Celiac disease is a digestive condition triggered by consumption of the protein gluten, which is found in bread, pasta, cookies, pizza crust and many other foods containing wheat, barley or rye. Oats may contain gluten as well. When a person with celiac disease eats foods containing gluten, an immune reaction occurs in the small intestine, resulting in damage to the surface of the small intestine and an inability to absorb certain nutrients from food.
Eventually, decreased absorption of nutrients (malabsorption) can cause vitamin deficiencies that deprive your brain, peripheral nervous system, bones, liver and other organs of vital nourishment, which can lead to other illnesses such as other autoimmune diseases, osteoporosis, thyroid disease, cancer, and even death
On Sunday May 18th, My younger brother and I will be participating in a walk to raise awareness of and funds to research into the causes, treatment and hopefully find a cure for Celiac Disease. I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in 1997. My mother read an article about it in Prevention magazine. (Thanks mom, you saved my life!)
Ask me how you can help, or visit www.celiacwalk.org to sponsor our team (or any one's team, for that matter.) Just select "sponsor Participant," then search for Joelle to be taken to the sponsorship page. Donations are tax deductible.
Ok, nice commercial, but now back to our regularly scheduled blog.
Today was a relatively good day. Work went ok. There was even some breathing time to have a little fun there. It's been a long time since I laughed that hard at work. (You had to be there, but let me jut tell you that it's amazing the things you can do with triangular shaped tissue boxes.)
The Red Wings swept the Colorado Avalanche to make it into the NHL's western conference finals. I've been following all of the other teams during this playoff season and have seen alot of good hockey! And, I'll even give credit where credit is due. The refs have been fairly decent so far. (There have been a few noticeable exceptions though.) Yes, I'll wash my mouth out with soap for saying that. It goes against the grain for me to say that as I'm a ref hater!
Physically I am doing well. My knee is still very sore, but it's getting better slowly and surely. I've made it back up to doing 2 miles a day of exercise. Hoping to make it back up to 3 by next week. Even the bruise has gone to that yellow phase just before it heals completely. Now if I could just get feeling back in that foot life would be great. It's had that pins and needles sensation for a couple days now. The doctor told me that the nerves that I landed on were kinda in shock and are now waking up and screaming "What in the h-e- double hockey sticks happened?"
I did get a chuckle out of the whole slip and fall incident though. Being the "wanna be" photographer, I've been taking pictures of the bruising on the knee so I could have a visual record. (Yes, I know it's weird. I do the same thing with rashes, you just never know when you might need a picture of something like that.) I laughed when I finally sat down and looked at the pictures. I noticed that one of my knees is located slightly higher than the other. And that there is just no way of getting a good picture of your own knees. I looked at the first couple of pictures and wondered when I'd been out whale watching. It's been a long cold winter and my legs are almost transparent from lack of color. (Mental note to start going to the tanner again.)
Well gang, I've written a book and a half in this blog. It's time to go watch American Idol and then to go exercise. I'll see y'all next time. And if you can, please support me with the celiac walk.
~Joelle "Reffie" "Refhater"
