duck-shaped pain

Now, nine hours later, I'm not any closer to knowing why.

I've been dealing with this thing that just sort of shows up once in awhile, makes my life hell for about a day, and then disappears. I've been getting it for about a month and half now, but only today did I finally get around to going to the doctor about it.

My doctor was stumped - he had no idea what it could be. Some of my symptoms possibly point to an allergy, but some of them are completely unrelated to any allergy he'd ever heard of.

I've noticed that the Symptoms of Doom seem to be triggered by food, so my doctor suggested that I keep a food diary for about a month, to try and see what's been making me feel bad. He told me that keeping a food diary is sort of a pain in the ass, but I more or less already write a food diary -- this one. So we'll see what, if anything, this path accomplishes.

He threw out a few other possibilities: thyroid problems, diabetes. The latter I find especially disturbing. My mother is diabetic, and relatives on both sides of the family have died of it. In fact, the thing that got me sort of freaked out enough to go to the doctor about all this was when I told my mom about my symptoms and she mentioned that she went through some of the same things just before she was diagnosed as diabetic. But, my doctor didn't think that was too likely at this stage in my life.

I sort of hope it's not an allergy, because it would be just my luck to turn out to be allergic to beer or wheat or soy or something else that I actually like to eat. I mean, I could develop a sudden bacon allergy and it wouldn't change my life one bit. But wheat...that would take a lot of work.