Choosing to cancel her tour was one of the hardest decisions musician Sara Lynn ever had to make.
Her music career as a singer/song writer was blossoming. Preparing to release a second album in a matter of days, the Fort Langley woman already had some radio play in Canada and two singles on American Top 40 charts. She was even getting ready to launch a promotional tour across Canada with stops in the United States as well.
However, her health was pulling her in a different direction.
“We were trying to build on that success so far, and timing is everything when you release an album, so we were planning a big CD release party in Vancouver. And I had not been feeling very well but I often am able to just push through it,” Lynn said. “If you have the flu the show goes on, it’s true, you just do what you’ve got to do.”
But it soon came to a point where she couldn’t push through anymore.
“I started blacking out, and my concern was that I was going to black out on stage and not be able to finish my performance,” she said.
Not knowing what was wrong, Lynn made a crushing decision four days prior to her CD release party to cancel both the party and the tour.
“It was hard because I thought I could do it. And I started the blackouts, and I realized there was just no way. I couldn’t make myself do it,” she said.
“It was really hard to make that decision. And I felt like I was letting people down. My crew, my band, the venues we had booked.”
Lynn went on bed rest and into the hospital where testing was done.
It was there that she was diagnosed with celiac disease, which was also causing her to be severely anaemic. Now the dizziness, the fatigue, the blackouts and the pain all made sense.
Celiac disease developes when the absorptive surface of the small intestine is damaged by the protein gluten.
Although Lynn was eating, her body wasn’t absorbing any nutrients. Gluten was destroying her digestive system and it was making her malnourished.
There is no known cure for the medical condition, but it can be treated by switching to a gluten-free diet.
Lynn now had to change her diet to remove all traces of gluten, wheat, rye and barley. But as she quickly discovered, this was much easier said than done. Not only did she find that most of the food she was buying from the grocery store contained these ingredients, she also had to change the way she was preparing her food.
“There was a lot for me to learn. It was extremely, extremely overwhelming when I was first diagnosed. It’s not just ingredients you have to look out for, it’s preparation, too. I can’t toast my bread in the same toaster as someone who has just put their wheat bread in there, because it’s wheat contamination. So the smallest little bit of wheat gets on my food, and I could be sick for four days,” she said.
Recovery time from the symptoms of celiac disease varies from patient to patient. Depending on their sensitivity level, patients can begin to improve in a matter of weeks to a matter of months after switching to a gluten-free diet. For Lynn it was nearly two years before she started to feel back to normal again.
“I think the scariest thing was not knowing anyone I could talk to about it personally. Someone who you can feel a trust with and just ask them anything, like did this happen to you, and where do I shop, how do I make stuff?” she said.
Because of the isolation she felt, Lynn began a blog on her music website about her gluten-free findings to try and help other people going through the same thing.
“I feel as a musician there’s lots of traffic on my website so why not help people out. They all know I’m celiac. A lot of people followed my journey from the cancellation of my tour till now, so I hope my findings will help them,” she said.
Slowly but surely, Lynn has been restarting her career.
Beginning with fundraising events for the BCSPCA Biscuit Fund, she has also done performances at boutiques and spas for pop-up parties.
Most recently, she was a special guest on an episode of Get With the Stars, where she and Daniel Craig, executive chef of EBO Restaurant in Burnaby, created tasty gluten-free meals.
“Those were sort of a soft entrance for me to get back into my community, back in my music, and back performing again. It was like a little warm-up,” Lynn said.
Now she is ready to continue on where she left off two years ago.
Lynn has been busy writing a new collection of “eclectic” songs and will be heading back into the recording studio in the fall to make a third album.
“Because I’m a song writer, I don’t like to be pigeon holed into one genre. So I have everything on there from a bit of an Americana feeling Tom Petty type stuff to some dance remixes to some acoustic Spanish flavour. There’s also some chill out type stuff on there, with a bluesy feel and a swampy bass, like a New Orleans kind of thing,” she said.
Lynn plans to do a grassroots tour across Canada when her new album is complete, and then branch out into the United States.
Now that she has taken her health back, she says she is ready to take her career back, too.
For more on Sara Lynn’s music and to read her blog on her gluten-free discoveries, visit www.saralynn.com.