Okay, technically I wasn’t saving the world, just my daughter’s stomach, but it’s just about the same thing in this household. For years now my oldest daughter has had severe bouts of nausea and vomiting, all happening, usually within an hour of going to bed. Weird. And heart wrenching when you’re the parent watching helplessly as this happens to your child and you don’t know why it’s happening and doctors can’t give you a reason.
And yes, I really mean “years”. It’s been a nightmare as one doctor after another just shrugged their shoulders and said it was probably just acid reflux and to try another med.
We finally have a pediatrician now who said “Huh, for 4 years this has gone on? And nobody’s done a scope on her? Nobody’s sent her to GI specialist?”
Nope. Nobody. So for the past two months we’ve been making the trek up to Jackson to see a super-fantabulous-wonderful Pediatric GI Specialist who immediately said “She needs an endoscopy and a colonoscopy. We need to figure this out.”
They got her in right away for that procedure and then we waited for two weeks while all the biopsies were sent away for testing. It was a horribly long wait.
Her diagnosis came back and we have now been introduced to Celiac Disease. It’s an allergy to gluten, and after meeting with the dietitian at the beginning of this week I discovered that gluten is in EVERYTHING. The good news is that more and more products are becoming gluten-free. But some of the stuff out there is just plain nasty. We were warned about the bread. Some of the gluten free bread has a shelf-life of a year. For bread. No thanks.
It’s a whole lifestyle change that my husband and I have decided that we are going to do with her. Yes, it’s going to be hard. And expensive (4 freakin’ gluten-free hockey pucks hamburger buns costs $6!). But it’s worth it to us. As a family we will do this.
So, this is another journey the Matthews Clan is embarking on, I’ll keep you posted.
