Posted in Uncategorized on 08/27/2009 08:50 pm by Laurel
This feels like coming full circle, and it is not a pleasant feeling. After 3 months of feeling great, Esther suddenly started accumulating weird symptoms, from itchiness to headaches to abdominal pain to feeling dizzy…more ulcers in her mouth, fatigue, irritability and depression. And Tuesday we took her back to college, so she is again three and a half hours away and sick and scared, unable to eat anything while we sit at home unable to help her.
All the symptoms fit with a candida overgrowth again…the evaluation puts her scores as high as they were in the Spring…but it seems awful soon to have that much of an imbalance. A Summer virus has been going around, and it is vaguely possible that it is just hitting her extra hard….but hard enough to last for a couple weeks?
If she doesn’t start to feel better within the week I may just go pull all the blinds and crawl under the bed for the duration of the Fall and Winter seasons.
Posted in Uncategorized on 08/03/2009 03:03 pm by Laurel
Our vacation to Indianapolis was surprisingly fun and stress-free. The first day we were traveling, so Esther ate a pasta salad made with Tinkyada brown rice spirals, broccoli, peppers, black olives, cauliflower, carrots, pepperoni, lactose free cheddar (it is soy based, so is not really cheese at all, but it is…similar), with Seeds of Change Italian Herb Vinaigrette. She even had fruit and Rice Krispie squares to munch on for a snack. By suppertime we were in Indiana and could stop at Chipotle’s….we absolutely love that place! Authentic Mexican food, all fresh and very natural. She got all the burrito fillings by the heaping spoonful on a platter, and added their fresh tortilla chips, salsa, and guacamole on the side. yum!
The next day we joined Tim at Panera Bread for lunch, which actually has a huge listing of gluten free items and a notebook listing the ingredients of everything they make, so you can check it out yourself. We grilled out for dinner, and then we wanted a treat, so we checked out the Krogers nearby and found a raspberry sorbet that was fabulous.
Saturday we were downtown at the Children’s Museum, for the King Tut exhibit, but fortunately, the Old Spaghetti Factory was also downtown and serves an excellent gluten-free pasta (corn, of course, seeing as how we were in the midwest) and several “safe” sauces including the marinara, the meat sauce, and the hot sausage. They offered oil and vinegar for the salad and even brought Esther a frozen juice bar for dessert instead of ice cream.
Thank heavens for restaurants that realize how many people in the country are affected by food intolerances and are willing to cater to those needs. I wish more of them did!
