Dylan Dreyer, Today co-host and NBC News meteorologist, revealed her six-year-old son has celiac disease.
If you’ve spent time watching the Today show over the past several years, you’ve probably seen Dreyer’s oldest son Calvin, also known as Cal, appear in the “Cooking with Cal” segment where the two cook something kid-friendly.
But little did the mother of three – her and husband Brian Fichera also share Oliver George, 2½, and Russell “Rusty” James, 19 months – know that all the food Cal loved to eat was hurting him.
She said he was “constantly complaining of stomach pain every day” among other symptoms that doctors couldn’t seem to understand.
“It was like a sharp pain every day, not a different pain, always a sharp pain,” he told Today.
Dreyer said there were many times Cal had to leave the dinner table because the pain was too much.
She and her husband also noticed other troubling symptoms.
“He’d be eating, and he’d just drop his fork,” she recalled. “We used to joke with him and call him banana hands.”
Cal also dealt with an earache for a year. He went to an ENT, but the doctor said everything was fine. He also developed a rash on his scalp and his hair started to fall out.
The family made some adjustments at home, but the pain remained. Several times it was bad enough they had to take Cal to the emergency room. It wasn’t until they visited a gastroenterologist who gave the six-year-old a blood test that they learned Cal had celiac disease.
“He had to go and get an endoscopy,” Dreyer said. “They needed to send the camera down into his intestines to make sure there was damage caused by celiac disease.”
During the procedure they found an ulcer which was causing Cal pain.
“We were very concerned because we thought it was something much more serious because of how some of the results came back. You start Googling and thinking the worst, so when we found out it was celiac, I could say, ‘Okay that’s an inconvenience, it’s a life change, but we can manage that.’ We were very grateful,” Dreyer told People.
In an effort to combat the autoimmune disease, the family replaced much of their kitchenware and Dreyer began researching new gluten-free recipes.
Now that their house is gluten-free and Cal is eating food that won’t make him sick, he feels much better.
“Now that I don’t eat gluten I feel terrific!”
It must have been incredibly scary and frustrating to see Cal deal with so much pain every day and not know the cause. I’m glad they were able to find a diagnosis.
Hopefully Cal’s story with raise awareness about celiac disease and help others who find themselves experiencing similar symptoms.
READ MORE:
- Hoda Kotb returns to ‘Today’ after 3-year-old daughter’s ICU stay
- Al Roker returns to ‘Today’ two months after major health scare
