It’s 10:23 am, first grade, 2017. I get called to the principal’s office. 

My heart is racing. Did I do something wrong? Am I in trouble? I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out. My parents. My parents were waiting for me in the front office. They are taking me to get an endoscopy at the hospital. 

For the past three weeks, I have been having really bad stomach aches in the middle of the night. We scheduled an appointment with Dr. Rangwalla, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Dell Children’s Medical Group. A couple of days before, he suggested we get an endoscopy. 

I arrive at the hospital an hour later, Flipz stuffed animal in hand. Honestly, the only thing keeping me alive is this stuffed animal. I got the stuffed animal as a Christmas gift in 2015. Her name is Charlie. Charlie is able to flip from a dog to a platypus in seconds. 

We are sitting in the waiting room waiting for my name to be called. “Lexey Martin,” the nurse says. I get up, barely able to walk, stumbling over my own feet. We walk into a room full of nurse supplies. They put me in a colorful hospital gown with lime green, yellow, purple and a bit of blue. 

The doctor brings me into a room with a curtain. My parents wait for me there. The nurse rolls me back in the rolling hospital bed to the procedure room to start the process. I am laying on a sort of table in a comfortable position. 

The last thing I remember is them putting me under anesthesia using a red clown nose and the nurse saying, “the anesthesia should be kicking in now.”

I wake up about 25 minutes later and meet up with my parents. I change out of the hospital gown, and then the doctor walks in…  

It is official, Lexey has Celiac disease. That’s when it hits me. My life has changed forever. We expected that something like this would happen, and that is what encouraged us to get the endoscopy. 

The next day at school, I am swarmed with questions. 

What happened? 

Where were you? 

Are you ok? 

All I say is I’m good, and now I have to be on a special diet, that’s all. We go to lunch and I eat my gluten free food and think to myself “this isn’t too bad.” Little do I know eating at school is going to be way harder and eating out with friends is going to be a lot more complicated. My friends and I always liked to go to Chick-Fil-A but that has changed. I now bring extra gluten free food everywhere and very rarely eat out.