The 5 Stages of Grief: Celiac Diagnosis Edition

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You or your loved one was just diagnosed with Celiac’s Disease. You’re probably in shock, possibly overwhelmed, or just happy you know what is going on. Now your emotions are all over the place because you have entered The 5 Stages of Grief: Celiac Diagnosis Edition.

The 5 Stages of Grief: Celiac Diagnosis Edition

Since we were the ones pushing for my daughter to have blood work done because my intuition told me there had to be more going on, I was initially relieved when we received my daughter’s diagnosis. After the initial “giddiness” of knowing what was causing my daughter to feel awful, we started going through the five stages of grief in regards to the Celiac diagnosis.

1. Denial – Maybe the test was wrong? How can we live like this? Can we ever travel as a family again?
2. Anger – Why did this happen to my daughter? Why does GF food have to be so expensive?
3. Bargaining – If I cheat (or let my daughter cheat) every now and then, I will be OK.
4. Depression – I gave this disease to my daughter? How will she (I) live a normal life?
5. Acceptance – Yes, my daughter has a disease, but it is easily treatable. We got this!

For more information on each of the stages, just click on the hyperlinks that you are interested in.

Our family went through all of these stages, and sometimes we go back and cycle through them again when new scenarios arise that we didn’t think of. I’m not a doctor or a psychiatrist. I’m just a parent of a kiddo who was diagnosed with an Autoimmune Disorder who has learned to cope with a Celiac diagnosis. We have figured out what our new “normal” is by being open to The 5 Stages of Grief: Celiac Diagnosis Edition.

Our View Now

We still have our good days and our bad days. What I can say is it does get easier. I don’t stress as much when we travel, I just plan. After a ton of failed pasta nights due to gross GF pasta, I finally found GF brand of pasta that tastes like what we used to get.

My Daughter’s View Now

My daughter still gets bummed when she can’t have a sleepover at a friend’s or there are limitations on field trips that only apply to her; however, we discuss it and work through it. We do the best that we can to make sure she can do what her friends can (when there is a pizza party, she just brings her own, etc).

Ultimately, we just learned to cope with each situation as it arrises. We acknowledge that it sucks when it does and push through. What we don’t do is hang out and have a pity party. It is completely acceptable to acknowledge those feelings of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression and feel bad – for a bit. It is not acceptable to set up house there and settle in. The diagnosis won’t go away, it’s our (your) new reality.

The good news, your (our) new reality doesn’t have to be all that different than your old reality, in fact, your new reality can be better. Ours is better because my daughter is no longer suffering from gastrointestinal issues.

Read about Stage 1 here. Do you want to know when new posts are uploaded? If so, you can follow me here for the latest information.