L.M.
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You need a specialist...don't wait.
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I posted a related question before...we are going into day 8 of cramping episodes for my daughter. She is 6 years old and I've always fought constipation with her. She never complained but I knew she wasn't going enough and have always pushed fruits and veggies...her whole life...and she has never had diarreha, ever. The suddenly last monday she starts with these crampy painful gassy BM's. she had like 5 on Monday and this continues so that by wed they were very loose almost diarreha. I started her on the brat diet and stopped all dairy and that seemed to firm up her BMs but did nothing for her cramping pain. I have since returned her to her normal diet and still every two hours or so she has cramping , sometimes with some times without a BM. The BMs are looking more normal every time but the pain has not gotten better and she still going 3-4 times a day. She was at the DR twice last week. At 4 am she woke me up saying she had pain and had a BM...Normal looking BM but the pain was so intense she said she thought she might throw up. Then it was gone and back to bed she went. They are doing stool studies and the bacterial check came back clean....I'm still waiting on parasites.... Anyone ever experience anything like this. She is a really happy well balanced kid who has never complained about her belly before this. I'm starting her on probiotics today to see if this helps and calling the Dr office again.....
All Dr tests are in...and no one has any idea whats wrong..*sigh*
Her symptoms are better but not gone so, next week she has an appt to see a Gastro....if all goes away by then I cancel, if it gets worse she has to go to ER, but her pediatrician has done all they can.....
:(
You need a specialist...don't wait.
I would ask for a referral to a Pediatric Gastroenterologist to find out what's causing this. If it is IBS, it is definitely something you don't want her pediatrician treating.
Good luck! Wish I had more to offer you, but I think it warrants a referral to a GI specialist.
T.,
I'm so sorry that your daughter is feeling crummy :(. I agree that you should continue to follow through with doctors. It can take a while to find out if health problems are food related, or if there's another cause, and until you know, it's hard to know what to do. If it turns out that you have to avoid either gluten and/or dairy, we have some recipes on our blog that might make things a little easier for you. The address is www.welcomingkitchen.blogspot.com. Good luck!
Just wanted throw out another possibility. Stress. My husband went through a similar issue several years back. It lasted about 6-8 weeks and then was over. He was tested for Crohn's, Celiac, plus all the fun stool sample things. And he had an endoscopy and a colonoscopy. Ultimately they didn't find anything and ruled it IBS. IBS is kind of a tricky thing because there are medicines, but no known real cause and no actual test to confirm it. It's more of a process of elimination. (And i'm not even sure they give meds to kids for it.)
We have come to believe that it was more of a stress issue. We definitely had a bit of stress going on in our life at that time and it seems like his body just couldn't handle everything he was dealing with.
Cleaning up the diet can be helpful--eliminating internal stressors is a great idea--cutting out all processed sugars (including high fructose corn syrup), flours, foods, etc. (I don't have much experience with gluten, but know some people who've had different kinds of relief from eliminating it.) If you're doing brat, be sure to use whole grain bread without added sugar only (Ezekial Bread is great), brown rice, and all natural, unsweetened applesauce. It's way too easy to pick up these items off the shelf at Publix and walk out with a cart full of chemicals, toxins and processed sugars that certainly won't help your daughter's gut.
But if the pediatric gastro doesn't find anything conclusive, then I would talk to him/her about stress. Stress absolutely affects the gut, so maybe your daughter has something going on that you could look into.
Trust me, I know how hard it is to watch someone go through the pain (my husband had excruciating pain after every time he ate on top of the bowel issues). I pray she feels better very soon!
Could be Crohns? Take her to a stomach doctor- they can run different tests.
Good Luck- stomach pain is never fun and you feel so helpless.
Have you seen a Pediatric Gastroenterologist? If insurance allow I woud do so asap. Your family ped can refer you to someone good in the area. Our child had stomach problems about 3 yrs ago at 10 and she was sent to one who was wonderful. Problem solved within a few wks. Hope this helps.Good luck to your child
I actually had many of your daughter's same symptoms back in November. What I did was take myself off gluten (wheat protein) for two weeks. Immediately, my digestion problems started to clear up and I no longer had the cramping. It didn't heal everything immediately but it started getting better right away and the difference was very noticeable. I didn't eat gluten-free for two weeks before I allowed myself to eat some bread. Felt great up until I ate that bread and within an hour, the symptoms returned. I checked with my doctor on this and, although a blood test that I took earlier that year was negative for celiac, blood tests are not always accurate and she agreed that the gluten food intollerance challenge that I did (two weeks without the offending food before reintroducing it) was probably the more reliable test.
Which brings to mind the dairy issue with your daughter, if she was starting to feel better without dairy, you should probably keep her off it for a bit longer than a couple of days. If she is casein (milk protein) intollerant, as opposed to lactose (milk sugar) intollerant, you will want to keep her off dairy for 2 weeks also before reintroducing it because casein can take a week or 2 to clear her system. And you may want to try having her try being gluten-free for a couple of weeks as well to see if that will help.
Just something for you to consider . . .
