So you’re at a conference in a foreign country, and its lunch time. The menu at the head of the table is in a language you don’t read. Now to judge the food by looks. All the food looks impossible. Even the vegetables are on the same tray as the sandwiches, all mingling with a bit too much friendliness. One dish looks like potatoes covered in a gravy dressing. Skipping over all the sandwiches, the next, dish looks like Quinoa salad, so let’s try some of that.
Just after shoveling the third scoop of this tasty gruel, you wander back to the menu to see if you can recognize what it is that you’re eating, since this clearly isn’t Quinoa. Amongst a bunch of words that you can’t read, you pick out “couscous”. Hmm, what’s that? First entry on Google says “wheat semolina”. Fuck. This gruel is the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
After throwing the rest of the meal in the garbage and using every swear word you know, you pace the room aimlessly. You wander outside, resisting the urge to just walk into traffic with your eyes closed. Going through past experiences of gluten, remembering the pain, the shakes, the groggy mornings, the throbbing head. Depending on your sensitivity, this may be only slightly annoying. For others, the next day or more is going to be a bell-curve of agony.
Its the last day of the conference, and you fly back tomorrow. Best case scenario you are feeling like yourself again by the time you get home, after your two flights, the airport noise, the questionable food, and the pain pills that don’t work.
You should have double checked the menu before you started shoveling. Its been months, maybe a year since your last slip. Reset the counter and brace yourself for what comes next.