My two children's father and I are divorced. As far as this goes it was on the very bad side. He was a bad boy and the stepmommy who was also married and the mother of three was a bad girl.

Anyway, after a recent weekend my kids spent at their father's house, my youngest came home saying, "Mom, I have to tell you what I saw but you have to promise not to tell my dad." She repeated this a handful of times with me saying I could not promise until I heard what she saw.

Now, over the past five years, my kids have told me some unsavory stuff but I won't go into the details here other than to say some fighting including a really nasty one where stepmommy was drunk and, another time, them not bothering to shut their bedroom door soon enough on a Sunday afternoon while they had both my kids, an 11-year old best friend and the stepmomster's 18 year old son all in the house. There's more . . .

Well, my daughter finally told me the secret. She said, "Mom, when Dad opened the medicine cabinet to pull out a medicine for me, I saw a tube of Preparation H in there."

Is this a sense of humor or what? No, I didn't burst out laughing too much nor in front of my daughter. I already knew this was a recurring problem of his during our long marriage. Earlier this year, he was diagnosed with Celiac Disorder, an anti-immune digestive disorder having to due with an intolerance to gluten and sometimes and in his case dairy products too. Unfortunately, it is genetic. Maybe more on this subject later because it's more common than the public knows and many people are undiagnosed.

I learned some things when taking my daughter to her quarterly diabetic clinic appointment today. I saw a brochure for a seminar coming up on Type I diabetes and Celiac disorder in children. Apparently there is a connection between the two especially in children.

I haven't had time to do much reading yet but if the test comes back positive for Celiac, I will definitely do so. We have no reason to believe my daughter has Celiac too, but the diabetic team is recommending blood tests for Celiac for all diabetic children.

The doctors say anyone with a predisposition for Celiac (as in Type I diabetes) is predisposed from birth genitically through genes. Sometimes stress or an illness/virus can trigger one or both. Many who have the Celiac genes might not develop it as in diabetes.

Well, I'm not a doctor and didn't explain this all well, but my older daughter was tested recently too after unexplained rashes that took several months and numerous doctor visits to clear up. The test was negative. Celiac may cause severe digestive problems along with skin rashes, etc. When I mentioned the Preparation H earlier, one of the symptoms of Celiac Disease is chronic diarrhea.