In January 2006, Brad joined his family on a trip to Mexico. With his mom and dad, brother and sister, Brad swam, hiked and parasailed, shaking off this latest bout of stomach pain, as he always did. "I may have had more than the usual amount of beers," Brad says. And spicy tortillas and — Brad's particular favorite — huge bowls of cereal with milk.

That explained it, Brad thought. Brad is lactose intolerant, diagnosed in the fifth grade. At 24, Brad often attributed his feeling unwell to his insistence on drinking milk with his beloved cereal.

But back at his family home in Texas, Brad's stomachache turned into severe abdominal cramps. His mother, Paula, a registered nurse, asked one of the pediatricians in her office to take a quick look at her boy.

Mexico? Probably some parasite. But the tests came back negative.

What the visit revealed was a weight change. At 6' 1", Brad weighed in at only 150 pounds. Surprised, he realized he’d lost 25 pounds in less than a year. In addition, he was tired all the time, but particularly after a meal. "As soon as I eat, I want to go to sleep," he told the doctor. Checking his notes, the physician asked, "You've had a headache for how long?" And Brad, thinking back, said, "About two years. On and off." The doctor sat back and said, "Wow."

Brad says, "I was just used to it. It's part of who I am."

It was Paula who nailed the diagnosis. Just weeks before, a friend had shared with Paula the symptoms of her long-undiagnosed celiac disease. Fatigue, brutal stomachaches, headaches. "I thought, doesn't that sound like…. God put that in my brain that day," Paula says. She asked the doctor to check Brad for celiac disease.

And there it was. The blood work came back showing Brad "extremely high" in all the indicators for celiac disease.

Celiac disease, a genetic disorder of the auto-immune system, creates an intolerance for gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley. The disease flattens the villi in the small intestine, which interferes with the absorption of nutrients in food. Research suggests that 1 percent of Americans, or about 2.9 million people, have the disease, and that only 3 percent of that number have been diagnosed. Treatment is adhering to the gluten-free diet.

The Navy, at Sea
Paula faxed the blood work to the medic at the Navy base in Bangor, Washington. Like many other health care professionals, the medic was not familiar with celiac disease, so Paula sent him whatever she could find. "We told him, 'You can't use the same pans or the same cutting board,'" Paula recalls. The medic's surprised reaction: "Oh. This is serious!"

According to Brad, "The civilian doctors and the Navy doctors were reading up on the condition as I was reading about it." The Navy ran Brad through a series of doctors and tests, including a small bowel biopsy. Brad sums up their reaction: "Yep. You have it."

The crew of the USS Pennsylvania, the nuclear submarine where Brad served, numbers just over 150. Quarters are tight. "We have more jobs than we have room to move around in," says Brad. Could they maintain a separate area for food preparation? Could they provide the FF&V — Navy-speak for fresh fruit and vegetables — that Brad would need? Trident missile subs like the Pennsylvania go out on patrol for three months at a time. When they surface, just once during a patrol, they may or may not be near a supply ship. So FF&V doesn't last long. "On the sub, you eat what everyone else eats, when they eat, or you don't eat," Brad says.

Brad predicted that he would not be able to continue on the sub: "It's my problem if I feed myself. It's their problem if they do. It would be too big a burden."