My Regression

I started working at Applebee's the summer of 2013. I was a waitress there and as you can imagine server life has no breaks, and you eat a lot of the restaurant's food.  I worked there until early 2014, so all that time I was eating a ton of gluten (although I still didn't realize I had a gluten allergy) with only one incident. So of course I didn't think much of it.  I started a new job in March of 2014 at a daycare center.  I was a teacher assistant so of course we got share in the snacks and have lunches if we wanted to, and mt at home diet never changed either.   Late that fall is when I really started to regress.  I woke up one morning got ready for work, and then all of a sudden I was taken to floor with stomach pains. My body was sweating and hot, and the pain makes you shake.  I of course went to the restroom and ended up taking Imodium to help stop everything.   I texted my mom (because who wouldn't) and told her what had happened that morning.  We agreed that it could have just been something funky I ate and not to worry to much about it because everyone deals with stomach issues here and there. I continued on my way not worrying about it too much.  If you ever used a costive (Imodium, Pepto, etc.) you know that it can hold for a few days. So, I didn't have any issues for a couple days after that, and I figured I was fine.  Shortly after (timeline is fuzzy) I woke up to get ready for work and I was hit with the same issue.  I took more medicine just to make it to work, and then had to take some more at work just function.  It's not easy having to run the restroom every couple minutes when you are watching a classroom full of children....after a few repeats of this over the next week or two, I decided to get a probitoic, and my mom suggested slowly eliminate things from diet and see if  have a reaction.  I took my probiotic and the episodes became a little less frequent but still once to twice a week. Which was still too many.  I started eliminating items from my diet. I was hoping my body could handle all my food. I didn't want to be gluten free, or dairy free. Those sounded miserable. So I took out gluten (or so I thought)for a few days, no change.  Then I took out diary for a few days, I thought I noticed a small improvement. Hey I think I found it!  You know what else I found out? They make a pill if you can't have dairy. This isn't going to be so bad after all I figured. I can eat dairy as long as I have my pill and we are good to go!  Oh poor naive Victoria. There was so much you didn't even know.   I was still having some issues but they did let up in the intensity for a while.  I just thought it would continue to get better and better.  I remember however and my works, Christmas meeting/potluck I brought Red Lobster biscuits. Boy are those things delicious! I am not ashamed to say I binged on those so much. I didn't have a lactose pill though. So I'm sure you can imagine what happened the next morning.... I was absolutely crippled! I was on imodium almost to it's full dose. I couldn't hardly walk in between potty breaks.  It took two hours before I even calmed down. I was at my breaking point.  I was going to call the doctor on my break that day.   I called my doctor and set up an appointment, who immediately told me he was going to set me up with a GI doc.  He told me to continue to take my Imodium as needed, until I can get in to see the specialist. The specialist was about a month out, which really sucked. In between my waiting I was about every other day with taking my medicine I couldn't even function on a normal level any more without it....My eyes were about to be partially open. Little did I know what my future holds.

The Following Summer

We are now several months in from when I first started  taking my probiotic.  I religiously took my probiotic morning and night because I was terrified of getting sick again.  I was doing so well over the last several months that I didn't want to go back.  I still did not understand what was or what could be wrong with me at all.  I had tried to track what ate with how I felt. It made no logical sense, but I knew that these probiotics were working so I was going to keep taking them!   However I did't know what lie ahead.  I remember working at the movie theater one Saturday, and we're getting ready to open and I had to rush to the bathroom again!  Panic instantly rushes through my head.  I am not ready to start this again.  I give it some chances to pass, paranoid that I may have to ditch a customer I was helping and run to the bathroom.  Thankfully when that did happen there was another employee was free and able to cover my line.  I finally was able to get some medicine in me and have it relax.   I went home that day my anxiety high and hoping to talk to my mom for some comforting words.  This stuff was so unpredictable and the pain was so intense that it has kind of turned me into a hypochondriac.   I went home and my mom said not to panic since it could just be something I ate or just your body going through stuff.  It happens and every one deals with it so I continued to try and live my life and not worrying about it.   After a couple more weeks, it hit me again. This time around it was not as frequent but it still happened too often for mine or anyone's own comfort.  We decided to try another stool test.  I  was hoping for good news, while I didn't want a ton of issues to surface, but I wanted to know what was wrong and what I was fighting. We even ran ultrasounds on my gallbladder to see if there was any issues.   Sadly the test came back negative.  The doctor said to let it ride for a bit longer and see if subsides.  I switched up my probiotics, and started feeling better again, but I still felt beat up emotionally over what is going on.   Two tests down, and nothing to be found. What the heck is going on?  I shortly started a second job as waitress once I got my confidence back and was feeling great...besides my headaches but that's a bit of a different story...