Can Symptoms Come And Go?

[minivanmama0300]

Hi all!

Several months ago I started trying to figure out what was wrong with my almost 2 year old dd. She had several of the symptoms of Celiac/gluten intolerance. To test my theory I took her off gluten and to my delight she had her first solid BM in months, practically ever! Then her horrible rashes cleared up, the bloated belly went away, she became a happy dear!!! I then decided to have her tested for celiac before going gluten-free forever just to be sure. Well, they told me to put her back on. The first few days were awful again, same old symptoms. But then they went away!! Well, not all the way away but they are much better now. She has started having mainly solid bm's again, and they are not mucousy like before. She DOES still have odd rashes on her belly that come and go. She gets a rash around her mouth too. I noticed this rash months before her digestive problems began, so I wonder if she is "gearing up" for more since before the intensity of the rash mirrored the extent of her digestive problem. She is on a regular diet now I should add. So is it still a possiblity for her to have gluten intolerance if she is not have as bad of symptoms now? Anyone experiance that? I have the full gluten panel on its way from Enterolab, so I hope to know for myself soon, but I cant help but wonder if I am just dreaming this up. If it matters, the period when her symptoms were the worst was a very high stress time for us, and I have heard stress can trigger celiac. Things are much calmer here now.

Jess

[minivanmama0300]

and I would also love to hear anyone experiances with enterolab!

[scaredparent]

I am also new to this but I know that my son had severe diahrea for 3 mo at a time and then it would slow way down for about a week or 2 and then it would start back up with a upper respitory problem and then the rash around the mouth and then the vomiting and then the diahrea and then 3 more months of that. It was an around the calander thing. My son is now 21 mo old and he has been tested by blood and biopsy and both came back negitive. We chose after 17 months of all the above we changed his diet to a gluten-free diet . He has been a total differnt kid. The dr said he doesn't have celiac disease but is glutten intolerent. But whether he has celiac disease or glutten intolerence he still has to be on the diet. He has been glutten free for almost a month and just after 4 days of gluten-free diet his stools started to form and the rash went away. If he accidedently gets glutten I know with in 10 min because the rash and diahrea will come back. It then takes about 4 days to get him back to normal. Your child sounds alot like my son. I say if the diet works put your child on the diet. My dr said to in about 5 years or about when he starts to school to try giving him glutten, if he gets sick we then will know he has to be on a gluten-free diet for the rest of his life. I hope this helps. As I said I am new and I am just learning but may be you can email me at dsaabbb2005@yahoo.com and trade reciepes and stories. I think our children are the same age and similar stories. Good Luck and take one day at a time.

[minivanmama0300]

Thank you so much for your thoughts! You know, last night at our local celiac support group meeting a man was mentioning that his symptoms were cyclical. Interesting! Have you had the testing from enterolab? One thing that attracted me was that it doesn't matter if you are fully on gluten for the test to be accurate. DD is eating a lot less gluten (she won't touch most breads or other obvious gluten products, which I find interesting since she is not even 2 yet and has made some connection there.) She still gets some though, and since she is not showing the horrible symptoms right now I am going to keep up the regular diet until we have our tests back. Thanks again! I would love to swap recipes sometime, I am early in the learning curve but am lucky to have a few moms of young celiacs in my support group to learn from!

Jess

[Lynne Billington]

The "cyclic" nature of this interests me too. I have a 13 yr old dd and last June she had a bout of a fatigue syndrome I'll call it. It last two weeks. She then got it again in Dec. for two weeks, February for two weeks, and she started again this week. BUT, I decided to play games with her food this time around. She was ill on Monday night, Tues. All day Tuesday I fed her gluten-free. On Wednesday she went to school and was fine. On Wed. night she wanted pasta. I fed her spaghetti. She was in bed most of Thursday. So, I fed her gluten-free on Thursday. She went to school on Friday. Now tell me it's not the gluten in her food! But I was amazed at how quickly she seems to react to the better. Is it really possible?

When I took her to the doctor in June, they couldn't find anything. Took her in December, they couldn't find anything and asked if it could be "mental" stress, etc. I told them no. Took her in February, couldn't really find anything and asked AGAIN if there was anything going on in school. "Does this happen when there's a test to take?" But he sent us to an infectious disease specialist at the local teaching hospital. She thought maybe it was cyclic neutropenia. Because there IS A LOW WHITE count each time, although the values do vary. And also, the differential is similar each time (whatever that means.)

Found an article the other day that says leukopenia can be a symptom of gluten, which is very similar to neutropenia. So the gluten could be causing the white count situation.

Sooooo, when the took blood on Tuesday, I requested the panel of blood tests be drawn for celiac. Haven't heard about that yet, just that her blood this time is similar to the previous times!

As a starting point, my husband has been having gluten problems severely since early December, that's where I got the idea to play with her food intake.

Thanks for listening.

Lynne