Emily Duprie
Celiac disease is an immune reaction to eating gluten, rye, wheat, and barley. It varies between cases, where some can be extremely serious and some are minor. The mainstay of treatment is a strict gluten-free diet that can help manage symptoms and promote intestinal healing. One slip-up can backtrack your bodies adaptations by weeks.
The disease is a fairly recent discovery and has helped to balance the health of people all over the world. However, some people who don’t suffer this unfortunate situation believe it is an overreaction and don’t take it seriously.
One angry father recently came to the “Am I The A-hole?” subreddit for advice on a family debacle that had been taking place since his sister and her kids had moved in with him and his family. His daughter is an anxious and traumatized celiac, and so their entire household is 100% gluten free. After catching his sister making the most gluten-packed meals despite being told not to, OP decided to react in an equally exaggerated way.
Read the full story below, along with some of the top comments!
A very upset OP asked: “AITA for kicking my sister out for bringing gluten into our gluten-free kitchen?”
My daughter is on the more severe end of celiac. ANY cross-contamination would set her back for weeks. It has taken us years to get her properly diagnosed and treated, and at 10 years old she now is underweight and has severe anxiety about food. She will not eat if she feels it’s unsafe, and it’s hard for me to blame her.
OP was kind enough to allow his sister and kids to move into their basement, with their own kitchen and all…
Our house has both a kitchen and a kitchenette in the basement, complete with full sets of pans and utensils. Our main rule for the house is that there is absolutely no dairy, gluten, or seafood to be kept or cooked in the kitchen (our older son is allergic to seafood and my wife is lactose intolerant). The kitchenette is for items containing those ingredients.
My sister and her kids have had to move in with us for personal reasons. They live in the basement bedrooms, and when they moved in, we very clearly explained this rule to them and why. It took less than a week for us to find a box of pasta in the kitchen. We explained the rule and moved it, and she was apologetic. A month later, my daughter comes to us in a panic because my sister was making fried chicken in the kitchen. My sister was apologetic, but insisted she needed to because the kitchenette was “too small”.
Strike one. But, it wasn’t the last…
It felt harsh, but we moved all of the food to the basement, threw out every single pan and utensil she may have used, and deep cleaned the kitchen. These incidents making the kitchen no longer 100% guaranteed safe has made her regress in therapy. We’re working on it, but unfortunately right now, it is so bad again that we have to feed her exclusively takeout from the one gluten-free restaurant around unless we want her in inpatient care.
Then, OP found out the hard way that his sister is a die-hard spaghetti fan.
Which takes us to last Sunday. I get home, and my daughter is having the worst panic attack I have ever seen. My mom and sister were in the kitchen making an entire Sunday dinner. Spaghetti, mozzarella sticks, garlic bread, the works. I lost it.
From one strike to three, this was the last straw for OP
I ended up absolutely screaming at them that they were ruining my life and had threatened my daughter’s life for the last time, and I had had it. I threw all of the food out into the yard, and told my sister that if she really cared that little about her own niece’s life, she could get the fuck out of my house. Now my mom is mad at me for kicking out my sister and her kids when they’re vulnerable over “a food allergy” but I don’t care. She can even leave the kids here if she absolutely needs to, but I’m done with her.
We have ONE rule. ONE. My wife agrees with me but thinks I should give one last chance and just not allow sister to bring ANY food into the house. My mom can’t take her in and she can’t afford rent anywhere, so she would be homeless if we didn’t let her stay. I’m not sure I’m in the wrong here.
OP added an edit to the post explaining what inpatient care would mean for his daughter.
Edit:
The possibility of inpatient care has come up before, and been fully investigated by her medical team. If she went into inpatient care, she would be eating takeout from the same restaurant there as well as they would also not be able to safely cook for her in their facilities. The only true differences would be more monitoring and not being at home.
u/poorunfortunatgluten
Redditors in the comments were outraged at OP’s sister’s behavior. Some shared their own stories of how their allergies were underestimated. Below are the top comments from the post.
