Posted by: rebeccajrobare | April 18, 2012

Coming Out

First, an update: I’m feeling better. My psychiatrist and I have made some adjustments to my medication, and it’s helping a lot.

However, my boss noticed that I was feeling better. Not a bad thing — she’s very supportive. I like working for her for a number of reasons. But she said, “what are you doing differently?” And all of a sudden I found myself telling her that I am now on an atypical antipsychotic, and have dopamine in my brain for the first time in a while. That the stress I’ve been under triggered a resurgence of my depressive symptoms, even though I had been in remission for quite some time.

Now, there’s not going to be any weird fallout from this (thank goodness!). My boss knows how to keep things confidential. But — and this is what I didn’t know ahead of time, and why I wasn’t particularly planning on telling her these things, she also knows how not to treat me strangely despite knowing that I have a history (hell, a currency) of mental illness. That’s not always an easy thing. People can be very strange about it, especially in a work environment, even when people have behavioral health backgrounds and we’re all working against stigma, etc. And I know my boss has a background in clinical psychology, and I have encountered many people in the past who don’t know how not to be psychologists. Thankfully, my boss knows how to be a boss, which because we work for a subcontractor with the city of Philadelphia, means she knows how to be a scientist and an educator and a politician as well. (No, nobody from work reads my blog as far as I know. I actually work for people I like and respect. I recommend it, rather.)

What is interesting to me is that I had a lot of anxiety about being “out” as a person with mental illness in my work environment. My other colleagues don’t know, at this point, but that’s probably less important. I knew that my symptoms were affecting my performance, and I wasn’t really sure about the ethics and propriety of keeping it a secret. The question is not only about how I am treated at work, but how other people perceive my illness. Do they look on it as though I am making an excuse for doing less than I had in the past, or less than my coworkers? Can they afford to be concerned about my well-being when they have bottom lines and deadlines? I’d have a little less anxiety about it if I’d been in my job longer, because after a year there are FMLA protections that can entitle one to medical leave on a continuous (like being in a hospital) or intermittent (like getting some sort of regular treatment) basis. Right now, I have sick time, but I don’t have a lot of it, because as you know, I get sick a lot. I’ve been seeing my psychiatrist on my lunch break, and making good use of my flex time. But if I needed TMS every day for two weeks, for example, that kind of thing could become a problem.

(TMS is awesome, by the way. Very strong magnetic fields can lessen depressive symptoms without the side effects of medication. I’ve been following this research for years and I’m looking forward to the day when it’s no longer too experimental for insurance to cover. Also it could well be better than drugs during pregnancy/nursing, and as a woman who wants children, the idea of not risking those side effects is really exciting.)

For now, I’m out in a limited way, and it doesn’t feel bad.

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Posted by: rebeccajrobare | March 26, 2012

What Doesn’t Kill the Camel

The blows keep coming — my illness, illness of a loved one, financial worries. I have more responsibility at work now — a good thing, because it means they value what I do and aren’t planning on getting rid of me, but I’m not sure I’m ever going to catch up and get it under control. And every time I’m sick, it slips a little further away.

I only lost half a day this time. I guess that’s progress. But my own frailty infuriates me. I worry that I don’t work as hard as my colleagues, and then I work harder to catch up, and become more stressed, and become more reactive and sicker. I’m caught in a poisonous feedback cycle of stress, and I don’t know how to break it. Or rather, I do know how to break it, but the logistics of breaking it require the two luxuries I don’t have: time and money.

These are things that are earned, through time on the job. I have something like 20 hours of vacation time that have just been handed to me because I’m no longer on new-hire probation. That’s less than three days. I’m not sure that’s enough time to loosen the knots in my back, let alone get done the things in my home that I’ve been neglecting for the past five months.  And money — I’m making a good salary, but so much of it is going to pay off debt. I’m still paying for graduate school, physically, mentally, financially. And spending money on getting out of Philadelphia for a few days feels so frivolous when I owe money and am saving for our future.

