When the Test Comes Back Clear

The Drive

Eleanor was hungry. It had been a while since that had been true, and she sat with it for a moment the way you'd sit with any small piece of good news.

The afternoon was beautiful. A quiet Sunday, the kind where nothing is expected of anybody.

"Hey, Mom! Do you need some help? Let me get that door."

Beth came around the front of the car and had it open before Eleanor could take a breath.

"Oh, to be so quick and agile," Eleanor said. "I remember the days."

"No worries, Mother. Here, let me hold that dish while you get seated. And don't forget your seat belt."

Eleanor slid into the seat, belted herself in, and put her hands out.

"All right. Hand it over."

Beth set the casserole dish on her mother's lap. It was heavier than Eleanor expected, and warm through the towel.

"That smells so good. What is it?"

"Marry Me Chicken. It's usually a crowd pleaser, so I made the whole dish."

Beth came around to her own side and got in. She didn't start the car right away.

"So what did he actually say? You gave me the short version on the phone."

"The short version is the version, dear. The celiac test came back negative."

"And the rest of it?"

"My iron is low. Low enough that he wants to know why, so there'll be another appointment and probably more blood work." Eleanor adjusted the towel under the dish. "He wasn't worried in the way he was worried before. That's the part I noticed."

Beth nodded slowly and put the car in reverse.

"Do you know how glad I am to be going to this dinner and not thinking about every single thing on the table? I'm beside myself."

"I know, Mom. I'm relieved too." Beth checked the mirror. "And if it had gone the other way, we'd have figured that out too."

"We would have." Eleanor looked out the window. "But I'm glad we don't have to today."

"Your eyes look brighter lately. Have you noticed?"

"Could be the iron pills finally doing their job. He said, " Give it a few weeks."

The Porch

The evening was cool enough that Eleanor was glad she'd brought the sweater. There was a faint smell of pine and sage in the air, the kind that only shows up in October.

Beth took the casserole, and Eleanor went up the porch steps ahead of her, into the light.

Elise had the door open before they reached it.

"Come in, come in. Oh, here, this way."

She led them down the hallway toward a room where the conversation was already going at full volume.

Eleanor was most of the way down the hall before she realized she hadn't stopped on the porch steps. Not once. She'd gone right up them and in the door like a woman who had never thought about stairs in her life.

The room was loud. Somebody laughed at something she hadn't heard. She found that she wanted to be in the middle of it.

The Question

"Ellie! Oh my goodness, look at you. I'm so glad you made it."

Millie came across the room with her arms already open, and Eleanor was in the biggest hug in Tennessee. The perfume was as overwhelming as always.

Millie stood back, held her by both shoulders, and looked her in the eye.

"Okay, so tell me. What did the doctor say?"

It came out so fast, in a hallway that loud, after a hug that size, that Eleanor opened her mouth and found she had no idea where to start.

Beth came closer and took her mother's hand.

"Mom's going to be just fine. Her test came back. There may be a little more testing, but for now he's got her on vitamins. She's had a B12 shot, and she goes back in a couple of weeks."

"We're so relieved," Eleanor added, and squeezed Beth's hand gratefully.

Millie moved in for a second hug, this one with a side-to-side shake in it.

"That is wonderful news, Ellie. I'm so happy for you." She turned. "For you both."

When Everyone Asks

If you've been through any kind of health scare, you know the moment Eleanor just had.

You walk into a room, and the first question isn't how are you? It's what did they find?

People ask because they care. That doesn't make it easier to answer while you're still holding your coat.

A few things that help:

Decide your one sentence before you go. Not a summary of your chart. One sentence you can say without thinking about it. "They checked for a lot of things, and most of it came back fine."

Pick it in the car, and you won't have to compose it in a doorway.

You can be warm and still be brief. "Thank you for asking. It's good news, mostly." Then a question back. People almost always follow where you lead.

It's all right to say you'd rather not get into it. "I'm still sorting it out, and tonight I just want to visit." Nobody who loves you will push after that. If somebody does, that's about them.

Pick your person ahead of time. Someone who can step in and give the longer answer when you don't feel like it. Eleanor had Beth. If you don't want anyone speaking for you, say so beforehand so they know.

And when the answer is complicated, you still don't owe the room a diagnosis. Pending results are nobody's business but yours. "We're still waiting on a few things" is a complete sentence.

The Table

The dining room table had been extended with a card table at one end, covered over with a cloth so it almost matched. There were more dishes than there was room for them.

Beth set the casserole down in the gap somebody made for it and lifted the towel off.

"Marry Me Chicken," Elise read off the top of the dish, where the steam was still coming up. "Eleanor, you did not."

"I did."

Nobody made a fuss. That was the thing. A dish went on a table at a potluck and people ate it, and the woman who brought it stood there and watched them, and three weeks earlier she had been standing in her own kitchen at five in the morning with a trash bag.

Eleanor took a plate. She put some of her sister's green beans on it, and a roll, and a spoonful of the chicken she'd made herself, and she carried it to a chair by the window.

Beth found her there a few minutes later with her own plate.

"You weren't kidding about this chicken."

"I told you. Crowd pleaser."

What Eleanor Took Home

She thought about it on the drive back, with the empty dish on her lap.

She had asked for the test. That was the part worth keeping. Not the result, because the result could have gone the other way and she'd have had to live with that one instead. The part worth keeping was that she went in, and she said out loud that something was wrong, and she let them look.

A lot of people her age don't. They decide the tiredness is just what sixty-eight feels like. They wait to see if it passes. Sometimes it does, and sometimes what's underneath it keeps going quietly for another year.

Eleanor's low iron still needs a reason. She has an appointment for that, and she'll go to it.

But tonight she ate at a long table with people she's known for forty years, and she went up the porch steps without stopping, and she brought a dish that everybody finished.

Some Sundays that's the entire report.

About That Casserole

Eleanor's Marry Me Chicken came from The Gluten Free Blogger, a UK site with a deep archive of gluten-free recipes, including notes on scaling dishes up for a crowd.

If you're cooking for someone who needs to eat gluten-free, it's worth a bookmark. Two things to know going in: the measurements are metric, and a few ingredient names differ from ours. British corn flour is what we call cornstarch, and double cream is richer than our heavy cream.

Where to Go Next

Eleanor's story ended with a clear result.

Yours might not, and that's worth saying plainly: a negative celiac test is one answer among several, and symptoms that don't have a name yet still deserve a doctor's attention.

If you're somewhere in the middle of this, these are the places worth your time.

Celiac Disease Foundation — celiac.org. Their screening pages explain the antibody blood test in plain language, including why you have to still be eating gluten when it's drawn.

Beyond Celiac — beyondceliac.org. Symptom checklists and questions to bring to your appointment.

National Celiac Association — nationalceliac.org. One of the few organizations writing specifically about celiac disease that develops later in life.

National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases — niddk.nih.gov. The government's overview. Nobody selling you anything.

And one thing worth knowing if your own labs came back with low iron: in an adult over sixty, low iron is a finding that deserves a reason, not just a supplement. Ask your doctor what's causing it.

This article is for general information and is not medical advice. Talk with your doctor before making changes to your diet, especially if testing has been ordered or discussed.

Photo by: Markus Winkler via Upsplash

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