My story isn't terribly impressive or exciting.

I'm not really certain where the Gluten part even starts, so I'll just start somewhere in the beginning.

To summarize, somewhere in my early teen years eating became a bad thing. I'd been overweight...and was actually pretty happy to have bouts of sudden weight loss; though I made sure to eat extra ice cream so my parents wouldn't bug me too much. My metabolism was kicking in.

Anyways...I eventually made the connection to corn. That story is here:
http://maybeitsstress.blogspot.com/2...beginning.html

But giving up corn wasn't enough. The better I felt, the more frustrated I was that I was still having trouble. The next step was to find hidden corn.
http://maybeitsstress.blogspot.com/2006/07/journey.html

And still...I was frustrated by strange "attacks". My gut seemed to freeze up regularly. And then...well, I felt like a pinball machine. Not as bad as I'd been, and I didn't know if it was a good or bad thing. A friend kept telling me it was gluten, and I kept responding that wheat was the one thing I knew I could eat. I did NOT want to give it up. I had a barium enema that showed nothing. Shortly afterward I began feeling a razor blade sensation after some meals. And my throat felt choked up and itchy after certain meals. I finally got to see an allergist.

The allergy testing did not show a problem with wheat. But, the dr reccomended I give it up and if that worked we'd run the celiac panel. He wanted me to give up all grains, which I eventually did. But I wasn't very careful with cross contamination. I switched to spelt, and eventually, dragging my feet, gave that up too. There was definite improvement. My gut seemed to be working again, though I was very aware of it. I went back to the dr for the celiac test after about a month of GF.

I tried to eat some gluten (oatmeal, spelt bread) before the blood test, but it made me sick. I figured that would be enough to trigger something, but it didn't. And I was feeling really bad, cramping, nausea, sharp pains, urgency/incontinence (My very worst nightmare) I started to think it wasn't really gluten, and being sick...just ignored CC. I lost nearly a quarter of my body weight in just a few weeks, they suspect I'd developed pancreatitis but elevated lipase was the only real finding.

One theory was that the gluten triggered the attack. Or I got corned. Either way, I was told to lay off gluten for life and avoid CC. I felt like I was going crazy. I was on a broth diet, and got IgG testing through YORK labs, which showed some other allergies. Many of my suspect foods that I thought were contaminated were on there. My allergist suggested that these were foods that my body associated with corn; which makes sense.

Finally...based on symptomatic response and the presense of the DQ2 gene my GI officially called it celiac disease...although to go to the celac clinic I need to get a biosy proven dx. I don't have the weight to lose on a gluten trial, though. My dr also feels that, based on my descriptions, corn may cause the same type of damage gluten does. He'd love to test out the theory, but I'm more interested in living again than being a guinea pig

Now I'm looking at the kids again. I recently took oldest off of dairy, which has solved her reflux issues (and she no longer is asking me to sit with her in the bathroom, a good sign I think) and would like to take her off of gluten properly once we get "good" at that. With the corn restriction...and no nuts for youngest...its hard to keep them fed well. I figured I could take out gluten, but would end up increasing dairy to make my flops palatable, or give up dairy and still let her have canned soups and sandwiches for school. Oldest was tested for Ttg and total IgA both well within normal. The dr ran a gene test which came back as DR4,1. Since I can't find any info relating DR genes to celiac, I think he ran the wrong one.

Its late...but thats the basic story. I know I'm missing parts...like finding you guys and really relating to a lot of what I've read here. I don't know if its true celiac or gluten intolerance, but that doesn't matter. I do think corn plays a BIG part in my issues, and that corn does cause celiac symptoms. I've seen a lot of other corn avoiders mention they're also DQ1, so I want to research that further. Its only been about a year since I gave up gluten, but it feels like much longer! Looking forward to continued healing!