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I am looking for advice from other people who went through the same thing I'm going to describe so that I can learn what you did in the same situation.  I'm writing this precisely.  I have been on this list long enough to know that the question I'm going to ask may elicit a lot of screeds against doctors and a lot of very basic information -- and I'm not looking for either of those.  

A friend's 10 year old son is having excruciating stomach pains like the kind I used to have at his age.  And he's having terrible diarrhea.  And he's skinny and he has other symptoms that give every indication he has Celiac Disease.  My friend had never considered CD until a month ago when she overheard me talking about my situation while at a party.  She and I talked for about an hour and she agreed that she'd have her son checked out.  I saw her last night for the first time since that conversation.  

"Did you take him in?"  "Yes."  "What happened?"

"They gave him an endoscopy and said he doesn't have Celiac's Disease, he has reflux."

"Did they do a blood test?"

"No.  The doctor said, 'Why do we need a blood test?  We'll just do the endoscopy.'"

"And it came back negative?"

"Yeah."

"They did a small bowel endoscope?"

"I don't know what they did.  But they said he has reflux.  He doesn't have Celiac's Disease."

My friend is a Physician's Assistant.  I believe she had the endoscope done at Children's National Medical Center.  I asked her if she's going to put her son on a GF diet, and she said she might try it, but she seems half-hearted about it, I think because she doesn't have a diagnoses of Celiac Disease.  

I would like to hear from other people who have had this same experience so that I can tell her what she might do next.

Thank you,

Richard Paul
Washington, DC

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