I need your help diagnosing my child (or I just removed gluten from her diet, skin issues)

[WCM]

Backstory (I'll try to be brief). My youngest gets severly constipated, and as I get this from gluten, I decided to take her off it as well. I did this in early January. Within two days she developed a rash on her cheeks. It wasn't red, just really bumpy, all across her cheeks. The next day it progresed to cross the bridge of her nose as well. My first thought was that she's detoxing, and/or that removing gluten has allowed another allergy (say dairy) to shine through, hence the cheek rash. I decided to keep an eye on it, hoping that within a week it would go away and I could write it off as a detox thing (or if it progressed, pull her off dairy as well).

We left for a topical holiday the next day (after the nose rash). After one day in some sun, her cheeks were bright red, where the rash was. they stayed that way through the night, and the next day. She was having lots of sun exposure, but in a safe, moderate way (not at high noon in the pool, etc). The rest of her body was not tanning too much nor burned at all. Within a few days she developed the rash all across her upper back/chest, just at the top even with her shouders, plus across her shoulders and down her arms, covering the backs of her hands. so she is now all bumpy, face, upper back/chest, arms (both backs and fronts) forearms and back of hands. It is completely random in pattern, and some are bigger than others, but all are small. I've seen pox, roseola, eczema, keratosis pilaris, etc . . this is none of those. What is this???? She doesn't complan of itching, but I've seen her brush her cheeks or grab at her biceps sometimes.We've ben away for 9 days now, and it is not progressing but it is not getting worse.

there is a pool where we are, it is mildly chlorinated and mostly treated with some salt/ozone thing. She swims in the public cholrinated/ozone pool at home, with no issues. And the rash did start before we left . . . .

is it some wierd reaction to the sudden sun exposure plus chlorine? i say that because the area affected is the part that stays above water as she splashes around the pool in her floty toy each day. I've taken her in the salty ocean a lot, hoping it would offer some healing. We are away from all our regular first aid, in terms of creams, homeopathics, etc. I've ben rubbing straight aloe on it, hoping for a change, but nothing has changed.

I've yet to pull her off dairy. Travelling with a celiac child (and parent, me) has proven hard as it is, dairy offers us some protein at one of our meals.

What do you think? I want to say food allergy showing up due to gluten removal, but why only on the upper parts of her body? Nothing's wrong with the creases of her elbows or knees, where my son's eczema occurs. I think it may be exascerbated by the sun because of where we are, but I don't think it's actually caused by it, because it began before we left. (We go home in a week).

Any thoughts? Thanks so much.

[sbgrace]

Gosh. That facial rash made me think lupus rash based on your description but I don't really know a lot about it. I do know sunlight triggers and it's autoimmune (as celiac would be). Kids can have lupus. I certainly hope that's not it. Surely there are other things it could be.

[tanyalynn]

Could you have really increased some other food she's eating, instead of the gluten?  It's so hard to trouble shoot when we're away from home, so many things are different all at once. 

Waiting to make any more diet changes til you get home seems wise (or at least it'll keep your sanity, which is high on the good list too).  Since you say it's not particularly itchy (maybe just slightly?), it seems reasonable to wait til you get home and give it a bit of time to resolve once everything's steady.  But I hate not understanding what's going on too. 

[KimPM]

Originally Posted by tanyalynn 

Could you have really increased some other food she's eating, instead of the gluten?  It's so hard to trouble shoot when we're away from home, so many things are different all at once. 

Waiting to make any more diet changes til you get home seems wise (or at least it'll keep your sanity, which is high on the good list too).  Since you say it's not particularly itchy (maybe just slightly?), it seems reasonable to wait til you get home and give it a bit of time to resolve once everything's steady.  But I hate not understanding what's going on too. 

That's exactly what I was going to say.  What have you been feeding her more of since you've taken the gluten away? 

[WCM]

Corn+dairy, but the big increase has ben corn. She lives on porridge (organic whole milk + br sugar), quesadillas (corn tortillas and org cheese and sour cream), corn chips and sour cream, smoothies (bananas, org full at yog, flax oil, protein, milk), burritos (yep, corn again) . . . we eat lots of other things, veggies, edamame, tofu, yada yada, but since I cut her off gluten the quickie fall back is something rolled up in a corn tortilla.

It DOES look like the lupus skin rash! I googled it, and while there are extreme/severe lups rash pics that are nothing like her's, the butterfly one looks exactly like hers. I've gotten some pictures of her arm rash too. When out of the sun it is not red, but bumpy and faintly white. You know the kind of rashes you can see on the 'horizon' of their skin? The kind you need the right lighting to catch? That's it, same with her face.

I guess I'll just be aware of it until we get home, and then once it's been a month, maybe remove something else? Or put her back on gluten, just one meal, to see if things 'get worse' or change somehow. I feel like it's wrong to purposey expose her, but I don't see how else to get a sense of whether I'm on the right track at all.

[tanyalynn]

Gluten, dairy, soy and corn are all fairly common allergens--something about the combo of the four seems different and a bit more common, they seem to cluster a bit, in a way the multitude of other allergens don't.  But for DS, although he's intolerant of soy, he actually tolerates quite a bit, it was a long weekend with lots of soy that suddenly made me realize the soy was an issue, more than a year after I cut out gluten and dairy.  So if corn is the issue, there are a range of amounts tolerated (since hidden corn is so incredibly difficult to avoid).