By Annie Holub
Arizona Daily Wildcat
April 7, 1998

The trials and travails of the lactose intolerant

Milk.

It does a body good, right? Three glasses a day and we won't have to worry about breaking our wrists every other week when we're 86. Three glasses a day and we can smile confidentially, showing our gleaming white calcium-enriched teeth.

Well, three glasses a day of milk would render me sicker than a Ethiopian village. I would be in such horrible pain I wouldn't be able to move. I'd feel as if I'd been sailing to Byzantium by way of the Colorado River rapids on a kayak. Those lactose molecules really like it in my stomach, so much they don't ever wanna leave. They party all night and into the morning, kickin' it without the interference of the lactase enzyme police most people have to keep the peace.

When I was about 16, I'd get these horrible, horrible stomach aches. We're talking shooting, seething pain. I'd go to the doctor, he'd poke and prod me, conclude I was a paranoid hypochondriac and collect his co-payment. Until one day one wonderful doctor says to me, "Try not drinking milk for a week."

I was shocked. What? No milk? I eat cereal religiously every morning, and Wheaties without milk is reminiscent of that wax they pour in your mouth to make a mold of your teeth. But I figured my reputation as a seemingly sane person was at stake, so I tried it. One whole week, no calcium. Milk commercials had me chewing my nails in frustration. But not once did I feel sick. And by the end of the week, it was all clear to me:

I was lactose intolerant.

So I began to face the world as a "lacker," as a friend so aptly calls my condition.

We lackers are relatively common and at the same time relatively new. Although the condition has been afflicting many people in this world for some time, it wasn't spoken about except in the privacy of one's own home. It was nameless, and unidentified, spreading its evil doings anonymously, much like the naked mole rats.

Then suddenly a whole new kind of people, a new culture evolved. Lactose Intolerance had a name, an identity; it characterizes a new social group that society didn't even know existed before. It's a food problem on a large scale - this kind of thing hasn't ever happened before. So naturally, people are in the dark, confused, trying to make sense of it all.

Lackers are not necessarily into not eating dairy products because of the ethical factors; no, we just flat out can't digest the stuff. I often tell people I'm a vegan by default. We're supposedly mostly of Eastern European descent, but in America, that could be anyone. We're of all religious denominations and genders, all shapes and sizes. You might sit next to one of us in Psych 101. We're everywhere.

Pizza parties are like our own personal version of hell: lots of people eating pizza, the cheese stringing out of their mouths, the grease building up on their fingers, while we stand there with a slice of crust with sauce on it. I mean, have you ever tried cheeseless pizza? And ice cream shops are even worse, unless you're a really big sorbet freak. (Although I do highly recommend tofu ice cream. It's actually pretty good.)

Sure, most people can just pop some Lactaid pills and party with the normal people. But those pills cost six to eight bucks for a bottle of forty. And some brands just don't work for some people. Me, I have to take at least five pills of the generic brand for a single slice of pizza. That's ten pills for two slices. That's almost a fourth of the whole damn bottle. Like hell I'm gonna eat pizza on my student budget. You can buy lactose-free milk, but there's just something suspicious about milk devoid of its very own special kind of sugar. It would be like drinking cola without the corn syrup.

Normal people just don't understand where we're coming from. They stare at us insensitively as they eat a tuna melt and say, "God, I can't imagine what it would be like not to be able to eat cheese."

I usually shrug and say, "Well, it's just something I have to live with, like shin splints."

Lactose intolerance is treatable, not curable; it doesn't go away. We have to get calcium-enriched orange juice and rice milk and eat Tums as a side dish and be brave enough to try things like tofu ice cream for the rest of our lives.

Trying to be lactose intolerant in a seemingly tolerant world is not easy. We're left out, calcium deficient and struggling to survive on a dairy-free diet. Will the milk-drinking world ever accept us?

Annie Holub is a freshman majoring in English