The Update on Celiac Disease

I took the girls to see their GI specialist today, as a follow-up for their February 4 endoscopies.

We weighed both babies, with Faith clocking in at 21 lbs, 14 oz, and Grace at 22 lbs, 7 oz. They can both face forwards in the car now (although they have been doing so for months...illegally. i'm soooooo bad.).

Dr. Elizondo came in to see us and said, "Let's talk about Grace first."

Apparently, Grace is fine. The biopsy showed no signs of Celiac disease and the anatomy of the lower intestines looked fine. She'll be labeled as "underweight," and be seen by Dr. E every few months, just to track her progress.

Then there's Faith. When he said, "Did anyone call you about her?" my heart sank. No, no one had called. I wondered why, but instead wen to the, "What's wrong?" portion of the appointment.

It seems as though her biopsy showed signs of Celiac disease, but not definitively. It also showed what may be an allergy to a certain protein in cow's milk. It's either one or the other, and only a blood test will give us the answer we need.

So, of course, I asked, "Isn't this the blood test that you didn't want to do and instead did the endoscopies?"

It turns out that the answer to that question is, "Yes." I was puzzled, so Dr. E explained it like this.

The endoscopy should have given us a 100% conclusive answer to the Celiac disease question, but it didn't. Some levels of certain hormones/enzymes/etc, indicated Celiac, whereas others looked perfectly normal. And some of the chemistry pointed toward this milk allergy, while other chemical elements looked just fine.

In short, it was inconclusive, which is where the blood work comes in.

If we do the blood work, then it can be compared side-by-side to the endoscopy biopsy and, hopefully, give an idea of the bigger picture. I'd liken it to a criminal trial -- one piece of circumstantial evidence will not win a case, but with a number of pieces of circumstantial evidence, you can build a story and put a criminal away. Same deal. Sort of.

So we left with orders to get blood work done on Faith. Both of the girls were in bad moods as it were, so I decided to just go ahead and get it done. Faith was less than thrilled about this attention she was getting, but recovered quickly.

We have an appointment with Dr. E on April 10 to discuss all of this. He said I'll get a call if it looks like it's Celiac disease, but otherwise, we'll just come in in April and go from there. Whatever that means.

So one question is answered, but two more have cropped up. Such is the story of my life with twins.