My niece Cami got married on Friday.  (I’ll highlight her wedding in a separate post.)  All my siblings came.  It was the first time since my wedding twelve years ago that we had all been together.  When we could steal Cindy (Cami’s mom) away from the festivities for a few minutes, we took a family picture.

My siblings and I are in order of age from right to left: Shari, Cindy, Becky, Jared, LeAnn, Caryn, and me.  I’m the youngest by eight and a half years, and I’m 23 years younger than my oldest sister Shari.

I love seeing my family, but it’s always stressful to have everyone around.  My family is extremely emotional so it has made for some interesting get togethers over the years.  Normally, someone goes away unhappy and angry.  Luckily, for my niece, nothing like that happened this time around.

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Yesterday, I found out I got an A in my latest English class.  I’m so excited! When I added up my points for the class, I thought I had missed an A by one point.  Luckily, my teacher rounded my percentage up and gave me an A instead of an A-.

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I went to my gastroenterologist last Wednesday.  He’s very confident that I don’t have Celiac.  He even said that my blood test, which my regular doctor thought was positive, was actually negative.

After I described all my symptoms to him, he told me he thought I had one of two things: Crohn’s Disease or SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth).  He thinks SIBO is the more likely option.  I get to have a colonoscopy to confirm (and to rule out other GI diseases, like colitis).

I couldn’t find a lot of about SIBO on the Internet, but from what I’ve gathered, I would rather have Celiac.  The reason for my thinking is that SIBO is hard to treat.  Normally, patients are put on a round of heavy antibiotics to kill the extra bacteria.  But, whatever caused the patient to collect this extra bacteria has to be treated too and most doctors don’t know why it happens.  More than likely, the bacteria will come back.  If that happens, the patient has to be put on antibiotics long term–usually one week on and three weeks off.  And, because of bacterial resistance, the patient has to switch between antibiotics constantly and possibly take probiotics with the antibiotics.  Sometimes, patients have to alter their diet anyway and the most effective diet is a high-fat low-carb one. I’m not a big meat eater and that’s where I’m going to get the good fats with the low carbs.  Also, with this diet, I’m not supposed to have excessive sweets, which is a good thing; I just don’t know if I’ll be able to eat any as some patients can’t.

I guess we’ll see what the colonoscopy tells the doctor.  Hopefully, it’s something conclusive so I can start feeling better.  He has already given me a round of antibiotics so we’ll see if that helps too.