Last week was so full of drama. Princessa turned 6 so we had a birthday dinner and party. Sometime I will have to write up her birth story here on my site. She was born in my bedroom two weeks before my due date. I had planned on a homebirth, but I was just suprised that she came early because I have never been that early before. She was such a sweet, pretty baby and it was so nice to finally get another girl after three boys. We are so glad she is part of our family. For her birthday dinner she requested popcorn, which I was thrilled to do because that is easy, not like lasagna or turkey and stuffing, like some of my other kids pick for their birthday dinners. So we made regular popcorn and caramel popcorn, threw in some raw veggies, and had gingerbread for her cake and ice cream. She enjoyed herself!

Two days after our birthday celebration last week she gave one of the birthday presents I gave to her back to me saying she didn’t like it. It was a pink flashlight with Dora the Explorer. I had wanted to get her one from Melissa and Doug that was blue and green with flowers. But I ran out of time and put off shopping for her present until Saturday, the day before her birthday. And then I found myself with all the little home with my husband and two big kids/babysitter gone to the homeschool debate tournament. As soon as they got home I would go out shopping by myself. No way was I taking four little kids shopping. By the time dh and big kids got home it was the worst winter storm so far this season. We went out in that shopping and all I wanted to do was go to one store and take my chances. They only had one flashlight for girls,  the Dora one. Now she says she doesn’t like it. What? Just two days earlier she happily told me she had had the best birthday ever and I figured it had to do with the flashlight since she was carrying it with her all day. Sometimes she is a changeling and swears off anything that is too “girly girl.” Talk about a moody girl. And she hasn’t even hit puberty.

Last Monday I took the younger kids to the Treehouse Museum for our homeschool day. I like everything there but the life-size cutout of Obama in the fake Oval Office. I adore the threecornered hats though and love that they have my favorite book on Washington there, the picture book about him illustrated by Cheryl Harness.

When I got home my 16 year old daughter was in a lot of pain and had no energy. Her stomach hurt as it always has. But it seemed worse than ever. I’m not one to go to the doctor much at all, preferring to rely on time and herbal remedies. My husband actually thought she might be dying though so he took her in. He weighed her and  we found out that she had lost 15 pounds in a month, and then 20 pounds in the two years before that. She has had stomach pains since she was 9 but things have been getting worse. She says that it hurts to eat anything so she wasn’t eating much at all and she said even water hurt.

This condition of hers has stymied me for years. And the condition scared the doctor because the next day he called us and told us to hospitalize our daughter. I don’t blame him. Here he was with a patient that looked like an anorexic who was starving. She has lost her appetite, but not for psychological reasons to be skinny and gain control over her life, but just because she says eating hurts her stomach. She won’t eat because it hurts, and then hunger makes it hurt more, but she says that eating doesn’t make it feel better.

Well, we compromised by getting her into a gastroenterologist the next day, thanks to my husband, who took on the doctor’s assertion that we wouldn’t be able to get her an appointment sooner than a month from now by calling from a list of all the GI doctors on the Wasatch Front. 

Sure enough, the doctor called the next day to follow up and make sure we were doing what we said we would, to take her to see a specialist instead of hospitalizing her. The end of the long story is that we took her into get an endoscopy and she got a biopsy done to test for celiac disease. She has been eating more too so her energy is up and she is able to do get back to doing scholar phase.  Now we are waiting to get the results on the celiac test. We are supposed to go back for a colonoscopy.

Does anybody  know what would cause stomach pain for years if it’s not gluten intolerance or celiac disease? Maybe this is leaky gut syndrome and the GAPS thing is worth looking into.