Kathrynn is my 9 year old, gifted daughter. She also happens to have a food allergy. This allergy is not like her friends allergies. She can touch the food she is allergic to without any problems. She can, technically, eat it, and be "ok." In other words, she won't die from it. At least not yet.

Kat has a grain allergy. So far, it is specifically barley, malt (which is usually made from barley, as far as I have been able to find) and corn. There may be more grains added to that list, but so far, this is all we have discovered.

I think it is important to start at the beginning. As soon as Kat went off formula, her skin became dry, bumpy, and itchy. It may have started sooner than that, but I know for sure it was there once she started eating things like Cheerios.

Every doctor she has had in the last 9 years pretty much blew us off. Some said they weren't sure why her skin was like that, but assumed it would go away, others said it was eczema. They suggested lotions and oatmeal baths. None of which REALLY worked. One product did work, to a degree. It was a Vaseline type product. It made her skin softer and helped with the itching, but it made her sticky. She didn't like it, I didn't like it, and I disliked having to wash her bed sheets every day.

As she got older, it did NOT get any better. It got worse. There were other things going on with her too that at the time, we didn't connect to the eczema. She would have these emotional outbursts from time to time that we couldn't really connect to anything obvious. One day, when I was several months pregnant with our second daughter, Kat had an all out, kicking and screaming temper tantrum. And she wasn't one of those kids who see screaming just because mom won't get them a lollipop at the store. She is usually a pretty laid back, well behaved kid. But this day, man! She blew her lid. It took two of my friends, whom I'd been having lunch with, the get her in her car seat. And she wasn't even 3 yet! She was kicking so hard that they were afraid she'd come in contact with my rather large belly and cause problems with the baby.

We DID make a food connection at that time, which really just came to me just now. She LOVED Honey Nut Cheerios, just like most toddlers. We changed them to plain Cheerios and the problems decreased. But since she didn't like the plain as much as the Honey Nut, she wasn't eating as much.

So fast forward a few years to Kat being 5 and in kindergarten now. The itching as become so bad that she is checked for lice a couple of times a month. I keep trying new lotions, oatmeal baths, and whatever anyone else can suggest for a skin problem. Because it wasn't SEVERE eczema, Drs. didn't want to give her a prescription lotion for it.

First grade wasn't that bad. I don't recall her getting checked for lice all that much that year, and as far as her behavior went, it was a pretty stellar year. But then came second grade, and Kat's behavior pretty much blew up.

She started stealing food from the fridge and cabinets at night, usually digging fingers into whatever sweet thing she could find. One night she ate half a cake on her own. She is now getting checked for lice at least ONCE A WEEK. Then a few months into school, she was suspended for stealing food from the teacher (a slice of cheesecake, which she took in plain view of her teacher). This happened two more times over the year, with the last time, the school Principal and Guidance Counselor trying to convince Isaac and I that Kat is bipolar. As we were sitting there talking about it, and after my pointing out that Kat is rarely sad, and NEVER seems depressed by any standards and causing the stupid School Psychologist to admit that Kat didn't REALLY fit the guidelines for Biopolarism, I realized that each time Kat had gotten in trouble, we'd had pizza to eat for dinner the night before. Since we lived too far out of town for delivery and we actually had to go get pizza on our own, we rarely ate it.

So, what's in a pizza? The girls are pretty Plain Jane when it comes to pizza. Cheese, extra cheese, and extra extra cheese. In addition to the cheese, you have marinara sauce, some spices, and dough. Bread, really. What's different about the things in a pizza than what we eat normally? They love spaghetti, and since I can grate up veggies and hide them in spaghetti sauce, we have that pretty often, and there is no reaction to spaghetti, which also rules out gluten. There is gluten in spaghetti noodles. It rules out the veggies, too, and the cheese on the pizza, because they'd put a ton of whatever cheese we had in the house on their spaghetti. So all we are left with is the dough. The bread. (It is important to note that Kat, who was only about 45 pounds at MOST could eat half a pizza by herself which is a huge amount of bread. She'd get PB&J once or twice a week at the most which isn't nearly as much bread as in half a stinking pizza!)

We also eat quesadillas pretty often, and she didn't have any trouble with that, so it seems wheat flour is ok. Logically, what is left? Yeast. She can eat tortillas but not risen bread. So we cut all yeast out of her diet. What an amazing response!! The outbursts stopped and so did the stealing. so only went after the sweets when she got the bread.

At this point in time, we didn't have any health insurance, and the low income clinic was less than helpful when it came to testing her for allergies. We finally got pretty decent health insurance in the Fall of 2007, and we took her to get tested. At the appt where we made the arrangements to get her blood work done, the Dr listened to what we had tried, what we had taken out of her diet, and the response. She agreed that it seemed it was yeast. But it wasn't.

Kat has a pretty significant grain allergy. But only to SOME grains. Even the Dr was surprised that it came back as a grain allergy. She can have wheat. She eats oatmeal and tortillas without problem. But most run of the mill bread that you can get in your grocery store has barley in it. Or malt. Which is from barley. So at this point, it isn't a gluten thing. Thank Heavens for that, among other things.

Somewhere in this time line, I was watching the girls play. It must have been about 4 or 5 months ago. Kat reached up to start scratching her head, and just as I was about to tell her to stop, SHE stopped. It was a normal, every day scratch. Not the kind she was prone to that would leave her skin red and irritated and her scalp so irritated it would bleed. That was when I realized that in addition to the behavior problems, the eczema was allergy related! Not one single Dr in 9 years mentioned to me that eczema can be caused by a food allergy. And I didn't think to look it up myself because, well, I'M NOT A DOCTOR.

When we went back to get the blood test results and found out it was the grain, I mentioned the itching to the Dr and she said oh, yeah, eczema can be food allergy related. Thanks for sharing that bit of information with me!

Kat has been pretty good about policing herself when it comes to food. Once in a while she will give in and have a bagel at school. She loves toast. She loves bread, and PB&J and grilled cheese, and more importantly PIZZA. It hasn't been easy for her, but she is doing a great job, especially when you figure in that she is only 9, and has only know about this allergy for a little over a year. We found some bread that is barley and malt free, but it is $5 a loaf. So she doesn't get it very often.

It has really been an eye opening experience for me. Kat just rolls with the flow, but we have really had to start paying attention to what is in the food that we eat. We found a great Orange chicken thing that she LOVED, but when I finally looked at the ingredients, the batter on the chicken had barley. She is happy to eat Spaghetti when the rest of the family has pizza for a birthday party. I think that even at only 9 years old, she is just happy to not be itchy all the time.