Celiac Disease

Got a call from Dr. Shah, Kagan's allergist, yesterday and his blood test came back negative for Celiac Disease, which is problems with Gluten. So yay, we do not have to go Gluten free. So she wants him to continue to use the nose spray for a month to see if that reduces the inflammation in his nose so he can get stuff out of his nose.  She thinks he is having alot of sinus drainage that is sitting in his stomach and making his stomach hurt. If this doesn't help then we will go see a Gastro doctor. Sounds weird to me but hope it works.

Alleriges.... what?

Yesterday was Kagan's appt with the allergist Dr. Shah.  Very nice lady. She feels since he has not had any physical reactions to food, then he is not allergic to any of the food that the blood test said he was, such as corn and walnuts.  She said he "reacted to alot of food" like peanuts, eggs, and so forth.  She is considering those "false positives".  Sometimes if food is a plant based food you can get a false positive reaction.  Not sure why you would do a blood test for allergies if you can get so many false positives, sounds foolish to me, why put the child (and parent) thru that blood test. Any hoo... they did skin test on him, which he did really good. It was a "stamp" of 8 needles, I wouldn't even call them needles b/c they didn't feel like needles. They did a stamp on each arm and two on his back and he had to sit still for 15 minutes to see if they reacted. Some did, some didn't.  He is allergic to tree, grass and weed pollen. Basically all things outdoors. During "pollen" season March - Sept, whenever he plays outside, he needs a hat on and sunglasses to help keep the pollen out of his hair and eyes.  Once he comes in from playing outside, he needs to change his clothes and before bed he HAS to wash his hair and take a bath.  This should help his symptoms but wont take them away. Now, how does this relate to his stomach aches???  Dr. Shah looked inside his nose and his airways are extremely inflamed. She feels since his airways are inflamed not much can come out so everything is going down to his stomach which can cause stomach aches. She is not saying this IS the cause of his stomach aches but she is trying to rule out things.  So he has nose spray he is suppose to use one a day for a month to see if it helps. Then we go back in a month to see her again. She has not mentioned anything about shots or other course of action. Taking one step at a time.

She did however want to test him for celiac disease aka gluten issues.  I thought Dr. Cleveland tested him for that but apparently not, so he had to have more blood taken. The lab was conveniently right next door at the Levine Children's hospital. Once we got there, he realized what was going on and he took off AGAIN!  Chris chased him down the hallway of the hospital and brought him back. This kid apparently wants to get us in shape. We will know the results in about a week.

Till then he can eat whatever he wants!!

Allergies

I took Kagan to the doctor to get tested for Gluten. Now that was an adventure. Once the nurses came in with the tray, Kagan took off. I mean he ran out of the room, out of the lobby, and out of the building. I finally caught him halfway across the parking lot. He was screaming and crying the whole time, scared to death.  After catching him and trying to catch my breath (big momma don't run), I tried to explain to him that they have to take blood to see why his belly is hurting. So after him throwing some punches, I finally got him back into the room and laid on top of him for the nurses to get 3 viles of blood.

I got a call back the other day telling me they tested him for many things but the two highest things he was allergic to is corn and walnuts. They told me to take him off of those two things to see if that helps his stomach.  So do I just keep him off of corn or does that include corn syrup and anything with corn in it?  She never specified and I didn't think to ask, so we are trying to take him off of all things corn. Do you know how hard that is????? Corn syrup is in sooooo much stuff. So it begins.....

We have set up an appt with an allergist on Wed, Aug. 8th at 10:15am.  Chris should be able to go so I hope they do everything they need done with shots and stuff while he is available.

"I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength", that's what I keep telling myself :)

The Latest News..... Garner

 Garner is now 15 mths old. He is very sweet but is a screamer and hitter. He especially screams when Adaline comes around.She aggravates him.  If she gets in my (christa) lap or I pick her up, he immediately runs to me and starts screaming. If he doesn't get his way he will hit anyone in his path or throw anything he can get his hands on. Temper, temper.

He has had many ear infections and seems to get them when we go to Florida.  So we decided to take him to see Dr. Weaver. Actually Garner is the reason we started seeing her in the first place. This was our last resort before tubes. She has been amazing. Since he has seen her, he has not had ear infections or colds. Saweet!

He does have separation issues from me esp at church. Which is crazy b/c he has gone there all his life and knows the workers.  I trust them and know they will come get me or text me if he doesn't calm down. He even cries when I leave the room in our own house or walk outside to throw something away. It's crazy, but I know it's a phase. This too shall pass.

Garner LOVES balls and anything to do with them. He has a little bat, which looks like a turkey leg, that he uses to hit a ball out of my hand. I am his personal tee.  No matter where we are at, if he sees a ball he will let you know he sees it, he is so loud. I just told Chris the other day, I think he is our loudest kid.

The Latest News...... Adaline

 Oh dear sweet, pain in the butt, Adaline.  Yes friends she is 3 and is 3 in every way possible.  She has started going to Summer Camp at Mt. Harmony Baptist Church (where Roo went to preschool) on Mon/Wed 9-12:30.  She seems to be doing good and enjoying it, which I knew she would.  It gets her out of the house, gives her a break from us, gives Garner a break from being picked on, and gives my ears a break from the screaming that Garner does b/c she aggravates him.  So it's a win win for all.  Her teacher, Miss Shelley, says she does very good. I asked her is she is bossy and she said not at all; which shocked me!  She did however, get put in time-out the other day for not listening (big surprise).  Miss Nancy asked her to sit down and she just turned and looked at her. She asked Adaline to sit down several times and even counted but still didn't sit. So into timeout she went. Hah, good for Miss Nancy!!  She will be also attending their 3yr old preschool class in the fall, can't wait for that!!

