Waiting For Test Results For My 7 Year Old

[HeatherG]

Hi, I may be joining you all soon. My daughter will be 7 years old in July. She has had stomach problems nearly her whole life. She had terrible constipation (10 -14 days between BMs) often not able to go at all without an enema even when she was a 100% breastfed child. We started treating it with month after month of laxatives that really didn't work. 2 to 3 times the adult dose and it just barely kept us from having to give her enemas. She had constant respiratory issues and sinus infections. When she was 18 months old my ped decided to go ahead and run a celiac panel - basicaly he was running out of ideas and GI guys told me I just needed to punish her when she wouldn't poop (nice). Here are the results from 18 months of age:

IgG was 89 which is hugely high

IgA was 10 which is normal

tTG IgA was 1 - again very normal

From this they told me she didn't have celiac and that the IgG didn't mean anything.

Fast forward 5 years - the symptoms have gotten no better. She is in constant pain. She's being diagnosed with reflux and a slow gut. Nothing seems to help. No one has any solution but constant laxatives which just makes her sick and unless I give her lots of exlax it doesn't help anyway. If I give her enough laxatives to help the cramping is so bad she can't get off the couch. Her reflux is bad too. I know it's all connected but I'm just at my wits end. She can't eat without pain so she often doesn't eat at all. So I started looking into Celiac again. It just didn't make sense that the high anti-gliadin IgG didn't mean anything. I found Dr. Fasano's website that said the other tests may not show positive for a child under the age of 2 so I called them up. They agreed that those blood tests are very suspicious so they asked me to have our ped run the tests again and get a total IgA. So we did that on Friday and here we wait.

Part of me is worried she has celiac and the other part of me is worried that they test will be negative and we'll be no closer to finding a solution to her pain.

Thanks for letting me talk while I wait in a panic.

Heather

[mart]

Heather, I surely understand your frustration. Your daughter sounds a lot like mine. She's 12 now, but boy did she give us trouble with constipation. Her celiac panel was also inconclusive, although her brother's was positive. Some how, we got through her severe constipation and bellyaches, and she outgrew them. If I were you, I would re-do those tests. Then after the tests, put her on a gluten free diet to see how that goes. Even if the tests remain inconclusive, see how the diet goes. It may help. It certainly resolved a lot of my daughter's mysterious health issues. Good luck, and I hope your little girl gets feeling well soon.

[wolfie]

I hope that you get some answers so that your daugther can get some relief. Even if the blood test isn't conclusive, it may still be worth giving the gluten-free diet a try.

[TCA]

My kids also showed symptoms while breatfeeding. I've gone on a gluten free diet for my daughter who is nursing and her health turned around almost immediately. It was so amazing to watch. If I ever get glutened, she has the same symptoms again.

I hope you find some answers. My daughter wasn't tested, but son's tests were inconclusive with a very high IgG, slightly elevated IgA, ttg normal. They didn't do an IgA deficiency test, though. The dietary response has been amazing, though. We never got a clear cut diagnosis, but the diet was diagnosis enough. By the time we tried the diet and got such good results, I was just relieved to find an answer!

Good luck!