Sande Smith prided herself on being a strong and healthy person. The married mother of two was feeling in top shape - until one morning in early January 2002.

"I looked in the mirror and I was just white," recalls Smith of Tubac, Arizona. Still, she set out on the five-mile hike she'd planned with her husband for the day. It wasn't until they were in the middle of the walk that she felt the urgent need to go to the bathroom and headed for the nearest portable toilet. She continued hiking but at the next portable toilet, she was again forced to stop.

On the way home, not wanting to upset anyone and hoping somehow she'd be better soon, she decided not to confess to her family how sick she felt. By Monday, however, after she'd stood up and passed out, she finally went with her son, then 21, to an urgent-care facility. Detecting signs of dehydration, the facility sent her directly to the hospital, which in turn sent her back home with the name of a gastroen-terologist. When she quickly called to make an appointment, the gastroen-terologist's office said the doctor could not see her until late March, a wait of almost three months.

In the meantime, she decided to go on the BRAT diet - bananas, rice, apple-sauce and toast - in an effort to calm her stomach, which by then was "a huge balloon." She was also experiencing a sensation she finds difficult to describe.

"You have this sense of not being inside your body, of floating outside your body," she explains. "You're really dizzy and can't concentrate. Like you're in a haze."

Over the next three days, her health spiraled downward and she retreated to bed. One week after the hike, after a near fainting spell, her husband took her to the hospital, where she was again told that she was dehydrated. There was also an assumption that she was simply under stress and that she could will herself well.

"That's what one emergency room doctor said to me: 'Tell yourself you're going to be okay and you'll be okay. Just start eating again,'" she recalls. The hospital sent her back home.

"I was terrified. I couldn't figure out what was wrong," she says. "It was scary for the family to see me like that."

In late February, the morning after a night so awful she believed she was dying, Sande called a friend who swiftly got her an emergency appointment that same day with a gastroenterologist. There was an exam and tests, including an endoscopy and colonoscopy. Later, examining the test results, the doctor diagnosed the problem: Smith had celiac disease.

"I could've kissed that doctor's shoes," Smith says. "I called my husband and said, 'Oh, honey, it's not in my head!'"