A Final Word on Conference Food

This post is a week late as I left the conference in St. John's last Sunday for the over heated climates of Toronto and the Ottawa Valley in June. I've just landed in Dublin on my way home, and I am feeling thankful for grey rainy days.

Anyway, on the last day of the conference, we were given packed lunches as everyone was leaving at different times and some of us were leaving before the ending to catch flights.

I asked if I had a special one packed due to my dietary needs and was told 'no' as the contents does not contain any of my allergens. So I inspected the bag before walking away with it. Let's have a look.

Looks innocent enough 

The contents. On the surface, nothing wrong here.

About a third of us were going to the airport before lunch. While I would normally be very happy to be given a bottle of orange juice, I can't take it through airport security.

Yogurt, which I love. Except that yogurt is treated as a gel by airport security. See above. And as yummy as blackberries are, they don't really mix with a low fibre diet.

Granny Smith apple. Love these. But I have to peel them as the peel is all insoluble fibre and even if I had a knife, I can't take that through airport security.

Sandwich. White bread and ham. Pretty boring. Except it's full of mayo. Which is mostly eggs, which I am intolerant too and is on the list if allergens I gave when registering for the conference. This is on of my British pet peeves because mayo is on most commercially pre-prepared sandwiches in the UK. And not only is it full of eggs, it's also gross.

Cookies. Oatmeal raisin cookies. And I'm allergic to grapes. Which was definitely on the list of allergies I gave the conference staff.

So, the two things I can get through airport security contain things I can't eat. I asked the staff person giving them out what was on my dietary needs list. Only things listed were shellfish and grapes. Not eggs, soya or fish, nor that I am on a low fibre diet for Crohn's Disease despite me giving all this information when I registered for the conference. I guess they were only interested in protecting themselves from the liability of directly killing me through a full blown allergic reaction and not about making me sick. Cheers for that!

I didn't bother arguing about it. The woman giving them out is pretty low down the food chain there and it was the last day anyway. When I got through airport security, I went straight to Tim Horton's for a bagel with cream cheese and a double chocolate donut. Like all good Canadian expats do when in Canada.

Laments of a Travelling Humira User

As mentioned in my last post, I'm in Canada at the moment and was attending a conference in lovely (albiet, cold and damp) St. John's, Nfld.

I've had a lot of flights on this trip, and this is the first time I've had to fly or go abroad with Humira. This was the cause of some anxiety as there was so much to sort out. 

It took ages to get someone hold of the pharmacist at the company who delivers it to confirm whether or not what the internet was saying about not needing to pack it with ice pack is was true. I couldn't re-freeze the packs at one of my stops, and airport security won't let them through partially frozen as they are a gel. Several weeks of calls, and I had the pharmacist tell me that I actually could leave it out of the fridge if the environment wasn't too hot, but fridge is better and once it's been out, be sure to use it within two weeks. That contradicts what I had been previously told, but hey-ho, it was less to carry.

If I didn't absolutely need to take the ice packs, then I need a new insulated bag, because I wasn't taking that hideous pink thing again. 

http://foodlovingcrohnie.blogspot.ca/2015/08/the-silly-season.html

I also needed to sort out how and where to dispose of the sharp, as I really didn't want to haul the used on home in some puncture-proof container.

Then I had to get a note from the doctor saying I was carrying a needle on a plane for medical purposes. The NHS won't pay for that, so the three line letter that I pretty much wrote myself cost me £25 (!!!), and I have yet to have anyone ask to see it.

So I had all that to sort, plus having a bit anxiety about whether or not I was going to get hassles from airport security. Thankfully I didn't, but that's possibly because I just told whoever was checking my bag that I was carrying injectable medication before they put it through the scanner.

To be on the safe side, I emailed the conference centre I was staying at, asking if I could store my Humira in a fridge there. The person who responded and very kindly suggested that they store it in their staff fridge for five days as there was no fridge in my room. 

I set myself about a dozen reminders to remember to pick it up on Sunday before I flew out to my next destination. I asked the staff for it after breakfast.

