I accidentally glutened myself on Wednesday night. While at my friend Amy’s house, for what has become a semi-monthly girls’ get together (called, alternatively, the Dysfunctional Ladies’ Night or just Bitches’ Night, if you’re Jenny), we usually order food, drink too much wine for a school night and pretend we’re working on a revision of the show we wrote back in 2009. We really are going to revise it and produce it again, hopefully early in 2012, but we’re kind of shit at staying on topic during these evenings. I am squarely in the ‘guilty’ camp when it comes to that.

We often order from a great Mexican place that I have never had problems with – Mexican food is usually pretty safe for me, as I can order something with corn tacos or just a burrito without the tortilla and be fine. I decided to try something different and get the catfish tostada – sounded yummy – and when it arrived it was covered in lettuce and sour cream and I was ravenous. I got a big forkful and took a delicious bite.

Ruh-roh.

Just as I swallowed my first mouthful, I pulled the lettuce and sour cream aside to get some more catfish, and saw with a sinking feeling that it was fried. Fried in some kind of breadcrumb/batter coating. That means flour. That means wheat.

I had a momentary battle in my brain, between my rumbling stomach saying ‘ah screw it, you already ate some so just finish it’ and my logical side saying ‘yes but you only had a bit, eat the whole thing and you’ll be totally messed up’. Luckily, my logical side won, but I was so mad at myself for not checking how they cooked the fish. Poor Amy felt terrible (even though it was my own stupid fault) and kept trying to find things for me to eat, but (as is often the case) anything she had in the fridge contained wheat. Eventually I snagged some leftover corn chips and demolished some hummus.

I fully expected my stomach to go nuts within 30 minutes, but instead I got a brand new set of reactions. I got the brain fog. This is a common symptom that I have never really had, but for some reason I got it badly on Wednesday night. My stomach has been a little annoyed since then, but considering I directly ingested a bunch of wheat I’m shocked at how well it did. Hopefully that’s a sign that my system is repairing itself and can better deal with accidental poisonings. But the brain fog was terrible. I had it the whole of the next day too – a strange, lightheaded, slightly dizzy and very sleepy feeling, like you could just put your head down and pass out in seconds. It was kind of alarming.

This morning I was still mega-tired, but I kept drinking lots of water (as that tends to flush my system pretty quickly) and tried to eat good foods for the last day or so. All of a sudden at about 11:30am, I got a massive burst of energy and was practically jigging up and down in my seat at work. That’s usually a good sign that the gluten is gone, and also my ravenous appetite is back, so I’m celebrating with a trip to the yummy halal stand across the street for some chicken & rice with hot sauce. Mmmmmm.