Me and my sis

I was playing this one close to my chest, but, for a couple of weeks before I went away, sis was really poorly. It kicked in a couple of weeks after giving birth, but she wasn't retaining any food, and her blood INR levels were all over the place and the hospital didn't know what to do with her.

I should backtrack a little. She has a protein deficiency that means her blood may be particularly clone to clotting, and that she has to take warfarin on a daily basis, and her blood thickness has to be constantly checked, usually every fortnight or so. The warfarin/baby thing is apparently not a match made in heaven, so for the duration of the pregnancy they moved her onto a different drug that she had to inject twice daily. But they monitored her closely, and everything went according to plan.

A few weeks after the birth and her levels are mad screwy, she's having to go in every day and spend the day on a hospital ward, she's not retaining magnesium or iron and the specialist who looked at her was making grave warnings about 'cardiac irrythmia'. Strange man.

Eventually, they discharged her, but with a referral to the gastronomy dept to see if they could find anything out, and after her blood specialist trod on a few toes, she was taken in for a gastroscopy / biopsy within a week.

And they're 95% sure (still awaiting the biopsy results) that she's coeliac. Which, means that she has carefully watch what she eats and stick to a gluten-free diet from now on. When you look at the list of foodstuffs that she can't now eat, it looks a bit harsh, but I know that all sorts of things were bashing around inside her head, and this came as a relief.

We bought her a couple of cookbooks the day after she was diagnosed and it looks like there are alternatives to nearly everything although whether a cake made with barmy flour instead of real flour will taste the same, I couldn't tell you.

But I can tell you that she's going to be alright, and that's the important thing.

(And be warned - that coeliac website is a bit annoying, turn the volume down on your speakers)