The insulated bag it was in came back soaking wet. You can't see it in the picture, but it was absolutely soaked through.

Soaked right through to the box inside.

And completely soaked the letter my GP wrote telling airport security that I had permission to carry a needle on a plane. I paid £25 for that!

It was so wet, the bag soaked the bed in my room. Good thing I was leaving that day!

I had to get a flight to my next destination, so I just put everything in a Ziploc bag, shoved it in carry-on and went. By the time I arrived and had a better look, it was like this.

It pretty much fell apart. It was also beginning to soak through the back of the packaging over the needle itself. Good thing I was taking it that night.

Thankfully, the injector is plastic and unlikely to be water damaged, but still. The injector itself seemed fine, and everything I could see through the little window on the needle looked normal, so I took it that night as usual.

And I was also able to rescue that letter from my GP with very careful handling and allowing it to dry flat. At least I shouldn't have to pay £25 for another one.

Oh Soy!

One of my discoveries in occasionally keeping is blog is reading other people's blogs on living with Crohn's. One of my favourites is the Mind Your Body Blog, which is written by Oak Park Behavioural Medicine in Illinois. A bit random with a Canadian expat in the UK, but hey, stranger things have happened in the internet!

The writers are health psychologists, and one of them is a fellow Crohnie. She has also recently been contending with one of the banes of my existence - soy.
http://opbmed.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/lets-talk-about-soy.html

I've blogged about my soy intolerance before - http://foodlovingcrohnie.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/oh-canada.html It's a bloody pain (literally).

I'm back in Canada at the moment and am attending a conference in St. John's before heading to Toronto. This is my first time in Newfoundland, and it really is as awesome as Newfoundlanders say it is, despite it being all of 6 degrees whole I've been here (it's mid-June!!)

But the problem with conferences is conference food. I've given my lengthy list of allergies and intolerances to the conference staff, but most of what they have offered is general alternatives (gluten free, veggie, etc), rather than a handy ingredient list. Most of the food has been served buffet style so I've been able to pick and choose what I'm eating.

Thursday lunch time, the offer was tomato soup with grilled chicken salad. I skipped the salad (not low fibre) in favour of soup, crackers and chicken, and I was doing a happy dance in the queue upon reading the ingredients list on the Premium Plus crackers and finding out they are no longer using soybean oil.

So I munched down on a fairly low carb lunch, and it took about 20 minutes to start regretting it. Horrible stomach cramps and trapped wind. Cue Wind-ezze, which doesn't relieve it. Start doing the mental arithmetic of everything I've eaten in the last 24 hours. Can't be the Rice Krispies at breakfast. Can't be the cheeky DQ blizzard with Skor I had despite the cold weather. Somehow managed to get dinner down and continued to battle stomach cramps for the rest of the day and well into the evening. I'll spare you the description of the carnage in the loo at 5 the next morning.

Of course, when this happens to a Crohnie, you start to panic a bit about flare-ups, especially when you are away from home. I try not to panic, but it was a worry as I have been under a lot of stress at work lately, plus the general stress of travelling. Thankfully, I was a lot better on Friday, which was especially good as I spent all day on a coach without a loo. Even managed a trip to the pub for proper Canadian wings and a local beer. That went down no problem. So what's going on?

Saturday night was a banquet, which was held kitchen party style, and was great fun. I got into a random conversation with some people at my table about food allergies and intolerances. I mentioned not being able to eat soya, and one of the other people at the table said she can't eat it either. "What did you think of that so-called chicken at lunch on Thursday?", she says. "I had that," I said. "Yeah, hardly any chicken in that," she says. "Whenever it's processed into those lovely flat shapes for salads, they use soya as a filler to get the texture, and it's like 2% chicken protein once they are fine with it."

"Oh bloody hell, now I know why I was sick!" I say. "Same here," she says. "I hate not getting labels."

So at least I know there is nothing to panic about and this was just the constant presence of soya in North American products biting me in the ass (literally) again.