We're gluten free

I don't know if that's good or bad but that where we are now at! Poor Sage had been sick for several months...since October 11th to be exact. The day after Lindsay's birthday she ate a bunch of chocolate cake and was very sick that night. It was a rare thing because my kids have always been so healthy. She had been to the gym with me and the trainer that day so I thought that she had maybe worked a bit too hard or had eaten too much cake. :-/

She felt a little better the next day but was still complaining of feeling sick. Over the next several weeks this cycle continued. She would feel hot, nauseated, have heartburn and feel generally miserable. We thought it was a reflux thing since I've got GERD so we started her on Prilosec but after a couple of weeks it still wasn't better. She was missing a lot of school and her grades were starting to suffer. On top of all of the GI complaints, she was now having constipation and diarrhea (Sorry Bug) and her joints were really hurting her, especially her hips and knees. I took her to the doctor and he agreed that her symptoms seemed consistent with reflux and gave her more Prilosec and tested her for h. pylori, which turned out to be negative. He sent us on our way and said if she didn't feel better in a couple of weeks that he'd refer us to the pediatric GI doc. She missed more school and then she started having numbness in her hands and feet, difficulty concentrating and her teeth got really discolored. I knew that something was up and after 5 days called the doctor back and asked for the GI referral. It didn't take nearly as long as I thought to get into the GI doc as I thought and we were so excited because we felt like he would give us the answers to help Sage feel better.

We met with Dr. Burpee (the best name for a GI doc, don't you think?) and we left his office with the diagnosis of constipation.....seriously? I was a little upset because I didn't think that it would help. We were set up with a whole regimen of Miralax and a prescription for a different acid reducer because the heartburn was worse. We did the clean out with little success and I was really discouraged. We decided to remove all traces of processed foods from our diets because her symptoms really seemed to be related to something she was eating.

Dr. Burpee did suggest an endoscopy might be helpful if the other measure didn't improve things. After a couple of weeks she was still missing a lot of school an her symptoms were awful. She was starting to get really depressed.

At one point her symptoms were so bad and she was so nauseated I ended up taking her to the ER. They did a CT study, which was negative and it took a lot of meds before she had any relief from the nausea. I felt so bad for her. The next morning, Dr. Burpee ordered a Gastric Emptying Study to see if she had gastroparesis (paralysis of the stomach). Guess what? Negative. So I called Dr. Burpee and requested the endoscopy....why not...our deductible was met. The plan was to check for reflux and take some biopsies to see if there was something more to all of this. I was beginning to suspect Celiac Disease and thought for sure that would explain ALL of her symptoms. After the endoscopy Dr. Burpee said everything looked great but that Celiac is difficulty to diagnose visually so we'd have to wait for the biopsy results. A week later the answers were in and guess what? No Celiacs.

Now what. We were just managing the symptoms (and poorly, I might add) hoping that we could find the link.

I started doing a bit more research because she had so many signs of Celiacs and kept reading about gluten disorders and came across something called Non-Celiacs Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS). Oh my goodness! Could this be it?

J and I talked it over and I felt strongly that we should try it since the clean eating thing wasn't working. So two weeks ago we removed all gluten from Sage's diet. After 3 days she was feeling amazingly better. She took the sacrament at church and felt crummy the whole rest of the day. It was really eye-opening. I called Dr. Burpee to discuss this with him and he felt like we should continue with the GF diet. He said that there isn't a lot that it known about NCGS because there aren't really any definitive tests for it. There are some that can point to gluten sensitivity but the ultimate test is just to remove the gluten. From my research I knew that it could take days or months (or even years in some cases) to know if it would work. Dr. Burpee is excited about the prospect of this helping and IT IS!!!

GF is working and Sage feels way better than she has in months! I'm so relieved! I don't know why is struck her all of a sudden and I don't know what triggered it, if anything but I'm thankful that it's something relatively simple and that she won't have to be on medication for the rest of her life.

GF has been an interesting transition but after you get over the shock of it all, it's truly not that hard and Sage is worth it!