Scope Prep, and Scope

The boy had to stay gluten-full until the endoscopy to ensure that we (well, not really all of us, just the nice doctor) could visualize the full extent of the damage within.

You see, if you're not familiar with the mechanism of celiac disease, I'll break it down for you really quick, and I like bullet points:

• It's an autoimmune disease, not just an allergy.
• When the wheat (also rye, barley, spelt) protein gluten is introduced into the gut, the villi, which are tiny little the finger-like projections on the walls of the small intestine are damaged. These are the little guys that ACTUALLY ABSORB THE NUTRIENTS FROM OUR FOOD! Not good.
• I'm going to say this one again: When the villi come into ANY contact with ANY gluten, they get angry and pissed off, and they are damaged. They will now not absorb the good stuff from food.
• To further clarify, not only is there a lack of absorption of nutrients, but you can gather very quickly by looking at my son's distended belly, there is an accompanying inflammatory reaction, which can cause more damage than you can ever dream up. Maybe we'll touch on some of that later.
• So now, since there is compromised absorption, just like if he were malnourished by any other means, the kid can get sick. Like real sick. Like actually worse than not even eating, since now the small intestine is all damaged and irritated. Seriously, like cancer sick. Sick, sick sick.
• The important thing to take away from this bullet point festival is that this can be really, really dangerous.

I decided to go ahead and clean out the house, since the kid is going to have to have something to eat when he wakes up (post-endoscopy). I really had no idea how "contaminated" our kitchen was. I took a picture, but I'm not posting it at this time for two reasons: #1 - I am TOTALLY ashamed of the state of my cabinet (that's right, ONE cabinet.. hopefully upgrading soon) #2 - I don't know how to do it yet.

Do you have any idea how many of our foods have wheat proteins in them? It's quite astonishing.

I gave away food to friends, open boxes of pasta to my son's kindergarten class for art projects, other stuff to food banks, and I even returned a whole bunch of recently purchased dry goods to Publix (thank you!).

And since I mentioned Publix, I have to say that the people that work in our local grocery store are the sweetest, kindest, most helpful people! They all know NCS, and they have gone out of their way to answer my questions and help me out whenever I have questions or concerns. I want to give a special shout-out to Sandy, the deli lady who slices the cheese just right, and the nice curly headed guy who rules over the produce department!

So the morning of the procedure, with a sleepy and very hungry little guy, we set off in search of visual images of his innards. And we got them. Throughout the process, NCS was a sweet, polite, patient little patient. He was brave, and we were so very, very proud of him.

Well, the biopsies (eight) confirmed the diagnosis, celiac disease, once and for all. Here we go.