Cystic Diagnosis Part 3: Family Doctor & Celiac Clinic

McMaster Children's Hospital

Picking up where we left off, Julie visited our family doctor the following Monday (Aug 25). The doctor reiterated #s 1 to 3 that we were told at the emergency room the Friday prior:

1. It's random. It won't happen again. Don't worry about it.
2. Celiac disease - dietary disorder where the body can't digest wheat properly.
3. Cystic Fibrosis - but... the odds are quite low on this, so don't worry about it.

And, the doctor also repeated her earlier statement that it likely wasn't CF, because Katie didn't have any of the other symptoms.

So... our family doctor booked us to visit the Celiac clinic at McMaster Hospital. We went to the Celiac clinic on Thurs September 11 2008. The clinic took some notes. They examined Katie. They took some blood. And they also spent a fair amount of time looking at her body - looking back, we can now see that they were considering whether she had "failure to thrive".

Funny enough, at that time, she had started to look a bit small. It wasn't a huge deal, but we were starting to notice her slipping a bit in how skinny she looked. This was strange, as she was a pretty chubby baby. We look back at baby pictures and she was always a pretty good weight. But, around the time we started to have her tested for Celiac and CF, she started to look thinner.

Celiac results came back a week or so later - I don't have the exact date for that handy. Negative. She did not have Celiac disease. We were down to two options at that point: The prolapsed rectum was a random thing, or, we were looking at Cystic Fibrosis.

Next step: test for CF. The Celiac clinic booked that appointment for us for Thurs Sept 25.

Next post: Sweat test at the CF clinic