The necessity that I’m weighing, though, is the other thing that haunts me. The other thing that happened two years ago is that I was hospitalized for depression. I never want to be in that mental and emotional place again. I don’t want to have to tell my employer that I’m that sick. I don’t want to put my loved ones through the fear that I might hurt myself. So I have to keep asking myself, how long until I break? At what point does something that seems like such a luxury become the inescapable necessity? And how do I stop punishing myself for it — for being weaker than I ought to be, for needing so much, for a physical being that lies somewhere between the two states acknowledged by our society, perfect health and severe disability.

It is said that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. What really happens is that what doesn’t kill you leaves you vulnerable, unless you can mend the vulnerability. To further speak in aphorisms, it’s the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. The exercise I’m engaged in now is judging which straw will be the last, to make sure that this time, I don’t get broken.

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Posted by: rebeccajrobare | March 25, 2012

After the Empire, part 2

The Hospital’s ampitheatre was designed for young healers, or the public, to attend lectures or demonstrations of healing techniques. It was not, really, all that large, and when Shana, Annan, and Eramie arrived, they had to squeeze themselves in. A seat on the first tier was vacated for Eramie, but the upper tiers were full, and only those who were old or infirm had been given seats on the lowest tier; the rest stood on their feet in a sweaty, packed in mass.

That mass fell silent as the Heads of the Hospital, two Magisters and two Mistresses, pushed through a crowd that tried to give them what little room it had. Finally, the younger of the Magisters stood on the lone table. Still the room was silent, and Shana, who had rarely heard such silence even while proctoring exams, began to shiver with anxiety. Annan was clutching herself, and Eramie was focused intently on the Magister, as though trying to read his mind in advance of hearing whatever announcement was to be made.

It was the First Mistress of the Hospital who spoke, though she brushed away the young Magister’s hand and declined to climb onto the table. She was not young, and was not even a Magister, but she was widely acknowledged to have been the best healer in the Avarita Colony for twenty years before her election to First Mistress fifteen years ago. The young Magister who was now the Second of the Hospital had been her protege since his return from the Imperial City, and considered the most likely to succeed her if she ever retired. He gestured for quiet, realized that it was unnecessary, and shrugged. The First Mistress patted his foot before she began to speak.

“The rumors are true,” she said. “The Empire is gone. The Army gave us no warning and has left us no defenses. The barracks emptied overnight, and there are no more soldiers or officers or officials. As of sunrise, Avarita is alone as it has not been in four hundred years.”

No one raised a voice, but Shana heard gasps and sobs in the crowd. She glanced at Emarie and saw tears falling down the older woman’s face, though she wept in silence. Annan had begun to pick at her hair. Shana herself felt ill, and found herself covering her mouth as though afraid of what might come out of it.

“Magister Lores, Magister Lee, Mistress Farlan, and myself have considered since hearing the news. The Hospital remains open! Our vows were maid to the Empire, but they were also made to the people who look to us for healing and succor. Now the Empire has broken its vows to us, and the only faith we have to keep is to those people who need us. We will remain at our posts.”

“But how will we be paid?” Shana recognized the voice; it was Mariman, a young Master healer who had expected to find more excitement and better pay than he had in the Empire’s farthest outpost.

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Posted by: rebeccajrobare | February 28, 2012

Sick Days

Here I am, having another sick day. Can you spell “sick day,” kids? That’s right. F-U-C-K-E-D. As if it weren’t enough to lose most of a week this month over a kidney infection (I haven’t yet blogged about that little escapade), I now have a cold. A perfectly ordinary bad cold that is keeping me from work while it’s in the stage of immense sinus pressure. Once I get to the drainy, runny stage I’ll be back on top of things, but for the moment I am sitting at home, and thinking about what a loser I am.

