Progression of Celiac Disease

When Whitney was a 3 month old baby, she got thrush.  It began the endless parade of ailments she would get. Tummy aches became common.

In the above picture you can see a  red spot on her cheek that came and went. This is like the one she had at age two but the one she got later was larger and darker. It wasn't like a pimple. It was about the size of a dime and it was just red and looked like a hive but it didn't itch.(Brett later got a similar spot on his face before he was diagnosed with Celiac disease). Other skin rashes and hives came and went. 

As a little toddler, she presented with allergies that affected her congestion.  She was one year old when Dr. Lindsay said she was allergic to dust or pollen. Then, he added milk to his list of possible allergies.

 She was a very picky eater and was often constipated but would swing to having diarrhea on any given day.

She was a magnet to viruses because her resistance always seemed to be down. She was put on an antibiotic for strep throat when she was 18 months old and had frequent ear infections.

 I pinned a handkerchief to Whitney’s shirt so she could wipe her constantly dripping nose. She often had fevers and congestion. 

She was a poor sleeper with frequent wake up periods with what appeared to be tummy aches. She would wake up in hysterics that took ½ hour to sooth. 

She had problems with bed-wetting until age 9. (Not coincidentally, we removed wheat from the house when she was 9) She had a scaly patch of skin on the back of her head above her hair line that was really difficult to get rid of when she was 8. It looked like Psoriasis. 

She broke a bone in her hand and later broke an arm and even later she broke a vertebra in her back. Children with Celiac disease have more bone fractures.  Whitney also had a lot of aching joints especially in her legs/knees. The doctor called them growing pains.The kids at school teased her because her breath was awful. She had frequent yeast infections.

Her doctor was concerned about muscle wasting in her extremities and buttocks. She was underweight and had short stature. At one point she had numbness in her extremities and face without explanation. She had exercise induced asthma. Before age 9 she was prone to moderate headaches. 

Whitney ate wheat on occasion during her teen age years when she was not at home. And during those years she had blood tests that showed that she had protein in her urine.  She was also found to have had 3 times the normal amount of single chain fatty acids in her bloodstream. They sent her to a specialist in Los Angeles Children’s Hospital.  They said she was not digesting fats properly. And yet....they didn't believe she had Celiac disease. All the pictures above were before going on a gluten free diet. 

What we know now is that because Whitney didn't entirely rid herself of gluten in her teens, she was probably slowly damaging her small intestine and would later be diagnosed with Celiac disease when the damage was finally obvious. But, the blood test would not be positive until she had been on a regular high gluten diet for 3 years. Our present tests are too unreliable in testing children and adults with early stage Celiac disease, especially when only minimal gluten is eaten in the home. I believe that it is the late diagnosis that made her have fertility problems. (Fertility problems are related to Celiac Disease) She was finally able to have a child through fertility treatments. She was successful with in-vitro fertilization. Her subsequent pregnancies were all without further treatments.  I believe her body was finally healthy enough to allow a normal pregnancy.  She had her first child a little less than 5 years after her definitive diagnosis of Celiac Disease. It is believed that it takes about 3 years to totally heal the damaged intestine in a young adult.