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hi all,

well i finally took my 20 month old in to see our ped, armed with the name of
a good pediatric GI........she had never heard that constipation could be a
presenting symptom of cd......which i hadn't either until i talked to you
all.........she palpated his abdomen for a long time to be sure she did not
feel any obstructions.  we had our son on 2tsp of lactulose tid, and were to
use daily enemas until he was cleared out.  she paged the gi doc who's name i
had (she knew him).....and presented the case....he agreed that with the
family history, celiac was a possibility, and asked if she had ordered any
labs yet.  she explained that she had ordered them, but that since he had
been vomitting over the last few days (they thought he might have an
obstruction, but we are pretty sure it turned out to be the stomach flu since
now my husband and daughter are vomitting too!!) the labs had been put on the
back burner. she told him which she had ordered (the 4 from the harvard
article) and he modified it a bit.  he wanted only the tTg and IgA levels.
He said that if you have a highly allergic child, some of the other tests
cloud the issue and you are not isolating celiac/serum testing.. if that
makes sense.  Anyway, i took him straight to that hospital's lab.... instead
of trying to get into children's..... and they took the blood.  he had had
blood taken about 2 months earlier for a lead screen, and it went great.. 1
stick, no problems... yesterday it didn't go as well.... the vein just
woulnd't appear.. they tried twice and then ended up doing a finger stick.
my son was a trooper throughoug.. i never thought that they could get enough
blood from a finger stick, but they did.... anyway, to make a long story
short, this gi said to call him as soon as the labs came back, and made it
sound like he would want to go ahead with the labs.  i had mentioned that i
did not like the first gi she sent us to, since when i started asking
questions he got annoyed... the primary question being what good would it do
to scope a baby (he was about 7 mos at the time) who has never been
introduced to gluten to see if he has celiac.... he insisted that no one knew
whether or not that was the case.. which seemed absurd to me.. but
nonetheless i didn't like his attitude.....

so that is where we are.. waiting for labs.....
eliz.