Evelyn is healing up from her latest allergic reaction.
Sunday night I thought her belly looked bloated. It hasn't looked like that since we took her off of gluten.
I noticed Monday morning that she had some blisters on the back of her thighs and bum and racked my brain to think of what she could have gotten into.
Then it clicked. I asked her what she had for snack at church. Her enthusiastic response..."fish"! Ugh. We pack a special snack for her, but apparently she found a goldfish cracker somewhere and decided to give it a try. The result was a day of blistery rash that seems to be healing up now. I knew they contained gluten, but when I looked up the ingredients online I discovered that they are cooked in sunflower oil as well.
We are currently having her tested for celiac. The traditional way to test for celiac if a child is displaying symptoms is to have them eat gluten every day for 2 weeks and then do a blood test. The results are not certain from this method though. So if they are positive at that point then you have them eat gluten for 6 weeks. Then you put them under general anesthesia and do a scope to take out a piece of their intestines for testing. I REALLY don't want to put her through all that. She would be a wreck the whole time while eating all that gluten and I would rather her not have to undergo anesthesia.
So we opted for another option. We sent in a swab of her cheek to Entero Labs to do a genetic test for celiac. It will tell us if she carries the gene that would make it possible for her to have celiac. If she has the gene, it will be assumed that she has developed celiac based on her symptoms. We get the results back in about a week from now.
Part of me is hoping beyond hope that she doesn't have it. It would be a radical lifestyle change for all of us. We would have to eradicate all gluten from our house. We already struggle to find restaurants where she doesn't react to the food, but we would have to be even more careful about this.
But on the other hand it would be nice to have an answer for why she has these problems. Her true allergy tests come back that she has no problems with any foods. It was only the ALCAT food sensitivities test that gave us any results. If she doesn't have celiac I will be on a quest to figure out how to heal her little body so that hopefully one day she can eat without worry!
oh Liz, I understand hoping that you have an answer, but also hoping that she doesn't have it at all! It's pretty easy for my grownup celiac self to understand what I can and cannot have and I can easily watch others eat the food I can't eat, but to deny Addie of her precious goldfish (which she eats only at the nursery or outside at the park during the summer) would be so hard. Praying for you guys - for the grace to get through either way.
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