so you think you are tough? Read this article by Assistant Head Coach Ellen Stanley…

In 2006, my life changed forever. On my masters swim team, where I was an assistant coach, I swam only with the evening group so rarely got to swim with the other “half” of the team. I had been swimming there for a few years but never really crossed paths with the morning coaches. One June morning I had to attend a morning workout due to a schedule conflict and got into a conversation with one of the head coaches who coached mornings. I had long been struggling with training properly for the 400 IM and after we talked, it was agreed that he would train me to win it at Nationals. He said he saw a tremendous amount of potential in me and that I needed a well-constructed plan and a lifestyle change, immediately, if I wanted to win. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. It was what I wanted more than anything and he was a coach with the experience and the National titles to prove he could do it. What neither of us realized at the time was the journey this opportunity would take me on and the hell I would undergo along the way.

Prior to my starting on this 400 IM training program, my diet consisted of every carb you can imagine while I was training. Pasta, bagels and every swimmer’s favorite, beer and significant quantities of each with no real attention paid to the types of food I should be eating as well as the quantities. When I started on the 400 IM program with my coach, he placed me on a specific carb/cal/protein diet that had me eating specific foods on specific days to get the most out of my body and prepare me for each day as I was swimming about 35k a week at the start and that increased to much more as we got farther into the program.

On November 11, 2006 after a hard workout and during my daily post-workout refueling, I became violently ill. Thinking it was nothing more than a stomach bug or maybe food poisoning, I brushed it off. I was under a lot of stress at work and some family issues compounded that stress, but I was pretty much convinced it was just a bug. That was the first sign and I completely ignored it.

Things just got worse from there. It all started becoming routine. 2.5 hour morning swim, afternoon run, weights/drylands, refuel with carbs throughout the day, work, and rest. All the while, my sickness was becoming more and more frequent and more and more violent by the day. I did what most people do when they have stomach issues…I rested when I could, ate bland foods like Saltines and bagels and drank carbonated beverages like Sprite (little did I know that these were compounding the issue).

When this started interfering in not only my everyday life, but my work and my training, I began documenting everything on the advice of my coach. I kept a journal where I listed everything I ate/drank, what my workout was, how much sleep I got the night before, and what symptoms I was having. It was chock full of information that didn’t raise any alarms other than the pattern was the same… my symptoms – bloating, crippling stomach cramps, vomiting and its southern partner (over and over and over…). My coach and I did endless research online looking for solutions, diagnoses…anything. There were so many possibilities. Was it IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), Ulcerative Colitis, stomach ulcers, mono??? So many questions so the next obvious step after a few week’s of this was to go to the doctor.

I went to my PCP for advice and after showing my journal to her, was referred to a local gastroenterologist. At first, the GI doc recommended culture samples and brushed it off telling me it was probably IBS, a fairly common diagnosis in women my age, primarily due to stress. At the time it made sense given all the changes going on in my life outside the pool and the amount of training I was doing. His solution to my problem was drugs. Now, anyone that knows me knows that drugs are not the typical course of treatment that I like. If it could be done by modifying my diet or adding something to my diet, I was ok with that. But these symptoms were interfering with my everyday life, making me miss work and my training was suffering as a direct result of what I was chalking up to IBS. So, I took the medication he recommended.

Weeks passed, dosages were upped, more cultures were ordered, new medications were introduced and nothing was improving. If anything, my symptoms were worsening. Of course, since we still did not know what it was, I continued to eat mild and bland foods like bagels, and toast. Then, in mid-December, my GI doc recommended a colonoscopy. Confident that this would answer all my questions and solve all my problems, the colonoscopy did anything but…everything came back “normal”.

And so the cycle continued and I continued training despite my coach’s very vocal concerns… at the same time I went in for the procedure, I was training for our regional SCM Championships in December and had to get the disappointing news from my coach that I couldn’t swim. He had had enough of the daily breakdown and simply stopped the program. I was at the peak of my training, in the best shape of my life and I was poised to break several New England records but not being able to compete put me further in a hole. I was angry at my coach, myself and the whole world of swimming. I was beginning to think that this was just going to be my way of life. I did not want to give up my training, but these symptoms were getting to the point of being unbearable.

