A not particularly agonizing reappraisal

    I gave up gluten four years ago, because it appeared and appears likely that I have celiac sprue. This is an autoimmune disorder that causes your body to attack itself if you ingest wheat, barley, barley malt, rye or oats, though the inclusion of oats is open to question. Evidence was pretty strong: I had wandering neuropathy, associated with vitamin B12 depletion, and some pretty spectacular lactose intolerance. Both of these cleared up quickly when I quit gluten. (I also lost 4 inches and 40 or 50 pounds, but that's another story.)
    Medical science takes a pretty binary view towards celiac sprue: you either have it or you don't. If you do, you have to avoid all gluten forever. It seems to me that every other condition known to medical science manifests as a continuum, with symptoms from mild to grave. My celiac symptoms are much milder than are those of most celiacs. It seems like I could maybe let my hair down a bit and still be fairly safe. It took 30-odd years to show any symptoms whatever after all.
    Mainly, it's the prognosis that bothers me. If I'm celiac and ate gluten for 45 years, I'm dead meat. It's a certainty I'm getting intestinal cancer within ten years or so, and it has no symptoms. So I need some way to stay optimistic about living into the 2020s. I like the idea that if I dodged the bullet as far as getting symptoms in the first place is concerned, maybe I dodged it as regards cancer, too. Fella can hope, can't he?