Travel dread

Traveling has been a great joy for me and for Shawn over the last two or three years. We've been from Pittsburgh to Cheyenne, from New Orleans to Anaheim. We've been to London and Cancun, to Nassau and Toronto. We've gone on two cruises, and on countless rodeo getaways, from little towns in Texas, to giant stock shows in Colorado. We've had conventions in New York City and downtown LA, and in all points in between.

We've both known for years that we're diabetic (20 years for Shawn as type 1, 8 years for me as type 2, diagnosed when I was 30), but on or off our insulin, that never made much difference to us in how we ate. High blood sugars made us feel sluggish, but the benefit of cutting out the sweets never seemed to outweigh the joy of a good chocolate cake, or of a big old pizza.

Shellfish is an allergy I've known about for years, as well, and while I used to love shrimp and scallops, cutting them out of my diet wasn't hard. The same could be said for Shawn's problem with some citrus fruits. She never has had a problem with them besides tongue blisters, so why deny herself that lemonade?

These new allergy diagnoses, though, are things we can't ignore. Since cutting out the gluten and caesin, Shawn's trigeminal neuralgia is almost completely dormant, and many of her MS symptoms are completely gone. My new diet requires me to eat protein at every mini meal, and I eat every two hours. So, an as to now undiagnosed nut allergy has suddenly become full blown, with hives and throat closures and all manner of ugliness.

I bet anyone can understand why S and I suddenly have a little travel dread.

How do you eat every two hours in a world that basically believes in three squares a day, and enormous portions? How do you deal with waiters, store owners and hoteliers who are well meaning, but essentially can't fathom something like a wheat allergy? (For instance, a sweet young man who checked to see if their restaurant's falafel was wheat free then asked if S wanted white or wheat bread or croutons for her salad.)

We're trying hard not to be bummed. We're both pull your socks up kind of girls, who see most everything as an adventure, but both of us are starting to just wonder if we ought to stay at home, where we manage okay.

What I'm proposing now is a few day trips. We live just outside Austin, so I think we need to go to Fredericksburg, or Salado (one south, one north) for the day, pack some snacks, do some research, and try to eat out a little.

Start small, my mom always said. Practice makes perfect.

Feel free to comment on what sorts of things you'd do to practice efficient travel!