Press Clippings
The Sunday Sentinel, May 7 2006
Eating out isn't easy ...
Eating out isn't easy when you're a coeliac patient, as eating a crumb of bread or a fleck of flour can leave you in pain - but observing a strict diet is better than the alternative as 57-year-old GEOFF CHAPMAN from Wolstanton discovered.
"I began getting poorly as long as 20 years ago and kept going to the doctor with various problems. I was misdiagnosed for six or seven years and was told it was irritable bowel syndrome among other things.
It ws an illness which came on gradually as I approached 40 as I'd had no trouble before. In the end I gave up on the doctor and assumed it was just something I'd have to put up with. People refer to coeliac almost as if it's an allergy, but it's actually a genetic condition in which the body mistakes gluten as something it must destroy and anti bodies destroy the lining of the bowel.
Being a genetic condition, my son now has the same symptoms although it doesn't necessarily pass down. Even if you have the gene it requires something else to act as a trigger, which in my case I suspect was a serious motorbike accident.
I'm 6ft 2ins and when I was at my most poorly I weighed nine stone, having previously weighed 14. I used to have difficulty concentrating on anything and I'd sleep up to five times a day because I had absolutely no energy. Fortunately I'd retired by then, because of my accident, as I would certainly have been incapable of working.
The degree of tiredness is something which is difficult to describe. It was so strong you couldn't fight it and try and work through it, which was due to the anaemia. I couldn't sleep because I was getting up two or three times a night to go to the toilet, and going as many as 10 times during the day. That caused me a tremendous amount of discomfort and my stomach would be so sore I couldn't even fasten a pair of trousers.
Then about three years ago my granddaughter came into the bathroom while I was shaving and she began crying because she said my body looked so awful. My ribs stuck out, and my wife said it reminded her of someone in a concentration camp. After that incident I decided to go to the doctor again, and luckily this time I saw a locum. After describing my symptoms he said he thought he knew what was wrong and sent for some blood tests. They revealed that I was severely anaemic, and I was sent for an urgent bowel biopsy which came back positive for coeliac.
It was a tremendous relief to know what was causing it all, because before I was diagnosed I had begun to worry I was dying of cancer and I'd even begun making preparations.
Before I was diagnosed I used to absolutely love speciality breads, but now I can't have things which include wheat, rye and barley. I get gluten free bread on prescription.
If you continue eating the food causing the problem then the bowel never has a chance to recover, but once you're diagnosed the symptoms disappear almost completely.
Now I'm back to 13 stone and I have my energy but the help I had from the NHS was appalling. I understood what I couldn't eat, but knowing what could contain those was incredibly complex. Things you'd never imagine, like Oxo cubes, have gluten in them. In the end my son went on the Internet and found the Coeliac UK charity and they came to the rescue. One of the most helpful things is a book they produce which has about 200 pages of products you're allowed to eat.
At home my wife and I have separate toasters because I can't have contact with the crumbs from regular bread. It can be tricky when I go out to eat, so I always ask to speak to the chef and explain the condition, and fortunately people are slowly becoming more aware of it."
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