Preface to my last post

I don't know if I ever said it on here before but I have celiac disease. It's the thing that makes you not be able to digest gluten which is the easiest way of putting it.  It seems to run in my family. I spent much of my life (my younger brother too) not knowing what was wrong with me, why certain foods made me bloat and sick feeling and why I was always either running to the bathroom or not going at all. Seriously when I eat something with gluten in it, my abdomen blows up like a balloon and I look about 7 months pregnant.  Beer is usually the worst as it's like liquid wheat, malt, barley, etc. that ends up in feeling like liquid fire once it hits my digestive system or worse I puke as soon as it hits. It's not like an allergy in that I won't go into Anaphylactic shock and die, however it could eventually cause cancer in the small intestine as it tends to ulcerate the intestine (I know TMI).  However most people don't get it. I do give my dad a pass sometimes because he's 74 and he doesn't get it, he tends to think my brother and I are on a weird diet because we always had strange taste in food (we were the only kids who ask for rice and beans because we like them) or brussel sprouts...However, sometimes with newer family members (people I take the time to learn things about) I get annoyed.  My brother has a similar situation with his in-laws particularly his mother in law who thinks pita bread is okay if it's organic, it's not, it's still wheat.  My mother in law usually has no clue either. She does try though. My sister in law though doesn't take the time to read up on things though. To me if a family member or a friend has an allergy, intolerance or sickness of some kind, the first thing I do when I get home is to look it up and try to understand it so that I am not going to do anything to harm them should they come to my house for dinner or we go out to eat. That may just be me though because I'm that way with everything, anything I don't know I find out  I look it up to learn. For example my other sister in law has a thyroid disease. I wanted to understand it because she was having trouble getting pregnant and it makes me more understanding to her. But then again that's just me. With cd it's hard because not everyone has even heard of it.  But it is common. It's about 1 in every 133 people that have it with most people not even knowing. And there are so many more people who have an intolerance to gluten, same way with the lactose intolerance (which I have lived with since I was born, my poor mom could only feed me soy products as a baby or else I ended up hospitalized with severe stomach issues).