How I collected all the bathrooms.

It all started when I was sitting on the toilet. The work toilet, not my home toilet. I had spent so much time perched on this toilet going twosies while staring at the same cream coloured door with it's slender, matte silver handle that swung slightly too far to the left that I loudly announced to the bathroom "Enough!"
I was so tired of sitting uncomfortably and thinking "What's wrong with me?" I realised I should be positive. Cheer up Charlie etc. I like collecting things. All sorts of things. Bottles, candles, feathers, typewriter keys. So I started a new collection: bathrooms and the backs of their doors. Sort of like Pokemon, I was going to catch them all (wait, ew?). If I was going to spend this much time in bathrooms, I was going to make it my hobby. My home one with it's ugly brown and orange lino, pale yellow door and round, smiley face doorknob (it's not a real face, it's those ones you can find in everyday objects, sort of like the grandpa in my lace curtain growing up and the jesus in my friend's skirting boards of her old place). Oh, the hours I've spent staring at these little details. Finding the faces in my landscape. Trying not to think about the pain and churning in my stomach, the cold sweat trickling down my forehead and the fact that toilet paper somehow decided to turn into tree bark after the tenth wipe (I'm certain of it). Here is a brief list of just some of the bathrooms I've collected:

• The crissycrossy metal doors in the toilets at Toombul. Fluoro lighting, long mirrors. Very shiny, very doctor's surgery.
• "You are beautiful!" exclaimed the loopy scrawl on the back of the public toilet door I collected in Woodfordia. I smiled when the skinny-spider-handwriting beneath it added "I hate penis."
• The back of the sliding starwars door in the robot toilet in a carpark in Ballina that washes itself when you leave. It says "Thank you for washing your hands" when you use the sink and it made me feel like a cyborg. In a good way, obv.
• The glorious, yet disturbing bathroom at The Tivoli with it's faux stone and pale pinks. Comes complete with a couch (for what, just hanging out in the toilet? Um, classy people are weird...) and ornate, oval mirrors.
• My favourite: the door in our new house's bathroom has my big, black metal circle (previously the inhabitant of the loungeroom wall) with magnetic poetry all over it. This was my idea in order to distract myself nicely while perched on the toilet of our new abode. Because, really, I got tired of talking to the smiling door handle in our old house. There's only so much I could say to it before I felt offended and alone from it's lack of response. Now I busy myself with offensive and inspirational (often one in the same) haiku while I'm making poopies.

Some of you (like I'm so confident there are people reading this? Gosh) might wonder "Why the fark would she write about toilets? Her poop? Her hours spent sweating it out in the bathroom? What a filthy girl!" And you'd be right, I probably am a filthy girl, but after hours spent trolling through other people's blogs and medical websites I saw how nobody talks about the "real" side of having this experience thrust upon you.
The experience I'm talking about? I'll get to it.

I got to a point though, where enough was enough. So tired of having to cut nice conversations short, missing vital parts of movies and never feeling comfortable. I never really thought much about it other than "My belly is a strange place." Gradually as the months passed I spent more and more time collecting bathroom doors. After collecting all the bathrooms in the land I realised "Wow, I've pooped everywhere in this city, what should I do now?" My first thought was to conquer the toilets of America. Then I realised I'd probably need a plane ticket and a lot of planning and by that time I got bored and distracted and thought that maybe I should go find out WHY I had been spending so much time in these bathrooms.

So I went to the doctor and told him "I can't stop pooping. I have issues going to the bathroom all the time, I feel bloated and sick and dizzy and disgusting. HALP!" (or something similar) He first told me to put the lime in the coconut (okay, not really, but I totally wished he would) THEN he said "Okay, let's do a bunch of tests!" We shouted yippee and *cue montage of me pooping into jars* did some tests and everything came back negative. At my next visit he asked me alot of questions and eventually came to the conclusion that perhaps we should test for Coeliac Disease. Dun dun dunnnnnn. My grandmother thinks she has it (she's a hypochondriac) and my uncle is intolerant of gluten, but not entirely allergic. Enough family history for him, I guess. Off I trotted for a plethora of blood, poop and urine tests which finally, FINALLY gave me an answer.
The blood tests came back positive for Coeliac Disease and I felt like a weight had been lifted. We high fived (really, he's that cool) and booked me in for an endoscopy, biopsy of the small bowel and gastroscopy.
In preparation for this day I had to eat a wheat heavy diet, something which hit me for six. I was so bloated my stomach was a mountain when I laid down. I was spewing and pooping like a champion in the days leading up to my hospital date and in the end I just kept thinking "This better bloody be over soon."
My worst fear? Them telling me the tests were wrong and they still weren't sure what was wrong with me. That I would continue collecting toilet doors, lethargic, bloated, nauseated for the rest of my life and never feel like "me" again.
Monday (two days ago) I had my procedure and it all went fine. I get my results this Friday, and quite frankly, I am jittery with excitement. I can't wait for the light at the end of the tunnel. To find out how to tackle this and how to turn my life around.

This entry is simply an introduction to my journey into learning about how to be a normal, happy person with Coeliac Disease. How to find humour in this somewhat embarrassing and strange ailment and to hopefully help others in my city or elsewhere to find good food that doesn't kill us or lead to cancer/infertility/further allergies, cos hey, those things sound pretty lame.
I plan to come here to document how I am approaching this situation, how my family and friends are helping or hindering and also to have something to reflect back on to see how I was feeling throughout the process of change.
I look forward to being here, but mostly I look forward to having more to say than a blog about poop, toilet doors and, well, that was all I really said, I suppose.
Welcome to my farewell to bread (and other tasty things)!