Hi, I’m back!

These past three weeks have been particularly challenging for me. In February-March this year, after experiencing some severe recurring stomach pains, I did an experiment by removing gluten from my diet. And, within a month, the result was quite astonishing: stomach pain significantly subsided, less headache, and (this is my favorite one) the skin rash on my upper arms (which came and went ‘as they like’) completely disappeared!

I was very happy with the result and was just thinking about continuing the gluten-free diet – when a friend told me that I’d better consulted a doctor first before deciding on the “currently hip” gluten-free lifestyle. I realized it came with one consequence: I had to reintroduce gluten into my diet, otherwise the test result would be negative.

Sure enough, I ate bread again and whole wheat cereals and cookies and my favorite cinnamon buns, flavored instant coffee…and I didn’t think much about it until, three weeks ago, the stomach pain came back one Saturday morning I had an event to attend (and I was supposed to help out early in the morning, but I couldn’t!). At first, I thought it was ‘just another stomach inflammation” caused by too much antibiotics (due to two dental surgeries and a throat infection I had had earlier this year). But then, the stomach pain came back literally every day. I went to work as usual but I wasn’t feeling well and I would rush to go home and to rest because most often I also had terrible headache …and I started to notice the bumpy skin rash on my upper arms again, they also came back!

Well yes, it was time to check with the doctor. I had to undergo several lab tests. And finally I got the result on Thursday, and once the doctor saw the skin rash on my arms he was convinced that I had to eliminate gluten and to cut back dairy intake. Maybe after a few weeks, I might be able to reintroduce gluten in a small amount per week, to experiment with how sensitive my body is to gluten, but maybe I will just continue to go gluten-free. We’ll see!

But anyway, this weekend I started to feel good again ;-) and somehow I would like to cheer myself with drawing a cheerful face of a girl with flowery hat. Hope you like it, too! ;-)

Please don’t forget that you can get the high-resolution, high-quality PDF files of these images by subscribing to the Free Weekly Coloring Pages here:

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And, if you do color them, please take a snapshot and post the pictures to An Artful Cup of Java’s Facebook page, I will add them to my upcoming gallery!

Thank you!