So, I rested for the remainder of December and accepted that this was all happening for a reason. I was determined to swim the following year and make up for the lost time. I might have been sick but I never wanted anything so badly in my life and I was determined to get it. So, I decided I would swim through the pain, the diarrhea, the bloating, everything and just train my ass off. I begged my coach to let me back in and he relented letting me back in on 1/1/07. I started training for SCY Nats and kept ignoring the physical issues my stomach was giving me. I told my coach that I was ok on most days even when I literally felt like I was dying.

For months I kept my journal with all the woes my stomach was giving me and to top it off, while running one day, I twisted and fractured my ankle. Awesome… talk about adding insult to injury. I figured it was all just dumb luck but as I would later find out, the ankle and the stomach were directly related. My muscles and bones were deteriorating right in front of me but I wouldn’t know this for many more months. So, now that my ankle was useless, I strapped my legs together with a large rubber band, stuck a pull buoy in between my legs and I pulled, for almost 3 months until I was completely healed. Weeks passed and I was still in phenomenal shape despite only using my arms. I was able to do drylands, weights, and swim. SCY Nats was now out of the question because I still couldn;t put enough pressure on the ankle to start off of a block, but I wasn’t losing any ground in my training for LCM Nats, and I was surprisingly optimistic that things would all work out…that somehow, “this” was all part of the plan. Meanwhile…the sickness was at its absolute worst peak.

LCM Nats rolled around in August 2007 and I headed to the Woodlands, TX. My ankle was 100% healed and my stomach was destroyed. Texas was brutal… 110 degrees in the shade and 100% humidity, hardly what one would call ideal conditions to race in but this was small potatoes next to the other issues that were going on so I took it on and despite the intense heat, I had a great meet! I placed 2nd in both the 200 and 400 IM and set lifetime PR’s in both. I was swimming fast, but my stomach was still battered and bruised. I ignored the problems my stomach was giving me and I swam through it… swam my way to PR’s and USMS Top Ten finishes! I called that a win!

After this trip, my coach and I went back to the drawing board…something had to change with my stomach. He pulled me out of the water and that was it for training…I was done until we had an answer. Clearly a change was in order, starting with my GI Doctor. After countless cultures, medications and no progress or improvement, my coach, who has a hiatal hernia, got me in to see his GI doc, who is one of the top GI docs in Massachusetts. My first appointment with her was like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. One of her first questions to me was “did my previous GI doctor request any blood work?” Well, the answer to that was, NO. She said the answers to all my problems were probably in my blood work. Not sure how my blood could determine why my stomach was on a constant cycle of rejecting anything I put into it, I gladly offered my blood, praying that this could solve all my problems. She also suggested another endoscopy and colonoscopy. I told her of my troubles with the last colonoscopy (only 6 months previously) and she assured me that she would make it a better experience for me. So, with that, I had my blood work orders in hand, my procedures scheduled and I felt a rush of relief… finally, after almost a year of this awful routine, I may finally get the answers I needed.

So now, 10 months after this had all started, I got my blood work back from a simple test. What a surprise this was… all my blood work was normal, with three notable exceptions. My iron levels were low (no surprise there), my Vitamin D levels were very low (again no surprise), and my tTGA (anti-tissue transglutaminase) number was off the chart. Having no clue what this test was, my doctor told me that this was a marker to determine if a patient may have Celiac Disease as it measures the level of antibodies in your body. What??? During all of our investigations and research we had read about Celiac Disease over and over, but brushed it off since it’s a genetic disease and no one in my family has it. Normal numbers for this particular test range from 0-19… my number was 285!!!! Based on these results my GI doc said the procedures were necessary for a final diagnosis. At last…hope.

