I’ve been gluten-free/dairy-free for….four years? Five? Something like that. I would not suggest you quit both dairy and gluten cold turkey in one day, but that’s just how I roll. Here’s an interesting fact about testing for celiac–you have to actually be eating gluten for six weeks in order to be tested. I asked my doctor about it years after I had gone GF. She said I had to get back on the gluten–and there was no way I was doing that. I decided that me knowing I could not eat gluten without an official diagnosis was good enough for me. To be clear, I don’t think I have celiac because–huh. Wait. I’m reading a list of symptoms and excessive diarrhea (sorry) is one of them. So are cramping and bloating.
I thought it had to be even more severe than that. Oh, there are other things that happen with celiac that doesn’t with gluten intolerance, but I don’t know which I have. More to the point, I’m not going to go back on gluten to get tested. I do fine with just avoiding gluten, so I might as well just do that.
The one restaurant on DoorDash that has GF and/or DF labeled is an Indian restaurant. Their curry is nothing to write home about, but their chicken pakora is great. And they opened another restaurant that has idli and vada, both of which are tasty. However, the last order I got caused me to sit on the toilet, on and off, for seven hours last night. I know it’s the chicken pakora, and it has to be cross-contamination. I always order two portions of it. The first day I ate it, it was a mild burn, but no big deal, so I figured it was just a trace contamination.
The second day (yesterday), however, it was a completely different story. Maybe I ate from the second container? At any rate, I felt it immediately and I was running to the bathroom every fifteen to twenty minutes. And, not to be too graphic (but I’m going to be, anyway), but I was shitting my brains out. I didn’t think I had that much excrement in me.
The last time I accidentally ate gluten was when I wasn’t paying attention at the grocery store. I bought regular macaroni rather than the gluten-free version. Then spent six hours on the toilet (on and off in fifteen minute increments).
This time, it was seven hours, but each episode wasn’t as bad as it was with the macaroni. Which, in a weird way is even more irritating. Here me out. When each episode is big, at least it’s its own thing. When it’s run to the toilet every fifteen minutes for a minute, that’s not enough time to be meaningul, but then it’s hard to get back into whatever I was doing.
The sad part is that now I can’t order from this restaurant any longer. I’m sure some people would say to call the restaurant, but nope. Trust is gone. Eevn if they reassured me that this would never happen again, I would not trust them to hold to that.
Graphic details to follow: I use a baby wipe after I’m done going to the bathroom because the hospital recommended it for getting really clean. Funnily enough, I thought it had to do with what had specifcially happen to me, but nope. Also, the medicated wipes they cormmended was a dollar a pop. That wasn’t happening, either. I did buy grocery store baby wipes, and they have been fine.
By the end of the seven hours last night, my ass was bleeding. Not badly, but there was blood with the wipe. And my asshole was stinging as I wiped it with the baby wipe. That is unacceptable. If you label your food gluten-free/dairy-free, then it damn well better be. I have no good will towards them now that I’ve spent mulitple hours in the bathroom. I could excuse the fact that all their curries tasted basically the same, but I cannot excuse the fact that they made me shit blood.
I will say, that they did me a favor in a weird way. I had become lax on checking for gluten and now, I’m sewing it back up. I had had traces of discomfort in the past from this restaurant, but I excused it because they are literally the only restaurante I found on DoorDash (near me) that actually noted GF/DF, nut-free, etc. Interestingly, they did the same with their new restaurant that was just added to DoorDash–but said that something with chicken was vegan. Um. No?
Anyway, this is the kind of thing that is a one-strike and you’re out. One big strike, I mean. It’s a shame for me food-wise, but better for my wallet. And if I really want to order out, there’s a great Thai place down the road. I used to order from them until I found the Indian place on DoorDash. That cuts out the fees, too, so I think I’ll get back to that.
It’s interesting. I might not recommend cutting out dairy and gluten completely on the same day, but I knew that was the way that would work best for me. I am an all-or-nothing kind of person, and it was easier mentally to just say that it was all off-limits rather than to gradually taper off.
Side note: I used to smoke two to three cigarettes a day, a quarter to a half cig at a time. My doctor told me that it was not a big deal. I asked why it was pushed so hard as being awful, then. She said because realistically, if doctors told their patients they could smoke one to two cigarettes a day, their patients would just hear, “It’s fine to smoke”. Which, fair.
But then later on, when I switched doctors, one of them said that smoking two cigarettes a day was the same as smoking a pack a day. I looked at her with disbelief in my eyes. Come on. That’s just ridiculous. She lost any credibility she might have had (which was none because she was a substitute for my normal doctor), and I dismissed everything else she had to say.
It’s the same whith the church in which I grew up. They hammeered it home that sex before marriage (especially for girls) was the biggest sin you could commit. It would send you to hell where you would burn forever after. When I had sex at the age of 20 and it was fantastic, I was done with religion. That one thing was such a huge lie, I could not take any of it seriosuly. I walked away from the tatters of a religion I had trouble believing, anyway, and never looked back.
I don’t want to spend seven hours on the toilets. I don’t think that’s too hard to ask. If a restaurant can’t guarantee that there will not be cross-contamination, then they should not categorize something as gluten-free.