Courtney and food intolerances

This is another post about Courtney, it might turn out a little long, but I want to get everything down.

About two weeks ago, Courtney was really sick.  I had bought some new bread that week (no high fructose corn syrup plus 100% whole grain) and after we had it a few days, Courtney started saying that her tummy hurt.  She is usually my pretty healthy kid, so I kept an eye on her, but wasn't too concerned and I didn't make her eat the bread anymore.

Wednesday. May 10th Grandma brought some 8 grain bread from a bread store here in town and shared it with my girls. They love toast with sugar and cinnamon, so between us all, we ate almost the whole loaf!

Thursday, May 11th. The girls and I had dentist appointments in the morning. After our appointments, we headed up to the mall to get lunch with the grandma (the other one!) and to look at shades/ curtains for my piano room.  Courtney had gotten food from Sarku and after she had eaten a little bit, she looked at me and said she needed to go to the bathroom. She does this a lot in the middle of meals, so I took her.  She also didn't look right, so I was a little concerned. I took her to the bathroom and she went potty. No big deal, but when we left to leave, she got pretty pale and held her stomach and started to cry. She said her stomach hurt so bad! Poor thing!! I ended up carrying her back to our table because it hurt to walk.  She didn't eat anymore food and I took her home.
Once we got home, she watched a movie and then took a two hour nap.  Again, not like her! I called the dentist to see if they had given her anything that would make her sick and they said no. Ok, time to call Dr. Mallory Rupp. She is who I have been consulting for my health issues and I think she does a great job! She is a holistic internal doctor/ chiropractor and sees things differently than medical doctors. She thought that she might be having a food intolerance problem.  I also told her that when she was about 15 months old, she had diarrhea for about 6 weeks and we ended up at a pediatric GI doctor with "toddlers' diarrhea."  We were dealing with the same situation now and I swear when she was younger, we had given her whole grain bread too about the same time that she gotten sick.

Friday, May 12th. I took Courtney in to see Dr. Mallory right away Friday morning and she said there was definitely something going on. When Dr. Mallory pushed on her stomach, Courtney winced.  She said if she was faking it, she wouldn't have winced.  I told her some of Courtney's history and told her that we had recently swtiched bread.  This made her suspect a whole grain intolerance. She also said that Japanese food is full of wheat and soy, so this could've made her ill on Thursday. Courtney had also been eating very little lately because of her stomach aches, the more she ate, the more it hurt. 

She recommended that we do a food intolerance blood test, so after preschool, I fed Courtney the bread that I was suspecting was making her sick (I know, bad mom!) and then went and had her blood drawn.  The doctor wanted it done after she ate so the antibodies would be at their highest peak (or something like that).  We got her tested against 96 different foods.

Friday night- We went to see a play at the Rose Theatre and we ate supper right before we left.  Halfway there, Courtney said her stomach hurt and we made about 4 trips to the bathroom while we are at the theatre. She wss really sick!

After this, Courtney has been fine. No stomach trouble, no pain, nothing that she tells me anyway. :)

Today: I get a call back from Dr. Mallory and she told me that Courtney definitely has some issues. She wanted me to come in next week, but I begged her to tell me some of her results.  She said that Courtney's numbers were high on quite a few foods. Some of them were cow's milk, cheddar cheese, cottage cheese, peanuts, and all whole grains! No wonder she got so sick! I was shocked at the other products though. She eats cheese and peanut butter daily! Dr. Mallory said that even though she looks fine on the outside, she probably has some inflamation on the inside. She also said that since they were food intolerances now, she could probably outgrow them if we pulled them out of her diet while she was still young and let her gut heal.  She said if we didn't, they could turn into full-blown allergies and then she might not be able to eat these foods the rest of her life! Wow! I definitely want to get her better.

I then told Dr. Mallory that Courtney LOVES cheese and she said that her body will crave the foods that it knows it shouldn't have. This is why she craves chees, cheese-sticks, mac and cheese, mac and cheese pizza, shredded cheese, etc.  She also wants peanut butter and jelly every single day for lunch. I am just amazed at all this! I am very anxious to go in next week and to see the full results. I was telling Courtney about it all tonight and she said, "What am I going to eat then?" I don't know Courtney! This is definitely something to talk to the doctor about.

Next one to get tested is Christian. He has had loose stools since last October and I am so afraid we are going to get sent to a pediatric GI doctor and his problem will get labeled as "toddler's diarrhea" again. I haven't pursued it much with our pediatrician, but I am definitely going to get him tested now with Dr. Mallory! I will probably be just as amazed when we get his results back too! (This might also explain why he gets runny noses every so often).