Do you believe there are “no accidents” in life? Is everything connected?
Our
daughter, Clare, had several health issues as a small child. None were continuous or always the same which
is why, as they continued, they didn’t seem connected. When she was ill the typical diagnosis was that
she had a virus. She was always pale,
which we put down to our Scottish and English roots so didn’t give that fact
much attention. At varying times, she
had stomach issues, vomiting, unable to keep food or drink down, fevers with or
without sickness and lethargy. She had regular
check-ups where the doctor gave her a clean bill of health and said she was
growing well. Or was she?
Clare has two older brothers. Their growth charts were always in the 95th and 75th percentiles. Clare was holding at the 25th percentile throughout those early years. This fact niggled at me; this just isn’t our family trait. What was going on?
In
kindergarten, her teacher told me pointedly that “Clare is the slowest student
in my class” and she often had to wait for her to finish before moving on to
another task. This really irritated her. Clare would come off the school bus every day
and take a nap on the couch before she could do anything else. At times she would come to us at 7 o’clock in
the evening and declare, “Mum, Dad, I’m tired, I’m going to bed.” We were so proud and pleased with our wee
girl who gave us none of the bedtime battles during her first 7 years of life.
I vividly recall one harrowing day when she was about 15 months old; she hadn’t kept food down for about 48 hours, she was very pale with black circles under her eyes. I spent the day sitting beside her on the couch spoon-feeding teaspoons of ginger ale into her every 7 minutes. If I tried after 5 minutes, she would throw up again and lose any ground she’d gained after which she needed to rest for a while before trying again. I was at my wits end, did a lot of crying and cuddling, yelling at God to show us what was going on with this little tiny girl who seemed to be fading away. I knew it was bad when a friend stopped by and we went outside to say hello – I was carrying her – he took one look at her and said, “what’s happened to Clare?!” This, of course, hit me even more so I knew we needed to see the doctor again. “Probably a stomach virus”, he said.
As
a toddler she would eat dry rice krispies for breakfast or for a snack and she
loved rice cakes. One friend once
declared, “what, you’ve got the kid on a diet already?”! Ice cream was another favorite. She wasn’t so keen on all the usual kid
favourites like chicken nuggets, pizza, etc.
She would eat a hotdog but without the bun though she did love macaroni
and cheese.
At her 6th year check-up, I said, “she’s still in the 25th
percentile which doesn’t seem right to me, are you sure there’s nothing going
on with her health? The answer concerning
the fact that she’s female and not wanting her to be “too big” seemed more and
more bizarre the more I thought about it.
One day, when she was 7, I was thinking about the things she ate. By then she had whittled down her diet to a few basic things: “rice soup”, which was broth with a handful of white rice in it, rice and green beans, sauteed chicken and ethnic foods. She also loved vegetables. Thai was her favourite and she loved Indian and Mexican food too. Then, suddenly, a memory popped into my mind. I felt compelled to investigate.
Back
about 1992, a friend who lived in Germany had come to visit with her toddler. A few months later, she wrote to me quite
distraught because he had just been diagnosed with Celiac disease which she wrote
a little bit about and, later, on the phone, she discussed how difficult his
life would be as a teenager; going out with the guys would be hard if he couldn’t
have beer and pizza with them.
As
I recalled her letter, our conversations afterwards and Clare’s eating habits,
I headed for the computer and googled the word “celiac”. Lo and behold, on Celiac.com it was all there
in black and white. The foods she loved
were on the “safe foods” list and the ones she had stopped eating (like bread
and pizza) were on the “unsafe foods” list.
Did Clare have celiac disease? Is
this the gremlin which has been troubling her throughout her childhood?
Her
diagnosis was later confirmed by the gastroenterologist via an endoscopy. “Classic” celiac pictures were what the GI
doctor showed us that day.
It isn’t always a straightforward road when your child is diagnosed with celiac disease but I’ve said since then that if there was ever a “good time” to be diagnosed with it, it was then. More information was emerging about the disease and some food manufacturers were producing safe gluten free foods (not all manufacturers have safe production practices) giving us a greater variety of choices so the diet wasn’t bland and boring.
Nowadays,
it’s even better with more foods, more choices and better nutritional
information. Clare has become a capable
young woman who knows exactly how to handle her dietary restrictions. That doesn’t mean she is no longer sick (her
immune system is compromised) but she handles the rough days with grace and
practices good self-care when necessary.
What’s the moral of this story? God. Uses. Everything. Sometimes our lives only make sense when we
take the long view.
Understand then, that the Lord, your God, is God indeed, the faithful God who keeps his merciful covenant down to the thousandth generation toward those who love Him and keep His commandments. Deuteronomy 7:9
Is there a compatible event or events in your life? How has someone else’s experience helped you to solve a puzzle or resolve an issue?
How precious to me are your designs, O God; how vast the sum of them! Psalm 139:17