To Test Or Not To Test...

[lizbeth93099]

Seems like I am not the only one that struggles with this decision. I have been looking at past posts and talking to my family and I haven't seen anything that convinces me to put my daughter through the agony.

My daughter from the age of six has dealt with severe anxiety, panic attacks, stomach aches, bouts of diahrea, constipation, fatty stool, heartburn (she was even prescribed prevacid at 7, that's not normal!), insomnia, nasty smelling breath, constant nausea. As a mom watching your daughter go through these things, especially the anxiety was so hard. We were seeing therapists and nothing was getting better. We had bloodwork for thyroid, diabetes, etc... done and they all came back normal. I continued doing google research and the one thing that kept popping up was celiac and gluten intolerance. Finally this past July I asked the doctor to please do food allergy testing on her. So she ordered a simple blood test. I'm not exactly sure what all was tested, but the doctor called saying she was allergic to sesame, a slight allergy to peanuts (which she has never reacted to) and a bit of an allergy to wheat. She said the wheat allergy was minimal and to just keep her away from whole wheat and that she wouldn't have her go gluten free or anything. That didn't make much sense to me. I talked to her therapist and he said we should give gluten free a try. In September we had her go gluten free to see if there would be any changes. The first week was terror, the anxiety actually got worse and her stomach hurt really bad. The second week however the tide began to change and it was like my daughter was coming out of this fog she had been in.

We don't go to the doctor often, but a couple weeks ago she had an ear infection so we saw the doctor and I let her know what happened. She seemed a little baffled and interested and said that we could do a celiac panel, but that she would have to eat gluten for at least a month or two before hand. My daughter was all for that, but I wasn't so sure. That weekend we had a few birthday parties and went out to pizza at a place that had gluten free pizza but she wanted regular pizza, we had another party and the host provided her gluten free pasta as a replacement for plain and there was gluten free cake and regular cake, she wanted all the regular food and was very upset when I wouldn't let her have it.

The next weekend she managed to eat some gluten and got sick. Her stomach hurt, she had diarreah, nausea and she suffered from a bit of anxiety. It took her about two days to feel back to normal.

Now that she was reminded how much better she feels off gluten she doesn't want to do the test either. I am curious though if it's just a wheat allergy as opposed to a full gluten intolerance or if it's even celiac disease. Plus it would be nice to have that official back up when and if she gives me a hard time about food again. I just don't know if I want to have her suffer...

No easy answers I know.

[ravenwoodglass]

Your in a tough spot. The first thing I would do is to call her doctor and tell them that you tried a challenge and what the results were. There is a chance that with her improvement on the diet and her reaction to the challenge that the doctor might see fit to go ahead and diagnose her.