POOR MISS ALIYA

Poor miss Aliya she hasn't felt good since to tell you truth I can't remember exactly when. The thing I really remember is Memorial weekend (May 09) her complaining on her back was hurting in the car on our way to Cannon Beach which then carried on to other trips and around the house and especially at night. Then came a horrible bout of the flu over the summer pucking countless times, which is the first time in her life she has ever thrown up. Al soshe began getting a itchy irritated bottom whenever she would take baths. Had a spell of what we believed to be athlete's foot. Still having back pain and began complaining of her tummy too. Then in early fall got a horrible itchy rash on her hands during a weekend in Seattle going to the zoo, aquarium and Pacific Science Center. After several doctors appointments, medications, and finally a trip to the dermatologist and a little over a month later, we finally got it to go away. I couldn't help but wonder if most of this all was related but to what was causing it? Jamey and I both began to question something in our water, but after the test came back crystal clean we were at a loss.
Still having back pain and tummy pain and having a horrible time sleeping we decided to take her to Graham to see Dr. Lapenski who does NUCCA. That seems to help relieve her back pain and a lot of her tummy pain too for a month or two and we were excited. Then the tummy pain came back and the not feeling good all over. After a couple visits to Shannon Neer and a visit to her regular doctor, we decided to see a Naturopath, Dr. Wilkinson, here we come. Unfortuneately we made that appointment the end of November and had to wait until January to see him, but I'm glad we found him. The first two weeks we tried a yeast diet suspecting a yeast control problem, which I must admit made complete sense, between the itchy bottom, athlete's foot, hand outbreak and reading "Back to Health" but unfortuneately almost two weeks on that diet didn't seem to help at all. We then got her food allegry results back and found out that pretty much everything we were feeding her on the yeast diet she is allegric to, Gluten, Whole wheat, rye, eggs, almonds (well minus the almonds). She is moderately allegric to red grapes. So now we just finished day two being Gluten free. For those of you who think it's simple just avoid bread and wheat, Ha! Gluten is hidden in everything from syrup, to candy, to cereal, to noodles, to sauces you name it. I have a page of names that mean gluten you would have no idea that I carry with me. We thankful have a great bakery in Yakima that is gluten free but unfortuneatly Aliya is allegric to eggs also which is in a lot of the breads and such, but we did get some bread and some cookies for her after her two weeks with out sugar. Jenny at Jenny Mae's Gluten Free Goodies is fabulous and a great resource of information and support, love her! She had many insightful things and one thing that really hit home was that people with gluten problems or celiac often feel like they have the flu and they ache all over even in their bones and they are starving always hungery (yep that's Aliya) literally because their bodies can not absorp the nutrients.
So what now? Next we do the diet and pray that she starts to feel better soon! And we will be doing another lab through entero labs (www.enterolab.com) which will tell us if she has Celiac and is having trouble asborping nutrients.