One thing Adaline is, is bossy. Not sure where she gets it from (must be Chris, b/c I'm as laid back as they come :) ) but she sure got it! Her best friend, Solomyn who is 5 mths younger than her, lives next door. Buddy she lets him have it!  He is THE cutest little thing and we all love him to pieces, but she wears the pants in the relationship. I have to give him credit though, he is getting braver and will finally tell her "No" and won't do everything she says. Go Sol!!

She is and can be very sweet and loving. She LOVES for someone to lay with her and would love for someone to sleep with her every night. We are having sleeping issues with her too. She doesn't sleep walk but she has a hard time settleing down and falling asleep. The thing we've found to work best is to give her Melatonin at night. Her doctor said it's perfectly fine. So now she falls asleep fine but wakes up during the night. She ends up in my bed every night, most of the time I have no idea she is there until the morning time. So, the dr mentioned several things we could do. We could test her iron to see if it's low and we could check her tonsils and adnoids, sometimes those things interfere with sleeping. She also suggested we try a reward system with tickets. She would have a jar with tickets in it and each time she gets out of bed she would have to give me a ticket. And at the end of the week, if she has a certain amount of tickets she would get a reward, such as going to get ice cream, or picking out something from the Dollar Tree, ect.  So we are going to try this first then if it doesn't work, we will go the medical route.

The Latest News...... Kagan

So obviously it has been a long time since I last wrote, so I thought I would let you in on what's going on in the Callaway house a little at a time...

Kagan was having problems with his allergies, it was so bad he was beginning to scratch his eyes out and they were becoming swollen. So we decided to take him to an Upper Cervical chiropractor.  This isn't your normal bone crackin chiropractor, she deals mainly with your neck, your upper cervical.  Your Atlas and Axis are the very first bones in your neck and if they are out of alignment then that messes up your whole body. Anyways we took him to see her, Dr. Weaver, and she took xrays and his Atlas was out. So we began twice a week appointments until it began to stay in place. She also recommended he take local honey everyday twice a day. Since we have been doing both, he has had no problems with his allergies. Now he goes on a regular once every two weeks basis.

He has been complaining alot that his stomach hurts, so I took him to the dr and he suggested to give him Miralax everyday to soften his stools to see if that would help. He thought that maybe he was constipated and when his bowels began to move it would rub the lining of his intestine and irritate it thus making his stomach hurt. So we began Miralax. It's hard to make a child drink all of his drink in the morning, he's got things to do. Have the time I would forget or he would drink half of it then want something else later, blah blah blah.  Dr. Weaver, the chiropractor suggested we put him on a Gluten-free diet for 2 weeks to see if that helps, so thus begins our gluten free adventure......

Yesterday, Friday, was when we really started putting things into place.  I did some research on Gluten and realized this was gonna be harder than I expected. If it turns out that this helps his stomach and this is the problem then this is going to be a lifestyle change for the whole family. I can't cook two separate ways. You have to change the type of flour you use, no pasta, no breads and the list goes on. He ate a whole lotta fruit yesterday was hungry all day long. Today I went to Walmart and searched the isles for Gluten free products, man what a pain. I didn't want to buy a whole lot of foods due to lack of funds but I wanted to get enough variety for him. I did find Apple Cinnamon Chex cereal, Annie's mac and cheese, pudding, rice cakes, chips, peanut thai noodles, and rice.

Tonight was our first taste of Gluten free mac and cheese. All the kids didn't seem to mind, Chris was a no go and I would have rather the real thing but it was ok, I would eat it (but not alot)  The good thing, Kagan is on board with it and makes sure he can eat what I'm giving him. I guess he's tired of his stomach hurting.  The big kicker is gonna be VBS next week. I guess I'm gonna have to pack a snack for him to take.

Kagan has also been sleepwalking lately. Sometimes it's just him standing at his door looking around and other times it's more.  One time I caught him trying to go out the back door, which really scared me b/c if I hadn't had my door open, I wouldn't have heard him whimpering/crying, His whimpering/crying made me walk out of my bedroom only to hear the jingle bell I have hanging on the back door,  jingling. So I yelled and it made him stop. He then came back up stairs and went back to bed. Scary. We now have an alarm on that door and we plan to get alarms on the other doors as well. He's also gone down the stairs and grabbed items and then went back to his room or came in my room. It's crazy stuff.

Long time no post...

Mornings have been so beautiful lately, so I decided after taking Roo to school that I would see if Garner could sit in the wagon and we would go on a walk. He did pretty good, couple times I had to stop and get him situated but overall I was very impressed with him. So here are a couple pictures from Garner's first walk in the wagon (sitting up). I have taken him once before but he was laying down.

As Elizabeth stated on Facebook, there IS never a dull moment in our house, fo sho! Kagan and Adaline were taking a shower in our shower and Kagan decided to to use my razor to shave Adaline's head. Thankfully she was not cut, nor did he do her whole head. Who knows what possessed him to do that. It will probably take about a year for it to completely grow back in, most of that with her looking like a parrot. Oh well...

The next day I heard Adaline laughing in Garner's room, I knew he had just woke up from his nap so I went in there to find Adaline in his crib with him, and she had rubbed Vapor Rub all in his hair. I wiped it out but for the rest of the day you could breathe really good when you were holding him. It did come out that night when I washed his hair. Never a dull moment

For those of you coffee drinkers, I recently tried a new creamer called Warm Cinnamon Sugar Cookie.... so good ............. just sayin