I know, I know. I don’t ask to get sick. I don’t do anything stupid regarding my health. If I hadn’t just had a severe illness, I probably wouldn’t even be worried about taking time off for a cold. But I did just have a severe illness, one that resulted in a lot of lost time and productivity (and money. I don’t have enough sick days stocked up for this sort of thing yet, so I get docked.). But I had a week of health — one week! — and now I’m sick again.

My job probably is not at stake here. I’m good at my job. I want to do my job. The people at my job understand that I am not malingering. But I have visited the realm of “too-sick-to-hold-down-a-job,” and one of my greatest fears in life is going back there. Lying in bed, huddled around the pain, reminds me of what it was like to have so many migraines that I was unable to work, of what it was like to be so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed. I hate that feeling. I would like to banish it from my life.

The fact is, I equate sickness with inadequacy. I think a lot of people do; I think it’s embedded in our society. We place a lot of value on work. We pity people who can’t work, and we make it hard for them to get the supports they need to survive without working. Even in the current economic climate, people look down on the unemployed, as though it’s some fault of theirs that they can’t find work that doesn’t exist. So when I am sick, I look at the world and feel all the ways in which I am inadequate to it, and may become even more so. I am terrified at the thought of losing this job, of being too ill to make it work. FMLA protections don’t kick in until after 1 year on the job; it could happen. Absenteeism, they could call it, without saying anything else. I wouldn’t even get unemployment. And then I’d have to tell people I’d been fired from a job. “Why?” they would ask. And I would say, “Because I was sick a lot.” And then they’d hire someone else. I wouldn’t even have the dubious privilege of having some kind of chronic illness that might make me eligible for disability benefits.  You might get disability, after a lot of work and doctor visits and red tape, for fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue or lupus. You don’t get it for “I get sick a lot.” And then I’d be a leech on my loved ones, who would be stuck taking care of me. I’d be added pressure on my partner to take a job for the pay rather than because it’s what he wants to do. We might have children, and I might be able to convince myself I was happy staying home to raise them — but what about getting sick then? Being a mother doesn’t really give you the leisure for sick days. I remember vividly the few times my mother was ill enough to take to her bed, when I was a child.

This, then, is my fear: That I am inadequate; that because of factors beyond my control I am simply not good enough to participate in my society. That because of this inadequacy, I will need to rely on others for my support, and diminish their happiness. And because of the workings of the benefits of our State, I wouldn’t even be what is called “a burden to society.” I wouldn’t meet the requirements of being such a burden. I would fall through the gap between being a worker, with pride and purpose, and being caught in the safety net of the State.

(I want to add that in the cognitive dissonance we are all capable of, I don’t think people on permanent disability are a burden to society; I think most people have something to contribute to their community if they were permitted to do so, but the structure of benefits doesn’t really allow for that. I feel inadequate for things that I don’t judge others as inadequate for; my own feelings do not seem to be subject to my own good reason.)

Tomorrow, I’m sure, I’ll be back at work, and in a few days, throwing myself into it to make up for lost time. And in a couple of weeks when my probationary period ends, I’m sure my supervisor will tell me I’m sick too often but won’t threaten me with job loss because of it; frankly, I don’t think my employers are quite that cold-hearted, and frankly, I think I’m too valuable. But this safety hinges only on luck, and luck is a fragile thing on which to pin one’s future.

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Posted by: rebeccajrobare | February 26, 2012

After the Empire, part 1

There were no guards at the entry to the grounds of the Imperial Hospital. Shana wondered what emergency could have drawn them both away. But there were no people milling about in the street, so it wasn’t an emergency inside the Hospital. Shana shrugged, and went inside.

The Administrators’ building seemed unusually quiet. First-day mornings were usually busy, with folk complaining about the days of rest being too short, or talking about the parties they had attended. But when Shana reached her floor, folk were huddled in knots speaking in soft voices, casting worried looks at each other, staring into mugs of coffee without drinking it.

