The backdrop: I had cracked my rib playing frisbee about a week prior to getting glutened. It was hurting pretty bad, and we were on a road trip down to Florida. On the way down, I was having trouble drawing a full breath, in retrospect I think because of the pain and the discomfort of sitting in one place in a vehicle.
However… the plot was about to thicken. I ate some Sam’s Club (Member’s Mark) jerky – no gluten ingredients, it says “gluten free,” and doesn’t say anything about being processed in a facility that processes wheat. Perfect. Let’s hope it’s clear…
IT’S NOT. But I wouldn’t know that until the evening. I’m guessing that the same machines that process this basic flavor of beef jerky also process teriyaki jerky on the same machines – gluten cross contamination.
But I didn’t know this. I had no idea it was the gluten – obviously, the first and most obvious conclusion is that it’s related to the cracked rib, and some kind of respiratory distress.
Anyhow, we are about 11 hours into our 13-hour drive, and suddenly I could feel myself losing it. As I mentioned, I had been a little iffy all day, but now I could feel myself coming unstrung fast – I slumped against the driver’s wheel, trying not to crash the van, losing feeling first in my right arm, then in my left leg, that in my right foot, etc. Chest pain in my right lung. I started getting COLD, them shaky, feeling like I was going to drop out of consciousness at any moment – like someone had cut the wires of communication between my muscles and my brain. Fortunately, I was able to pull off to a gas station and stumble inside – I made sure Caitlin had her phone ringer up, and I took my phone in with me.
It was all I could do to stay upright. Perhaps thankfully, the gas station was about a grimy as they come, and I didn’t have the option of lying down on the floor. I was horribly thirsty, but drinking water did nothing.
I was certain it had to be the cracked rib – maybe a closed pneumonothorax and collapsed lung, or the rapid culmination of pneumonia, or a lung blood clot.
But there we were, in the middle of nowhere Tennessee, out of range of just about everyone and everything.
I stumbled back the car and collapsed and one on the back seats. I had to force myself to breathe. If I forgot and stopped breathing, there was no natural inclination to breathe – I would find myself just simply having stopped breathing; I had to intentionally think about breathing to make it happen.
Ironically, still without me realizing it was the gluten, my thoughts wandered back to the very first time I had collapsed from gluten – that time, staring up at the passing street lights in the back of the van on the way to the ER wondering if this was it. And just like that time, eventually, after about an hour, things started to clear up. I was able to sit up and let Caitlin know that I had not in fact died just yet. So far so good.
We stopped and got a pulseOx – and of course my O2 was fine. Ok. Strange. It’s probably not lungs then – what on earth?…
You would think I would have figured it out. But nope. The next day, I ate some more of the same jerky – then after a partial collapse the next day, it dawned on the slow kid that, maybe perhaps possibly all was not well in Mudsville.
The epilogue is thankfully that I seem to recover quite a bit faster than I used to. For better or for worse, I now have confirmation that I do indeed still dramatically react to “gluten free” cross contaminated products. But, if you’re wondering what someone’s “glutening” felt like, to compare it to your own, or otherwise – well, that’s my little story.
*I wrote this immediately after it happened. Well. As it happened, it wasn’t the end of the story, unfortunately. Read the rest here.