I wasn’t out of the woods yet though. Only a few days later, I was rushed to the ER. I had come to the end and my body was rejecting absolutely everything I put in it, so I had stopped drinking/eating altogether. I barely had the strength to crawl to the toilet across my apartment and by the end just stayed in the bathroom lying on the floor. Dangerously dehydrated and losing weight at a rapid rate, my brother came and took me to the ER where the ER doctor examined me. They hooked me up to an IV and they asked for a culture. After asking all sorts of questions, they also said I needed an endoscopy/colonoscopy. They got enough fluids in me to send me home where my body’s breakdown continued.

Needless to say, I was miserable. This was just like swimming a 400 IM…so close to the end and your body begins to completely fail. It requires every bit of mental and physical strength to finish. I was failing and I had begun to recall the articles I read about patients having complete GI/kidney breakdown at this stage. The next few days were hell…no sleeping, no eating or drinking…just praying.

On September 27, 2007 all my prayers were answered. My GI doctor performed the procedures, and sure enough, my small intestine was completely smooth and severely swollen. Why? Because this whole time, I had been poisoning myself. I was eating the equivalent of battery acid. My pancakes, bagels, pasta dinners, saltines, soda, toothpaste, etc. were secretly destroying my small intestine. The villi that absorb vitamins and nutrients from the food I eat were basically destroyed. There were none left. None. The gluten in these food items attacked my villi and prevented my body from absorbing the necessary nutrients I needed. FINALLY, an answer!

I woke up from my procedures groggy, but when I saw my GI doc and she gave me the news, there was a HUGE weight lifted off my shoulders. While my carbo loading was great for my training, it was something my body simply could not handle. I was literally toxic and it would take years for my numbers to get to normal and for my small intestine to repair itself. The course of attack to heal – eat/drink gluten free. No medications, no more procedures… just a change in my diet! From now on, no wheat, rye, and barley (and oats kind of). Sadly, my days of drinking all varieties of beer were over and pasta dinners would be with rice pasta instead of wheat pasta, but in the grand scheme of things, in order to save myself, all I needed to do was watch my diet. I didn’t need medication to keep me healthy. How fantastic was that!?!?!?

A few weeks later, I started to feel better. I was not symptom free by any means, but definitely better. Each day got 1% better than the one before it. A few weeks later I returned to swimming and to my training and since this diagnosis, great things have happened. I’m swimming faster, I’m stronger, I’m not bound to my house for fear that I might have a flare up. My coach and I tested out energy drink after energy drink and bar after bar and did so much research on what I could and could not eat. I became a walking Celiac encyclopedia. Its been three years and I can still remember those days and every time I do, I think about how easy a workout is. No matter what my coach throws at me, nothing in my life will ever be as bad as that.

Thankfully, although my training suffered slightly, I could still do the work needed in the high intensity workouts and was lucky to not do any further damage to my body. Turns out, when someone has Celiac Disease and doesn’t realize it, they can become malnourished and do significant damage to their body… such as anemia, weak bones, in addition to diarrhea, bloating, and cramps. All of the problems I had previously were a direct result of Celiac Disease.

Looking back on these past few years, I consider myself very lucky. I’m finally healthy and I’m fully committed to my training and reaching my goals. I live gluten free and while yes, I do miss a good beer or a slice of pizza or heck, a cupcake, in the grand scheme of things, these are small sacrifices to make to be pain free and symptom free. I can continue on my path and reach my goals… leaving the gluten in my trails. While this process was very painful and slow, it saved my life.

Interestingly enough…I did make one more attempt at the 400 IM/200 IM at SCY Nats in 2008 but having done so little training to prepare due to a shoulder that was in desperate need of surgery, I was not optimistic. I placed 5th and 7th respectively and a week after Nats, had my shoulder repaired after putting off the surgery for over a decade. I recovered from that after 6 months of kick and started down the path of distance training. I set the 800 SCM record in 2008 for New England and have my sights set on many others. So…bring on the 12,000+ yard workouts and countless sit-ups. I know I can do it. Gluten or no gluten, nothing will ever keep this swimmer from doing what I love.