Shana set her bags down near her desk, inside the screens that divided her desk from the ones around it. At the end of the row and down three columns sat old Eramie, who’d been here longer than anyone. She was sitting by herself staring at the papers on her desk, compulsively shuffling them, pushing them around, but she didn’t seem to be reading them or organizing them in some logical way. It was just movement.

That was even more unusual. Eramie was always in a good mood, unfailingly helpful and ready with a quiet joke. Shana approached her.

“Eramie?” she said.

The older woman started and as she turned to face Shana, her arm dragged across her desk, scattering papers to the floor.

Shana knelt and began to pick them up. “Eramie, what’s going on?”

Eramie, usually self-conscious about being clumsy – the woman was crippled from illness, but fiercely independent nonetheless – ignored the disarray. “They’re saying that the Empire is gone.”

“Gone? What does that mean, gone?”

“That they’re gone. The army’s gone, the governor, all the functionaries – they’re saying most of the healers are gone from the hospital, though I don’t know whether I believe it.” Eramie had been a healer before the illness took her magic, and she was contemptuous of any healer whose devotion to their patients was lacking.

Shana put the stack of papers on Eramie’s desk and sat back on her heels. “But – but they’ve been here forever! I mean, hundreds of years, at least. What do we even do without the Empire? What about the Hospital? They have all the money, all the healers – should we even be here?” Shana shook her head. “Maybe we should all just go home.” She looked at Eramie curiously. “How did you even get here? Don’t you come on the Omnibus?” The Omnibus was an Imperial form of transport, for those who could not ride horses or walk.

“I hired a private cab,” Eramie said primly. “I don’t know what’s happening yet, but I still have a duty, until someone relieves me of it, and I intend to see that it’s done.” But her hand tightened on Shana’s shoulder, and Shana put her hand over Eramie’s, and the two women sat like that together, wondering, until Annan came and said, “Come, we’re gathering in the ampitheatre. We have to decide what to do.”

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Posted by: rebeccajrobare | February 26, 2012

The Avenging Princess, part 1

1.

As the sun rose to reveal the night’s devastation, the survivors came out of hiding, and the wailing began. The air was full of the stench of dragon, musky and sulfurous, and the high metallic odor of blood, and under both the reek of death. Ekelyn pushed open the root cellar doors when she heard the wails begin, and smelled the destruction as she came into the dawnlight that spilled over the castle wall into the kitchen garden. Others, the children of servants and retainers, came behind her. They gripped what weapons they had found, stones and garden forks, in case the renewed voices did not mean the attack was truly over. Ekelyn clutched a dagger that seemed large in her small hands. She followed the noise through the gardens and toward the courtyard, her young follows alertly behind.

She was met in the archway by a pale guard with a stump of an arm held by a sling. “Thank God!” he breathed as he saw them. “The children!” he shouted into the courtyard behind him. “The children survived!”

Pale faces and wet with tears, they turned toward the small procession as the children entered the courtyard. “The children!” “Praise be to God!” “The Princess! Princess Ekelyn survived!” As the last murmur began to spread, folk rose from their knees to bow or curtsey, and Ekelyn acknowledged them all. Had they not suffered losses to defend her family? But her heart hurt as the children who followed her reunited with parents, were embraced, were kissed, and no one ran forward to embrace her.

Instead, at the far end of the courtyard, the end nearest the Throne Hall, injured ministers rose slowly to their feet, faces grim and eyes wide. They bowed when Ekelyn drew near, but did not otherwise move.

“Highness –” one began, and at the same time another said, “Your Majesty,” and the two broke off and eyed each other. In the silence, then, a third spoke, the First Minister, Ryam, who Ekelyn had known since her birth.

“Ekelyn, my child,” he said, “your parents died defending the walls.”

Ekelyn’s eyes grew wide, but the only other sign of sudden grief was a shudder that went through her. Then she was still, and said softly, “And my brothers?”

“Died defending the rear gates.”

