Wondering If I Might Have celiac disease?

[iamblessed]

Hi ya'll! It's passed through my head here & there over the years that I might have celiac disease. I took my grandmother for her colonscope a couple of weeks ago and the dr mentioned doing a celiac disease test on her. Said he didn't think she had it, but just in case. She has chronic stomach problems (diarahea) mostly (we asume) due to having part of her intestines taken out in her 30's. My dad just had to be taken to the emergency room for a allergic reaction to wheat three nights ago. He is deathly allegic to a certain type of wheat, tea, red meat, etc. (I know food allergies are different from this) He also has stomach problems w/ upper GI pain and is lactose intollerant. My grandmother's daughter and granddaughter..my aunt and cousin) both have have been diagnosed with IBS. I always thought they were just big complainers, because honestly...they are! LOL

Now to me. I've been having more of this upper stomach pain. It's hard to describe. It just hurts..bad..like a constant pressure & uncomfortableness. I had two Eggo waffles this morning and spent hours with this pain. Nothing I take seems to help. Other times I've tried one Librax and that didn't help. My dad takes 2 Libraxes at a time to help his and sometimes it takes 2 days for this pain to feel better. I had this pain triggered in June when I was prescribed a high dosage of antiobiotics. I was in such pain I was crying talking to the dr. He had me taking Librax & it did finally help that time. I was dx w/ hypothyroidism in 1994 as well as polycystic ovarian syndrome. My hubby and I have tried for 8 years to get pregnant to no avail. I also have this bad rash on my bottom, just above the crack on just one side. I can't seem to get rid of it and it itches like crazy sometimes. I try to leave it alone, but sometimes it looks like something got busted. It gets better on & off, but never goes away. I put off eating lunch because usually about 15 minutes later my energy level just crashes for a couple of hours. Nw like this afternoon I finally ate an apple, some celery, some cheddar cheese, and some nuts and I felt fine...no pain..no tiredness. Before this time the last thing that sent my stomach pain off was I made a loaf of bread (using all purpose flour and yeast) and ate a little of it for four days in a row w/ homemade veggie soup and I hurt so bad for days afterwards. Oh, the last thing. Since my early 20's (I'm now 38), I've been getting this awful, awful arm pain. It's not muscle. I tell my hubby it feels like my bone is aching! It's all the way from my neck/shoulder area to the tips of fingers. One side only at a time. Nothing helps. Constant. Sometimes likes for a couple of days. Makes me want to throw up. I also have migraines and chronic sinusitis. Boy do I sound like a miserable person. I'm not! I'm very positive and optomistic!

I just told my husband I think I should get tested for this. I do medical transcription & it's a joke that transcriptionists "get" every medical condition they type about, but I haven't typed about this..I promise! I'm just not sure if I'm headed in a direction I should even be looking in or certainlly that I want to be headed in! Thanks!

[ksymonds84]

Hello and Welcome! I would get the celiac panel done right away, especially since your still eating gluten. Many people (myself included) start the diet before testing which will most likely cause the tests to be false. Then the only way to get properly tested again is to do the challenge which was horrible for me. Your rash could be Dermatitis herpetiformis (HD) which is celiac related and responds to a gluten free diet. Now would be the time to biopsy it while it is still active. A Dermatologist is who you need to call for this. The sample is taken near the site not through it. Good luck and keep us all posted!

[iamblessed]

Thanks for the welcome! We have a big problem w/ seeing dermatolgoist's where I live. There is only two groups, one isn't covered by our ins. and the other doesn't take new patient's! Crazy!

I admit I'm afraid of going ahead and getting tested and this being true. We're headed on a big family reunion vacation to Australia in June and I couldn't imagine the dificulty in trying to eat gluten free there. When we visited before we had a hard enough time finding "normal" food that we liked to eat. (We're pretty picky already..not into seafood much). I did see where this diet is kind of like the low carbohydrate diet, which is the diet I should be on for my PCOS anyway. Thanks for your welcome and I see I have a lot of check into about all of this.

[Jean'sBrainonGluten]

Australia actually has a large celiac population so the restaurants and so on might be less challenging than you think, and there are several books and websites that discuss how to travel and stay gluten free.

If you have celiac you will feel better and have more energy and focus if you get off gluten. Try to get tested...

If you have $329 you can try myceliacid which does a gene test but they can only tell you the possibility of getting celiac, not whether you are actually reacting.

The migraine and arm pain could mean celiac antibodies are affecting your brain ( do web searches on celiac white matter and celiac cross reactivity to brain structures). I've had the migraines and that was the case for me. From what I've read the damage is reversible but you don't really want to mess with this.

Really try to get tested because that will help you be firm about planning for and eating gluten free.