It all started with a one week trial. Si and I discussed it, and it seemed worth it to try going off of wheat. The way I see it, especially now, is that food trials and dietary adjustment are a great way to go. We were at a point where any future tests might be painful and/or dangerous {not to mention expensive}. Any possible treatments involved risking terrible side-effects and future resistance to drugs. Any possible diagnosis might result in having a label placed on our child, which implied the threat of government intervention {the government can be quite pushy once a child is labeled with a disability or impairment}.
Dietary adjustment, on the other hand, is relatively risk-free. It is annoying, to be sure, especially in the case of gluten or soy, which are in almost everything. There are no side-effects, and, if it doesn’t work, things can always go back to the old way in no time flat. We had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
E. was already off of dairy due to some problem–I still don’t know if it is an intolerance or an allergy or what–so going gluten-free-casein-free {GFCF} wouldn’t be as big a step for us as it would for some families. My use of milk in cooking was only an occasional slice of cheese or sprinkling of parmesan.
So I did it.
Every Monday, I sit down and map out our menu for the week. After this, I make a grocery list. I cannot express how hard it was for me to find a week’s worth of food that were gluten-free. I hadn’t realized how much gluten we consumed until that moment because we don’t eat a lot of bread. But gluten is in pasta and stuffing and cereal and even lots of brands of catsup. It can be a filler in sausage or kielbasa. It can lurk in all sorts of packaged and canned foods.
In fact, I bought special catsup for our week’s trial because I wasn’t about to give up our Sunday evening tradition of, among other things, country-fried potatoes that the children dip in catsup.
Tuesday night was the first night I cooked this way.
By Friday, he was free of tics.
A week later, I was in tears…
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