Gluten for Punishment

So we headed off to Disney and the first three days I did really well. My family snacked on Ice Cream - I had a pickle. They ate popcorn I had peacans. We had packed snacks to bring in the park with us and I made a special trail mix of nuts and raisins without the peanuts.

Our first night there we went to The Garden Grill Resturant at Epcot to have dinner with Chip and Dale, Pluto and Mickey. Disney has accomodations for people with food allergies so they sent the chef out to talk with me about what I could and couldn't have. They had gluten free rice rolls - and made my plate seperate from the family style meal that was served. The Turkey and fresh veggies were amazing but I couldn't keep myself from trying the cranberry stuffing that the rest of my family was eating. Desert for them was a blueberry muffin with whipped cream and mine was a brownie. I have to say I didn't care for the brownie. I had also ordered a cake to celebrate the birthdays of my husband and my sister-in-law's boyfriend and since I watch a TON of Food Network I was dying to taste a famous Disney cake. And so the spiral began and I paid dearly for it.

Suffice it to say by the end of the week I had thrown my dietary restrictions to the wind and had sampled some of Disney World Resorts finest food: Fried Chicken from the 50's Prime Time Cafe, Prime Rib and Gniocchi Soup from Cinderella's Royal Table (In the Castle - IN THE CASTLE... Come on who isn't going to eat like royalty in the castle. Excuse me chef I'll just have the salad for the $50 I paid to get in here.)And the dessert..... Oh the dessert.

While I did try to keep the snacking to a minmum and opted for fruit pops for the Mickey shaped ice cream by Friday I started to have a sore throat. Did I mention Thursday and Friday it poured? We wore ponchos all day. By Saturday my ears were bothering me and by Sunday night I was coughing. Thankfully my Mother-in-Law had Sudafed but it wasn't helping. Monday morning I opted to sleep in instead of hit the park for our last day and by 8PM I was running a 101 fever. (I bring a thermometer with me everywhere since fevers are a big indication of sarcoid issues.)

Have you ever been on a plane with a fever? Let me tell you its miserable. I ended up calling in sick the next day and saw my doctor. She sent me for a chest X-ray to rule out Pnemonia. (It was normal).

Now lots of people go to Florida and get sick. There are a ton of germy kids and an airplane, and climate changes involved but I apsolutely feel that if I had kept up eating to boost my immune system what ever bug I caught would not have been able to do as much damage.

And since I was wondering about how much of these allergens can mess with your immune system I decided it was time to educate myself.