Marcy Thorner

Topics discussed

Menu ideas for school lunches, quick dinners, and sports snacks
Finding gluten-free food
Contacting your child’s school

Video Text

My first reaction when Alex got her diagnoses was dread and fear. I was really, really scared. It seemed such an enormous thing to deal with a dietary issue to eliminate wheat in particular. I was really overwhelmed. I found the simplest thing for me to do was to simplify our meals. Dinners became grilled meat, a steamed vegetable and potato or rice. I just simplified. And you can eat a variation of that every night of the week and not be too unhappy.

As you’re getting used to dealing with the food, it’s important to go very slowly in the kitchen and not make mistakes with cross-contamination. There were times when I was fixing two kinds of pasta—regular pasta for my husband and me and gluten-free pasta for my daughter and I have them in pots, boiling side-by-side and took the spoon from the regular pasta and put it in the other and realized it fortunately and had to throw it away. Mistakes will happen.

What we did was, I made it special. I told Alex, “This is your special food. Your special food is good for you, other food will make you sick.” And I labeled her food with pretty stickers – I got little holographic butterfly stickers and I put it on the uncontaminated mayonnaise in the refrigerator for example. And when I left food for her at the preschool, I put pretty stickers on it. This was Alex’s special Food. And it was not an issue until much, much later when Alex was really into 3 rd, 4 th grade. And at that point, when children are starting to become cruel, when the teachers are less involved in the moment-to-moment interactions, there were instances where she had a great deal to deal with -- where she reported to me for example that other children had taken their sandwich and crumpled it over her lunch. So that she couldn’t eat it. And they were teasing her. And that was just “You know Alex, they’re just being small” and I explained to her that this was a cruel thing that children did to each other and it was unfortunate that she had to deal with that, but she knew who she was. And I explained to her “This is what you have to do to be healthy.

When Alex was first diagnosed, there was very little available to me in terms of foods available on the marketplace, in terms of general public knowledge, in terms of medical profession knowledge about Celiac Disease. There has been so much good work done in the meantime. So much awareness brought. Now when I say “My daughter has Celiac Disease,” people say “Oh, I’ve heard of that. That’s wheat, isn’t it?” And they recognize what you’re dealing with.

I’m Marcy Thorner. My daughter Alex is 13 years old. She has Celiac Disease and we are living our life.