Celiac's Sucks!

Today we officially got Emma's diagnosis of Celiac Disease. For those of you who don't know what's been going on I'll give you a brief version. Emma was referred to an endocrinologist because of her short stature and her failure to grow/thrive. Basically she hasn't grown in the last year and has almost dropped off the growth charts. They ran a blood test and found she was testing positive for Celiac. So we had an endoscopy done last week and they took some biopsies. We thought that would be the end of it, but they also told me today she has Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EE). As I understand it she has damage in her esophagus due to a food allergy. She now has to have allergy testing done and more endoscopies to check for healing/damage. There is a possibility that the inflammation in her esophagus is from the wheat/gluten and once she heals from that she may be "normal".

So our new diet has started, which means we can no longer eat most of our favorite foods. Gluten is found in just about every processed food so we are still trying to find alternatives. Please don't be offended if we don't want to go out to eat or have dinner at any one's house, but we have to get all this figured out first. It's very overwhelming when you start learning about cross contamination in the kitchen and how much it's actually hurting her. All we want is for her to be healthy again. It looks like this coming year is going to be just as hard as this past, but hopefully we will get everything figured out soon.

On a side note, Isabella is also testing positive for Celiac and has an appointment in a few weeks to see if we should do further testing. Matt and I are also going to do genetic testing to see who is the carrier for Celiac. If we are both carriers then there is a good change Oliver has it too and that we can also develop it later in life. We will also be urging people in our families to get tested as well.

Isabella's 3rd Birthday

Isabella turned 3 over the past weekend and we had a little party for her. Thanks to everyone who came and celebrated the day with us. We had a good time and good food.