Worried

by Jackye
(Amarillo Texas)

My daughter has been having pain in her abdomen for about 3 years now. When she first started having problems she was 12. She hurt so bad that she could not go to school. We went to the emergency room three times within two weeks. They first diagnosed her with H-Pylori which they treated with antibiotics. We thought good this will take care of it but she continued to hurt. She always describes her pain as her intestines are inflated. They found out that her gallbladder was not working totally so they took it out and the surgeon saw that her appendix was inflamed so he took that out at the same time. She did pretty good for a while after that. Then she started having pain again. She has not ever had the diarrhea but she said it is real soft and she feels nauseated. The doctor did a blood test and it showed positive for Crohn's. He then did a colonoscopy and endoscopy. He said she looked good and he didn't think she has Crohns. My question is: Since her blood tested positive and she still has the pain can she develop Crohns? I am at my wits end. Seems like every doctor doesn't care. In fact this doctor said he couldn't do anything more for her but to come back if she started having more GI problems. They don't seem to understand how hard it is when your child is in so much pain and there is nothing you can do about it.

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Worried NEW
by: Annette Young

Hello there,

Thank you very much writing in and sharing your daughter's story with us. I'm so sorry to hear that she has been having severe pain in the abdomen for so long. I do hear of lots of children having abdominal pains and many being diagnosed with Crohn's disease. It sounds like she has been through a great deal considering her gall bladder and appendix were both removed.

There can be many reasons why she is still having abdominal pain although I have to say that I have not heard many people saying they were diagnosed with Crohn's first and then to find out that it was actually another condition. I know many people who have experienced the reverse.

As a mother myself I can understand completely how frustrating and worrying this is for you. All I can say is that she needs to go back to the doctors and maybe you need to push for more information. Sometimes there seems to be little evidence of Crohn's during tests, but it can quickly spike and may be present elsewhere and I think for the doctors to say she has to learn to live with it is ridiculous.

There is a possibility that there are foods that she is eating that might be causing an aggressive response. I know lots of people with Crohn's disease who are also intolerant of dairy products and some have found that reducing wheat products can help too. If she is drinking lots of fizzy drinks then she should be reducing these and stopping altogether, because these can cause problems and might be why she is in pain.

Try to give her basic food i.e. soups, mashed potatoes etc anything that might help her to ease the digestive process and not make digestion such a problem. If she has sores inside the intestinal tract, as you can imagine it can be unbearably painful to then eat.

At this stage however, there is much it could be so really, my advice is to push the doctor for more assistance.

Hope this helps.
Annette

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