In recent months Korbin has began to gain weight and have more problems with his stomach becoming harder and more distended than normal. He has always been treated for acid reflux and has severe constipation. My sweet boy often complains of his tummy hurting. In Kindergarten, he had a scope done to check for an ulcer which may have been the cause of his stomach hurting. He had no ulcer, praise the Lord, and he had a biopsy to check for Celiac's Disease. The biopsy came back inconclusive, which the GI doctor said it was a high probability that he did not have a gluten intolerance. So, we moved on. A decision I highly regret now because even though we moved on, the symptoms did not.
Korbin plays 2 or more sports all year long with a short break from December to February. He eats more fruits and veggies than not but does enjoy his junk food too. This summer when the allergist said Korbin weighed 108 pounds, warning signals went off within me. He has always been middle of the road for his height and weight, this was the first time anyone has ever said anything about his weight. The funny thing is that his body fat is extremely low, less than 5 %.
Something was not right!
I began slowly doing research on Celiac's disease and a gluten intolerance. The rate of tests coming back inconclusive or negative but someone still suffering for this is alarmingly high. Something I wish I would have known years ago. I watched Korbins stomach become hard and bloated after certain meals, and one particular date we were eating steak and potato's. The moment he ate a roll, his stomach began to hurt. Plus, his constipation issue's were painful for me to even watch as he cried from the bathroom in agony as he tried to relieve himself. I felt extremely helpless!
Finally in late November, I told Rod it was time to do what we should have done before and go with my gut feeling. Pardon the pun. We need to try to eliminate the gluten from out diets to see if it would help Korbin's on going stomach issues.He reluctantly agree. His reluctance was not because he did not want Korbin to feel better but because it felt like we were talking yet another thing away from him. First nuts, now everything else because so much has gluten in it!
We agreed that we would wait until after the holiday to implement the changes, and as you may remember I do not start my goals in January because I believe that it sets you up for failure if you jump from the busiest season of one's life into changes without proper time to make an action plan. Failure to plan is a plan to fail.
As I began to list my goals for 2013, I knew I had to go through the clutter and become more organized. Now I realize that my quest for organization was going to help us succeed in removing the gluten from our lives.
As we sat down to explain to Korbbie about the gluten, we told him our family is a team. Every member has an important part of our team. If everyone does not show up for practice, at the game everyone would be on different pages of the same book. Food is our practice and it fuels us for the game of school, work and other things that we do that requires us to think, run and use brain power & energy. Since we are a team, we will all go gluten free so that we are all on the same page of the same book. It will require some work and adjustment but I have no doubt with God's help we will get it accomplished.
As January passed and I watched Korbin to see if specific things bothered him, I noticed that many of the same things that bothered his system also bothered Rods. I have thought for many years that Rod is lactose intolerant. He just watches his dairy intake but refuses to believe that he could be lactose intolerance. As I read and study more about Celiac's Disease, that is one of the signs/symptoms of being gluten intolerant as well.
I downloaded a book to my kindle recommended by one of my friends called The G-Free Diet by Elizabth Hasselbeck ( Ya know ,the blonde from the View). It has really helped understand the disease and the gluten is in alot of things other than food. It also sent me running to the bathroom to check shampoo and I found that Rod's body wash has almond paste in one of the lower ingredients which was the random thing that has been causing Korbin to break out when Rod comes home from work. We has originally thought is was something from work and Rod was coming in from work to wash his hands & face with antibacterial soap. This stopped the majority of the breakouts. Now we know why it did.
As we prepare to be gluten free, I am reorganizing my kitchen. I will need to purchase some new storage items so that the gluten free items do not become cross contaminated with my old ones. I found this great website called Simple Dimples that showed me some great organization idea's for my kitchen storage.
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| This photo is from the Simple-Dimples site and not my own. |
This is my next project, with a trip to the dollar store, I will have this done by the end of the week.I will post pictures of my cabinets before & after. Feb. 1st is "D-Day" for a gluten free kitchen. So, why not go all the way?? A new kitchen system for a new start??
I am super nervous and super excited to start this leg of our adventure together. Yesterday, I celebrated my 5 year post op anniversary. I have lost approximently 200 lbs!! I did it to be healthier. I want my family to be healthy too and will do whatever it takes to help them live long, healthy lives. Even if it takes me out of my comfort zone.
Anything worth having is worth fighting for, and our health is definately worth that!!
~Kristy~
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