I Cheated and I Paid for It

I have a confession to make

There it was staring at me from across the room — the most delicious-looking cheese platter. I was famished and the cheese was giving me that look.

I could hear it calling my name.

Just try it. A small amount. You’ll be fine.

I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. I don’t eat meat. These things are by choice.

I can’t eat cheese because of my stomach. I have what they call microscopic colitis, an autoimmune inflammation of the colon. Well, there isn’t anything microscopic about it when it returns with a vengeance.

You see, I’d been giving in from time to time when out of the house. It hadn’t bothered me yet, so I indulged once in a while, hoping and praying that I could just be vegetarian.

At a family dinner, I had some parmesan on my pasta. Just a sprinkle. I was fine. Maybe it didn’t really bother my stomach and maybe my problem back then was just the alcohol.

Alcohol exacerbates it, too.

So, I tried it again another time. A bite here and there. All good.

I believed I deserved some of that cheese platter. Just a few squares of sharp cheddar and a slice of brie with apricot jam on top.

I love cheese. It was promising but my body was just testing me. I was giving into cheese peer pressure. The sweet, salty, buttery, nutty, sharp peppery flavor coats your entire mouth that sends pleasure signals through your whole body.

The electrifying sensation from cheese that nothing else gave me. Why was my body being so mean to me?

Why couldn’t I have this? I felt so deprived.

After the cheese platter was eyeballing me at the wedding and being as famished as I was, I started walking over even though my stomach told me to stop. But, my brain was telling me that I could just have one.

I should know better. I can’t just have one drink.

But, I could moderate my cheese consumption. This would be different.

The wedding cheese platter sent me into an awful space. Severe stomach pains and all that goes along with it. I will spare you the details.

So what to do? Be deprived of cheese or suffer with it?

It’s kind of like alcohol for me. It’s not good for me and I can’t have it.

Back to the vegan drawing board and don’t mind me while I sulk in the corner with jealousy at everyone that can enjoy cheese.

In 2016, the stomach pains from hell ruled my happiness. It went on for almost a year before I decided to do anything about it. That is how I rolled, hoping that it would just be gone the next day.

I loved to keep putting things off and seeing if they magically healed on their own with no intervention. When in reality, I wasn’t ready to give it up. I’d been inhaling cheese since I was a little girl.

That day never came so I did the battery of tests. The lovely endoscopy and colonoscopy at the same time by the hottest set of doctors and nurses that I’ve ever seen in my life.

Figures. And, pretty shitty if you ask me.

The diagnosis was in. Microscopic colitis. There are 6 types of colitis and the doctor informed me that I had the “good one”. I remember when the doctor said that to me when I had cancer, too. I survived so that gave me a little relief.

At least it wasn’t cancer and at least it wasn’t ulcerative colitis, which would mean the possibility of a colostomy bag. I don’t know about you but I think I’d rather die than have a colostomy bag.

They wanted to put me on all these drugs but at the time I only wanted to take the drugs that I wanted to for fun. I didn’t want any of that pharmaceutical steroid crap in my body. How ironic.

So, I did a lot of research and found just what I did during my cancer diagnosis. What was the answer? I could heal my body with food.

Veggies. Lots of veggies. Raw, sauteed, juiced, you name it. The more veggies the better.

What might the culprit be? Dairy. Gluten. Nightshades. There was an extensive list because we are all different.

I was no beginner at nutrition so I knew what the inflammatory foods were and decided to cut those out first. Dairy and Gluten. Was I going to look at alcohol and its effect on my insides? Not yet and not for a while, either.

Well, what do you know? After I cut out dairy, things got better. I also wasn’t drinking much during this time to let everything heal. I tried keeping gluten at a minimum because it didn’t seem to be bothering me enough to cut it out completely.

My stomach issues didn’t completely get better until I cut out alcohol in January of 2021. From then until a few weeks ago, I had no problems at all.

I thought I was in remission for good. So, I might as well try to have another love affair, seeing if it would be different this time.

But, I should have known better…

Lesson learned. Cheating never ends well.

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