilets at a festival or getting covered in mud. Last year at Glastonbudget – a tribute band festival in Leicester – they were the least of my worries.

Friends thought my husband and I were mad for taking our two-year-old along to a festival and camping. And even more so because I am a coeliac.

I worked out the year before that there was nothing I could eat safely, except the hog roast (minus the bread). The lovely man on the kiosk served me extra meat, which was very kind. I managed to get some chips that the food place cooked first for me but then had stomach cramps the next day (this may have had something to do with the cider consumed, however).

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As a coeliac, there’s a real fear factor when eating at other people’s houses. I try to do a lot of it myself when I’m there and take along my trusted friends and saviours (toaster bags, gluten-free bread and cereal, Lactofree butter, cheese and milk) everywhere I go. I am not risking not being able to eat – no way, man!

Some people insist on cooking for you, so I then have two choices – to watch or not to watch.

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So, it’s Coeliac Awareness Week and we’re meant to be spreading the word to the wider public, right? Actually, I’ve found the hardest battles begin at home.

I was diagnosed with coeliac disease seven years ago but my mum is still struggling to get her head around it. She can’t quite believe it is a proper “thing” – a bit like sex addiction. And my sister’s “faddy” vegetarianism (24 years and counting).

She is brilliant in some aspects. She lives enviably close to a Sainsbury’s that has a free-from aisle so vast it should have its own postcode. Whenever she visits, she comes weighed down with brownies, bakewells, macaroons and cookies.
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Have you got something to say? Any questions or experiences you want share with the tricky eater community?

If so, contribute to the Safer Eating site by posting on our forum

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