So I noticed an anomaly in my abdominal muscles last week. Then a couple more. All on the left side. The right side seems to be fine. I spent some time inspecting my muscles, and finding that just above my hip bone there's about a 2 inch tear in the muscle. Just below the ribs, a smaller one, and to the left of the belly button, just a very small one. All on the left abdominal wall.
And because I curiously poked at these, determining my muscles were indeed torn in those places, afterward my abdomen was swollen for 5 days.
(My chiropractor is now keeping an eye on it, he's a soft tissue specialist.)
Honestly, I'm not too surprised I poked myself enough for it to swell up for several days - I don't seem to have a very good sense of pain. I've figured myself "fine" on more than one emergency occasion. I've many times failed to react to my own injuries with anything more than an after-the-fact "Oh, wow, that's gross, anybody know where a first aide kit is?" or an "Oh dear, this might be a problem."
But the point is, Celiac disease has torn me up. Literally.
People often ask me what will happen if I get gluten.
When I get gluten, my abdomen swells up. I consider this a blessing - a swollen stomach is not going to immediately kill me. I don't need to carry an epi-pen, I don't have to rush to the hospital. This is good. But, the amount of swelling can be severe. We're talking muscle distension, and within two hours, my abdomen can swell such that it is visually similar to the size of 6 month partum. It is very painful.
My intestines have healed a lot. My swelling reaction is not nearly as frequent as it once was. For example, I can get through a 'wrong kind of carmel coloring' goof-up with only minor digestive complaints. If you aren't familiar with celiac damage, here's a nice, scientific, non-icky description for you. And if you don't feel like reading that, the simple explanation is that the more wheat/gluten I had (before I knew what was wrong with me) the more my upper intestines were bleeding. I've healed quite a bit, the fact that I can get through a minor food oops relatively comfortably is a major triumph.
I think the abdominal tears were probably a result of my healing process. When I first eliminated gluten from my diet, my body was starting to get used to being not swollen, but was still so sensitive to the slightest thing, and I also was still learning how to get my diet right, extreme swelling flares were still relatively frequent. I think that is the time when my stomach muscles would have torn. I did have to go to the ER once for abdominal pain during that time, and they never really figured out what was wrong, and I ended up prescribed for pelvic floor physical therapy to re-build the muscles that didn't know how to function without the swelling that had always been there. That episode was 3 years ago. And things have been mostly well since then. The therapy was no fun to do, but was tremendously helpful.
So I'm hoping this is just something that is still trying to heal and with a little TLC just won't give me any further problems.
And, clearly, I shouldn't poke it.
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