Noah is so much more than his medical journey through food allergies, intolerances, and celiac. He is the joy of our home!
He has that natural ability to drop a joke, or a word, or even a look, at just the right moment to send the whole room into laughter. You can be sad or angry yet he will still make you laugh! In a group, he has two extremes, quirky and fun or quiet and solemn. In truth, he is a true introvert. I often think that the ideas in his head are so much more interesting than the world around him. It’s not uncommon for others to be taken off guard when he drops one of his deep and perceptive insights on others… or more often, a wild idea! I never know what he will say!
So, as a parent, the rest of this post is difficult… to boil my child down to only their medical conditions. Honestly, I pray I do it poorly. That you get a chance to glimpse our family as much more than just food allergies or celiac. That we can offer you hope of being more than the medical conditions that brought you here. That our story can encourage you to pursue abundance.
GERD
Noah was a healthy baby. No signs of food allergies like his older brother and only occasional and mild eczema. But he was fussy, a lot!
Around one year old, he began to have choking episodes. Some mild. Some not! I thank God that I had been trained as an EMT earlier in my life. I genuinely believe that training is the only reason Noah is alive today!
Our pediatrician at the time, not the same amazing man we had with Andrew, referred to these as “isolated choking incidents” and assured me he was developing fine. After several severe incidents, I insisted on getting a referral to a specialist. A battery of tests showed silent reflux as the major culprit and he was placed on meds to help. It was also the first time I heard “failure to thrive.”
Food Intolerances? Celiac?
Around this same time, Noah had several “normal” childhood issues. None of them were normal in intensity. His first ear infection blew out both ear drums. Every sickness resulted in asthmatic emergency room visits. Steroids were regularly given. Low dose steroids did nothing to reduce the issues. Add to that, the medicines for reflux didn’t seem to be helping either. Noah often refused to eat, he was losing weight that he didn’t have to begin with, and discussions began about inserting a feeding tube.
The turning point for Noah came when I was desperate enough to look at alternative medical options. In an effort to help the ear infections we visited a chiropractor who included a medical history sheet with the question,
“How many rounds of antibiotics have you started in the last year?” I could easily say Noah had started more than 20!
I realized that mainstream medicine was treating the symptoms, and that poorly, but it wasn’t treating the cause. My gut said that if we kept doing what we had been doing, Noah wasn’t going to make it. I went back to what I knew. Food.
We still worked with mainstream doctors but I insisted on testing and exploring some other issues. Unsurprisingly, since he hardly ate, Noah was malnutritioned. His vitamin D especially was alarmingly low. A test for EoE… well, I never got a straight answer on the results of that particular test but…
I made a last ditch effort to avoid that feeding tube and found an elimination diet for GERD. I removed all gluten from his diet as well. Additionally, I focused on feeding him high nutrient density foods with a wide variety of nutrients. I also focused on gut health and probiotics through lacto-fermentation. It was a self-led crash course in nutrition! The changes in Noah’s health attested to its veracity!!!
Officially the doctors gave a diagnosis of likely celiac. A possibility since I myself and several relatives all received a similar diagnosis at about this time and we all saw our health turn around, although not as dramatically as Noah’s.
Allergies: Food and Others
In the midst of Noah’s medical struggles, he was diagnosed with a peanut allergy. Because of his brother’s allergies and our peanut free home, he has been blessed with no direct reactions. However, he has had occasional mystery reactions when out and about that make us assume he is quite sensitive but we also suspect he might have more allergies.
He has also struggled with eczema and allergies to detergents. Between his sensitivity to chemicals and his brother’s allergies, I make my own bar soap. For years I made my own laundry detergent but was never thrilled with it. Recently, I found TWO brands of laundry detergent that he doesn’t react to!!!
Most recently, Noah has begun reacting to adhesives.
Today
Today, Noah is about as healthy as a teenager can be! Quite the turnaround from the sickly child he was. He has “normal” sicknesses and powers through life at his own pace. Over the years, he has been able to add a lot of his intolerant foods back into his diet and now only excludes gluten, peanuts, and some processed milk. Partly because his brother is allergic to eggs, a favorite for him has been visiting local gluten free breakfast restaurants.
Noah is currently enrolled in the Southern California Food Allergy Institute’s Tolerance Induction Program.