Anyone Else's Show Up After Surgery?

[Aimee]

Hi! I have recently been diagnosed with this, and it seems that mine didn't come to the surface until I had a surgery last May. The surgery was one in which the wound is left open to heal from the inside out (supposed to be 6-8 weeks) and at 5 months, it still wasn't, so a Wound Care Center was brought into help. It was my wound care doctor that discovered Celiac. I am now seeing a gastro guy and will have my biopsy in two weeks.

My question is, how soon will my protein levels go up once the gluten is removed, and therefore my wound heal? It is still not healing at all, but I have been told its because I have no nutrients to heal it because of the Celiac.

Anyone else have a simliar issue, with a wound not healing? Did yours arise after surgery? How soon did you see your protein levels and such go up? I would LOVE to have this thing healed before my one year mark!!

Thanks!

Aimee

[kejohe]

Hi Aimee and welcome to the board!

My son was diagnosed with celiac disease shortly after he turned 1 y/o. His case was unique because he originally had no symptoms, at all. When he was about 10 months old, we took a trip down the Alaska/Canada Highway and stayed in one really raunchy motel, where Bryce contracted staph infection in the form of lesions on his face. He was given antibiotics and seemed to be fine after the lesions disappeared, but 2 months later we went to California to visit family and while on the trip, Bryce became very ill. His symptoms were mild at first, so on the last day of our vacation, we boarded the plane like nothing was wrong. mid- flight, Bryce became so ill that he could barely breath. By the time we landed back home, we were headed straight for the emergency room. He had another infection, this time it was croup, coupled with a respiritory infection called RSV, the combination of these two has often proved deadly, but we were lucky. Bryce went on meds and seemed to be getting better for a while. Then after a week or so, other symptoms began presenting themselves, like the diahrrea, skin rash, moodieness, fatigue, loss of apetite, etc. It took a while, but the doc finally figured out that it was Celiac and within 6 weeks of going gluten free, Bryce was nearly back to normal. He has been gluten-free eversince.

I tell you this long winded story because before Bryce had celiac disease, I had never even heard of it. But I did a lot of research, and what I came up with is that while celiac disease is genetic, it can also be 'dormant' so to speak, and severe situations, such as pregnancy, viral infection, surgery, srtess etc, can bring about the symptoms, or bring it out of 'dormancy'. That's what happened with my son, between the staph infection and then the croup and the RSV, all within a two month time frame, his little body couldn't handle it.

With your very invasive surgery, I am not suprised that your celiac disease has decided to rear it's ugly head. But I will say this, be glad that you know you have it, because now you can compensate with a gluten-free diet and potentially extend your life by many many years. They are discovering that more and more people have it than they ever thought and that even though they may be asymptomatic, the effect of eating gluten can still contribute to other things like gastrointestinal cancers and bone loss, even miscarriage etc. Sorry to sound so lectureish.

Regarding your question on how long till your better, the best advice I can give you is to stay totally and completely gluten free, even small accidents, even if you don't feelbad, can and probably will slow your progress. My son got better in about 6 weeks, some on this board have said they remained sick for 3 months and a few cases as long as a year, it just depends on the amount of damage to your intestines.

I hope this helps a little. Good Luck and I hope that we will see you around the board more!

[Guest LisaB]

If your body has no nutrition to heal itself, then you obviously not been absorbing well for a long time...that wouldn't happen over-night. Sounds like the damage to your intestines has been ongoing. It is amazing how long a person can go on without crashing, but when it happens, it happens. Warning signs are often there, but we don't know what they mean.

[Nin]

I have been dealing with a Naturopath doctor who has recommended very good vitamins/minerals and supplements to help heal the intestines. You may want to look into doing the same.

[kvogt]

My celiac disease surfaced after my first routine colonoscopy. Talk about business development...

[kejohe]

I'm not saying that celiac disease can just happen overnight, but there are some specific situations that can make it more obvious that something is wrong, even if you thought you felt fine. For my son, he was always big for his age, and no one would ever accuse him of wasting, but he suffered from colic, frequent vomiting, more that just spit up, he never could sleep for more than and hour or two tops, and so on. After his celiac disease was discovered, after he contracted those infections, it was more obvious there was something else going on. After a while on the gluten-free diet, he began sleeping better, somewhat, and he stopped vomiting, and best of all, he got over the colic, not to mention all the other symptoms that showed up after the infection.

celiac disease is something you are born with, but a lot of people go through the majority of their lives never knowing they have it until... all of the sudden... something happens and they get a dx. Maybe they felt ok before, maybe they had been sick for a while and never even realized it, but it seems like it happens suddenly, and certain situations can bring it out, or make it worse.

[chrissygirl0668]

I am having the same problem.. apparently, we are born with it (however.. no one else in my family has it) i had two back surgeries in 2007 and after second surgery lumbar fusion ( screw and metal in my back ) i started to get a rash on forearms. i thought this was because they gave me the drug lyrica (after seeing a commercial and side affects), in Jan 2008 I went to a dermatologist who diagnosed me with dermitisis. gave me scripts for refills, saw him one last time... that was it. Last year, before Thanksgiving, my skin started breaking out in these water blisters, and was on my face and sooo bad in my scalp. My sister, who has bad skin and I don't referred me to her dermotoligist in Jan. of this year. he took one look at my arms, did a biopsy, sent me to a gastro that week (had the procedure) saw derm again took another biospy and wallll aaa i have herm/dermititis and celiac (got all results back on Ash Wed). I also saw a dietician to help me out with some of the hydrolyzed products. My family and I went to trader joes, whole foods, etc. Apparently as I have the skin portion of this too i cannot have soy. well i went online ordered stuff from vitacost.com, thinking i was getting everything gluten-free... not what happened. still getting sick, feel like crap, dr. put me on dapsone, which i am having bad reactions too. lowered dosege and now totally off of it. hate most of the food that is gluten-free. any help ANYONE can give me would be sooooo appreciated.

regards,

chrissy

[BeckyMR]

I have not been formally diagnosed, but after removing gluten from my diet I have seen improvement. I don't want to add it back in and feel bad just to get a diagnosis and then have it on my medical record for life. As I look back to childhood and especially over the last few years, celiac is really the only thing that fits all my weird symptoms! All that to say that 20 months ago I had my left foot completely reconstructed. The surgery included 3 bone grafts. After 8 months post surgery and lots of physical therapy I could not walk without a limp. I complained to my doctor who really didn't believe me since he couldn't see anything wrong on the x-ray. He finally ordered a MRI and we found out that one of the bone grafts did not heal. There was actually a gap in the bone on the side of my foot. My doctor was completely baffled and told me that he had no explanation as to why I couldn't heal. He said that there was a 5% risk category for this to happen and the risk factors were age (I was only 34, smoking and diabetes (I am neither of the last 2). This last January I had another surgery where they took bone from my tibia and replaced the bone graft that didn't heal in my foot. It was after this surgery that my symptoms (for celiac) became more apparent. Now that I think I know the problem as to why it didn't heal the first time I feel so encouraged to know that it will fully heal this time. A good friend of mine is a registered Dietician and nutritionist and she told me to take 6000mg a day of fish oil to try to help heal my foot and my intestines. She said at this point not to take my calcium magnesium because my body can't digest it just yet. I hope this helps! I was wondering if anyone else had dealt with not healing from a surgery too.