Ekelyn nodded. In her heart, she held fiercely to herself. This is how a princess must behave, she thought. I must be in command where they can see me. “Then they died as king and queen and princes should, in defense of their kingdom and their people.” While I hid in a cupboard. She did not think of herself then as a child of ten, where her brothers were sixteen and twenty. She thought only of responsibility, and wondered whether, in surviving the attack, she had failed hers.

“I would do them honor,” she said to the ministers. They looked at each other uncertainly, but Ryam nodded to them, and they parted to reveal for bodies, laid out on the stone. Her brothers, tunics covered in blood, their faces and bodies marred by the deep sword cuts that had killed them. Her parents, black and red from dragonfire, recognizable only by the twisted crowns melted around their heads.

Ekelyn curtsied to each in turn, then knelt and kissed their brows. As she rose from beside her father’s body, she found Ryam next to her.

“Highness –” he began, and from his formality Ekelyn knew he was about to give her orders, and she would be expected to follow them for her own good.

She interrupted. “Have we done what is necessary for the defense of Alteria in case of another attack?”

The minster nodded. “We have, Highness. The Army and Navy stand ready, and the townsfolk are rallied. Last night’s attack seems to have been focused on the palace, but we will not be caught by surprise should any of our towns or castles be attacked.”

“Good. Do you know who did it?”

“We believe the Empire was behind the attack. Only they have captive dragons to send, and some surviving solders recognized Imperial uniforms on the troops at the gate.

Ekelyn nodded, but she was out of things to ask, so Ryam said what he had come to say. “Highness, we must send you away from here.”

The princess looked up at him sharply, and then her body betrayed her, tears beginning to fall from her eyes. Ryam gathered her into his arms and picked her up and carried her from the courtyard, and Ekelyn knew that no argument would change the ministers’ minds. She never won an argument once she began to cry.

 

2.

The girl who emerged from the forest gate with the chief of the woods-rangers bore only a slight resemblance to the Princess Ekelyn. Her face was the same, but her long curls had been cut short, and her dress of white and pink had been exchanged for tunic and trousers of forest green, her delicate slippers for sturdy boots. She wore a yellow kerchief tied around her neck, and a canteen at her waist.

The ranger who stood with her was dressed similarly; the child at his side might have been taken for his son or apprentice. He looked around, shading his eyes with his hand. A soft whistle echoed down from the wall above. There was no one to see.

“Come,” he said, and set off into the forest, the child following at his side.

The land sloped upward, making a high, wide hill. They followed it up, the ranger pointing out the cairns of rock, the blazes marked faintly on the trees, to show where the little-used paths would lead. Ekelyn was quiet, trying to mark it all in her mind. Someday she might have to find her way alone through this forest. They would send for her, the ministers had said, when it was safe. Ekelyn did not plan to wait until they decided it was safe. The plan she held in her heart but had not voiced to anyone was to learn to fight the way her brothers had, and then return. It was not right for a princess to be kept in safety while her kingdom suffered. She would learn to fight, and then she would return either to lead her people to victory or to die in their defense.

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Posted by: rebeccajrobare | February 26, 2012

Update, and regarding fiction

Well, that took a long time! I know I’ve been neglecting this blog. I was offered a full-time job — I’m now a research coordinator for Community Behavioral Health in Philadelphia — and I love it, but it has left me little time or energy to do computerish things when I’m not at work. And since the major purpose behind running a blog was to have a platform for non-fiction writing that I would be freelancing, then keeping up with it didn’t seem so urgent.

But I’m back, just for fun. I was bitten by the writing bug this weekend — the creative writing bug. Mostly this impulse died for me while I was writing my dissertation — I believe I’ve started two stories in the past 14 months — but this week I thought of two I wanted to at least put on paper, to see where they will go.

