life was easy, until it wasn’t.
I believe it was my second semester of my Freshman year in college. I went to the Heritage Center to grab lunch with friends. We never realize how liberation can move us to make bad decisions until we do. I filled my plastic red plate up with freshly cooked pizza. Pepperoni. We all sat down together to talk about our 2020 History of Rock and Roll class.
Next thing I knew, my body swelled up like a bloated balloon, ready to burst. It was a couple days before my first trip to the hospital. I followed the swelling with a couple days of easy eating. A piece of toast, some potato soup. From here on out my story shifted.
I could hardly eat a thing without having an outburst. I went to the hospital with a baby ready for labor. I was pregnant with confusion and worry, in a state 2200 miles away from home. They put a camera down my throat, took stool tests, blood-work, urine samples, the whole nine yards. To no avail I left the probing sessions with more questions than answers, more pain than guidence.
At this point I think I was given an antacid, anti-nausea, antiinflammatory, anti-answers. IBS they said. Take this oxycodone they said. I lived on my boyfriend’s bed high as a kite for weeks on end, holding my stomach like a soon to be mother.
During this time I was lost in the bottles that sat in the box next to my bed. Muscle relaxers in the morning, oxycodone after class. I couldn’t sustain this lifestyle any longer. I smoked weed in the dorm bathroom and used dryer sheets as a mouthguard for every exhale. What I found was temporary relief from a diagnosis that would shift gerastically over the next seven years.
Fast forward six months. I’m avoiding the pizza bar, no longer making root beer floats out of the soft serve ice cream I creatively thought to put in a cup instead of a bowl (yes, I am proud of that idea). I was trying to eat healthy in an effort to stop the bloat baby from growing any closer to it’s due date.
I scheduled appointments with specialists, who insisted it was “Irritable Bowel Syndrome”- An ubrella term for ‘we-have-no-fucking-idea-sorry’ or maybe acid reflux from the stresses of school. Granted, school wasn’t a walk in the park, but at this time I was studying until noon and going skiing until 4PM. Not necessarily a Harvard Law experience.
It took almost a full year before someone suggested to get an allergy test. So I went in for a few minutes, got scraped with a couple of needles, and low and behold! My back swelled up like a bee sting right where the label for “Milk” was drawn on my back in pen. #13, #4, #9… Red. Swollen. Bumps.
I was allergic to milk, potatoes and barley. Dammit. No more beer.
I uprooted my diet. Starting my sophomore year I was eating totally gluten, dairy and potato free. Which to be honest, wasn’t easy being back home in Georgia. Not only did I have to convert my own eating habits, but I had to press against family dinners and resist my grandmothers mac n cheese (to die for, by the way)
Anna Stump 