A New Journey

*I’ll warn anyone with delicate sensibilities this post is going to contain bodily function talk.

*********************************************************************

I’m so glad my three year old isn’t potty trained yet. I’m thankful for the diapers that cover his butt and the foul smelling diarrhea that he has filled them with lately. After another bout of cleaning up a child, his bed, and doing laundry at 4:30am, I called our family doctor. Aaron’s had a pretty constant belly ache for almost a month now. Then we got the diarrhea and sometimes vomiting when it’s really bad. I can’t stand to see my child in so much agony. We’re past the point where this is a virus or some other passing issue.

I took him to the doctor last week. She had his belly x-rayed so we could see how full of poop he really is. She said he felt full. Maybe constipation was the cause. Nope. His intestines (as far as the matter filling them) look OK. So she suggested maybe a food allergy or even possible celiac disease. The course of action was to get blood drawn for allergy testing and if it’s positive for wheat, then get a referral to a pediatric gastroenterologist. We go the blood drawn, gave a stool sample, and we’ll have the allergy test results in anywhere form 1-3 weeks.

In the meantime, I did a social experiment of my own. The next day I got gluten free products to replace Aaron’s favorite foods. He was mostly gluten free (except additives because I don’t know them all yet and was only experimenting) until Friday. That’s just THREE days of going gluten free and we saw a vast improvement. Then to test our theory, I’ve been letting him eat whatever the last two days. We’re back to FOUL, nasty, diarrhea, and a kid complaining of a constant belly ache.

To me this all suggests he’s got gluten issues even without allergy testing. I called and asked for the referral NOW. We’ll see if that happens as I’m dealing with military doctors. If we wait for the allergy tests to come back, at this point we could be waiting 2 more weeks for the allergy tests + 2 more weeks for a referral + the time it takes the specialist to fit Aaron in for an appointment + the time for any tests the specialist runs. I really don’t see the need to make my child suffer like that. Let’s get these referrals and get this show on the road. We need to know for sure what we’re dealing with.