I’m putting the beginnings here for you to read, if you so choose. I’ve never before been one to force my unfinished writings on my unsuspecting friends — in the past I usually at least had the decency not to ask anyone to read anything until it was finished — but this is kind of an experiment for me. It’s an experiment to see whether I will be taking writing back up as a hobby.  And if I do, what do I want to do with what I write? I’d love to be a published author, but let’s face it, that takes skill, time, and luck, and I don’t know whether I have any of that. Well, I have a little skill, but I don’t know whether it’s enough. But if I am going to be writer, even as a hobby, then it seems fitting that I should work to get better at it over time, whether my ultimate goal is publication or not. Because let’s face it, wanting to be a published author when I haven’t even finished a story in years is like me wanting to be an Olympic fencer — not impossible, but it’s a number of steps down the line. If I wanted to be an Olympic fencer, my first goal would have to be to start fencing regularly. So if I want to write, my first goal is to start writing regularly.

This brings me to why I’m posting my writing here and thus inflicting it on the world. First, my friends tend to be well-read individuals who like reading things that are written well. So maybe you’ll be able to tell me what is working and what is not working about my writing. This will help me get better over time. And second, if I know you’re reading this, if I’m lucky enough and doing this with enough skill that you want more, I’m more likely to keep writing.

Of course, it’s possible that I’m writing something no one really wants to read.If that’s the case, I hope you’ll tell me — I can always refrain from posting it here. (Or you could refrain from reading my blog, but I do feel like if I’m going to have a blog, even one as lonely and untended as mine, I should be writing something that someone wants to read, even if it’s not always the thing I think I ought to be writing.

So, I look forward to your thoughts on my stories. I’ll offer one note, and one request. The note is that although both stories feature an Empire, they are unrelated — Empires can serve a useful purpose in many fantasy worlds. Second, if you are going to comment with your thoughts, please either be nice or be constructive. If you want to shower me with praises without being specific, I can’t mind the ego boost. But if you want to tell me something’s terrible, please tell me what specifically is terrible and what you think would be better. “Ack, your writing sucks! I want to poke my eyes out with a stick!” may be honest, but it doesn’t really help me improve as a writer.

Thanks, all. I hope you are interested in my stories.

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Posted by: rebeccajrobare | September 20, 2011

Episode

I had a little depressive episode yesterday.

There was massive, disproportionate stress, and crying, and not getting things done. The difference between this and the episodes I had before is that I made a conscious effort to modify my mood through tea, food, and activities. My success was only moderate, but when it comes to depression, the trying is important. One of the hardest things I face right now is how to move beyond the karma of depression — how to not let depressed moods take over, how to fight them. When I’m depressed, I stop fighting. So yesterday I fought, and that makes fighting the next episode a little easier.

(So I’ve just realized that depression is the opposite of a video game. The bossfight comes at the beginning, and all the levels get easier after that.)

And I had help in my fight, which is important. My boyfriend helped a lot, with hugs, talking, and sushi. I feel better today, like the not-sick self I want to be. But I have been reminded strongly that there is a shadow at my heels, and every once in a while it will remind me of its presence.

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Posted by: rebeccajrobare | September 12, 2011

“Straight Talk About Vaccines”

Warning: Some of the content below is strident, snarky, and possibly mean in the direction of people who make false claims about a subject in which I have fourteen years of post-secondary education. In other words, towards people who make authoritative claims about subjects in which they have no authority. As you can see, this drives me nuts. Read at your own risk.

Scientific American has a great article about vaccination, which you can read here. I wanted to add a constructive comment to this article, but (to be blunt about it) Oh! the stupid! Take, for example, the comment of one reader who seems to believe that there may be a link between vaccines and autism, that “until we know what causes autism, we don’t know what doesn’t cause autism.” (This is not a direct quote from the comment. To find it again, I’d have to go re-read the first page of comments, and I’m just not putting myself through that again.) That is not how science works. Science works through the disproving of hypotheses; the claim that vaccines cause autism has been thoroughly disproven. A decade of research has shown that (1) the original claim was made via falsified data, and (2) that vaccinated children and non-vaccinated children develop autism at the same rate, and (3) there is no mechansim by which a vaccine or any of its components can cause autism. At least, that’s my understanding of the current scientific consensus. If you know of primary sources that contradict any or all of these points, I would very much like to read them.

