I was flippant - of course I'll manage to live. The problem is the sudden shock that I can no longer eat half a baguette in one sitting; that if I want to make a sandwich, I'll have to do it with rubbery low-carb bread or no bread at all. That I have to find an alternative to the quick pasta dish that had become our default dinner when we had no time for anything else. That as a Mexican, I a limited to one, single, solitary corn tortilla per meal. That I can't eat corn - which in Mayan, is called by the same word as "life."

The point is, some of my favorite things are deadly to me now. I'm 37 and have to relearn everything about how to eat. It's just kind of sad.