A Lifestyle Guide for People with Allergies and Food Sensitivities

Saving Gillian
By Diane Keough

Sue Otolo gasped when she saw her daughter's kindergarten picture. Standing beside more than a dozen of her schoolmates, her daughter Gillian stood out. It wasn't Gillian's blue eyes, curly blond hair or her cute, colorful outfit that caught Sue's attention, but rather her weak smile, sunken eyes and droopy shoulders. Compared to her peers, Gillian looked tiny and emaciated - and very sick. "All I thought was 'Oh my God, my daughter's dying,'" Sue said.

Ignited to action, Sue marched Gillian to the nearest hospital for testing after being pooh-poohed by the family's pediatrician. "I knew something was wrong with her, but until I got to the hospital, no one would believe me," Sue said.

Almost from the beginning of Gillian's life, Sue had been nagged with suspicions that something was just not right. Gillian's face always looked haggard and much older than other children her age, and her physique was, Sue thought, abnormally fragile and small. She was constantly run-down, plagued with colds and other infections. Her hair was sparse and wispy, and the nails on her hands and feet refused to grow.  And although she was physically active enough, Gillian's coordination seemed, according to Sue, somewhat sluggish.

Gillian's father, Bob, noticed her lack of muscle tone compared to the couple's younger son, but he attributed it to being a "girl thing."

"I thought the headaches she complained about all the time were because she didn't want to go to school or do her school work," Bob said. With a flat rear-end and grossly protruding stomach, Gillian looked more like a starving refugee than an average American kindergartner. But the couple worked long hours in the restaurant business - he as a professional chef and she as a waitress - and they had little time to pursue their hunches. "She was functioning okay and not deathly ill," Bob said.

According to Dr. Barbara Kaplan, clinical director of pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at Cleveland's University Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital, vague symptoms like Gillian's mimic a number of different diseases. "When a child is not thriving, testing for an unknown illness takes a heavy toll on parents because it takes several weeks to come to a definite conclusion," said Dr. Kaplan. "The tests can be somewhat invasive and painful for the child, which makes it even more difficult for the parents."