But I didn’t actually ask you all here to rant about people who don’t understand science and endanger communities by choosing to leave their children unvaccinated. I asked you here because I have a little idea, and while I don’t have much knowledge about how it could be implemented, I want to know what you think.

The Scientific American article suggests that pediatricians who must talk to parents about vaccinating their infants have a great deal to cover at the same well-baby visit, and have only about 20 minutes in which to cover it all. This leads to the physician not being able to follow up with a parent who says he or she chooses not to vaccinate their children, or who agrees but does not bring the child in for vaccines. Could not a nurse have this conversation with the parent? Or, if the nurses do not have time for this conversation (because they are already working in the pediatrician’s office, and presumably their time is filled by the work they already have) why not suitably trained individuals, perhaps employed by public health departments, to follow up with these parents and discuss why vaccination is the right choice? You could have one per whatever number of people in a region, who could contact by phone or home visit, or immediately in the pediatrician’s office.

There are objections for such a scheme. Rural areas would likely be underserved, as they are in medicine in general. Such individuals might be unable to affect the vaccination rates for a region even through repeated contact with recalcitrant parents, because it’s very difficult to change the mind of a closed-minded person. But a trial of such a program could employ some small number of people and have the potential to dramatically impact the public health of a community through the better creation and maintenance of herd immunity.

Thoughts?

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Posted in Archive, Science

Posted by: rebeccajrobare | September 8, 2011

Traveling Gluten-Free

We just got back from vacation in Israel, with stops in London. We had a lovely, relaxing time and missed all the dramatic weather and geology here on the East Coast.  I’ll pause to shill http://www.restoringrutland.org/, where you can find out about helping my shattered home county, but mostly I want to write here about my first experience of international travel while on the GF diet.

First, I want to tell you that I love British Airways.  I was continually impressed by the air service crews in a general sense, and was specifically impressed by the ease of getting gluten-free meals in-flight.  I requested these meals ahead of time on the British Airways website , where they specify that they may not be able to honor all requests. I therefore traveled with snacks. But for every meal service on four flights, I had a tasty gluten-free meal that included some sort of bread or substitute (once I had rice cakes, twice rolls, once a sandwich on GF bread).  There were two occasions in which my meal included more food than that of my boyfriend, who had regular meals. BA has won my loyalty with this.

Our first stop while traveling was in London, where we had a 12-hour layover during the day. We went out into the city, and I want to tell you about 2 things: Pret, and pubs. Pret a Manger is a British sandwich chain. I’ve been a fan for quite a while. On this trip, I discovered something new: a “no-bread sandwich” that included everything found in that day’s specialty sandwich except the bread. It made for a nice lunch and I was excited to have an option other than a salad. We visited a couple of pubs with a friend later that afternoon, and both had cider on tap — something I consider a mark of a good bar here in the states, but which is clearly easier to come by in the UK.

The main part of our trip was in Israel, and I am pleased to report that the country is very celiac-aware. I traveled with Hebrew cards explaining the condition, but found that a couple of words either in English or in Hebrew (from my boyfriend) were followed by quick understanding and a willingness to check or change whatever was required. Bonus points to the Frida Kahlo restaurant in Tel Aviv for making slight alterations to my meal (and their fabulous sangria). I found that GF items such as bread and cake tended to be better than their American counterparts. So I found my travel to be overall very easy and pleasant in terms of dealing with my gluten-free diet. My only close call in the whole trip was half a French fry (okay, a chip) in our London hotel on the way back. I didn’t ask about the fries, just took one off my boyfriend’s plate, and discovered that it was battered. My stomach sent up a few warning signs, but no major consequences ensued (and I am again reminded that even a little gluten can make a big difference, and I should not cheat no matter how tempted).

So, we had a great time, I found food all over that I could eat and enjoy, and now I’m happy to be home!

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