Please help: DD in hospital with mystery abdominal pain.

[Stath]

DD (16) has had what we thought was a UTI. She felt generally unwell and has had lower right abdo pain that’s been increasing for a week.

Ended up being admitted to hospital as she couldn’t keep any meds/fluids down so given iv antibiotics and fluids plus antiemetics.

The pain has been getting worse. Her bloods have shown a decrease in infection (her uti weeing symptoms disappeared after a couple of days) but an ultrasound and now an mri haven’t found anything dodgy apart from enlarged lymph nodes (so maybe Mesenteric Adenitis?)

Pain relief hasn’t stopped it. She’s on paracetamol, ibuprofen and tried oral morphine and then tramadol. The last two had the effect of making her ‘still feel the pain but being so out of it she didn’t care’.

Now been given oxycodone which makes her feel off her face but still has breakthrough pain and doesn’t seem to last very long.

Needless to say, she’s absolutely fed up. Gynae are seeing her tomorrow but I understand that if it’s endometriosis then it can only be definitely diagnosed through a lap not imaging.

Ruled out an ectopic pregnancy and now she’s responding to antibiotics they don’t think it’s appendicitis.

Does anyone have any knowledge or advice? She’s desperate to be home and back to normal but the pain is literally doubling her over 😞

Cheers.

DS complained of tummy pain for years Turned out he had a blocked kidney. If they don’t find anything else ask them to do a scan. I wish her better.

It started off lower right side, the thought appendix at first and it took them a few days to realise what it was.. May be worth looking in to.

Back in the day ....... medics did not rely so much on scans, but rather developed their skills to recognise and diagnose from clinical signs and symptoms. There is lots to be said for this: if it looks like a duck and quacks, it is a duck till proven otherwise.

All the tales above of scans failing to show an obvious appendicitis before it went on to cause further problems are very worrying.

I hope very much that your DD has a diagnosis soon and starts to feel better.

At 18 I woke up one night feeling like I was being stabbed constantly in my stomach, pain was horrific and I went to a&e where they said it didn’t look like appendicitis but they will take it out anyway. Turns out it was inflamed and I had lots of adhesions as well as a cyst taken out too. A 1hr standard operation ended up being 4 hours under the knife! Sometimes they can’t tell what it is unless they actually look for themselves.

My teenage DD had appendicitis ruled out. She got worse and the A&E doctor thought it was gallstones despite scans not showing anything. Another doctor, a few hours later, said that he would open her up and take a look. She had a burst appendix.

My daughter had Mesenteric Adenitis. Very high temperature 43-44 and severe pain. They diagnosed it with ultrasound. She also had a CT scan. She was only in hospital one night. And was fine by the following day. They said it was a virus and an extreme reaction to it.
However, 2 months later she collapsed with viral encephalitis which has left her with lots of problems. I don’t know if the two were linked.

I had this around the age of 16. Turned out to be ovarian cysts. One had wrapped itself around my fallopian tube so it was partially removed the other had burst which caused the incredible pain. It was horrendous. Hope she's sorted ASAP x

I had bouts of this when I was about 14 hospitalised twice morphine nothing helped scans showed nothing and it eventually eased off they said it was possibly a grumbling appendix the only thing I do remember is I was very under weight at the time and wondered if that had something to do with it.

Fwiw, it sounded very familiar to the attack of Pancreatitis I had as a young woman which was absolutely agony but also oddly difficult for me to pinpoint precisely where in my body it was coming from. I think they would know that from her blood work, though. The GP didn’t take me seriously at first but when he got the bloods back he could see things weren’t right at all. Still, the incredible amount of pain being reported made me wonder.

I hope she recovers soon, whatever it is. It must be so stressful but she is in good hands.

How's your daughter today @Stath?

I had similar symptoms and had endometriosis on my appendix (and all over the show including kidney) - could ask for a laparoscopy if she also has severe period pains? It’s fairly low invasive and endo isn’t always picked up on scans. My symptoms did have a monthly nature initially then permanent but I just thought I’d had bad periods for years and didn’t connect anything until my appendix burst. I was admitted four times before they took a proper look.

Hi sorry only just seen this, but I've been there done that. I've had burst ovarian cyst, gall bladder removed, diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and am being investigated for sphincter of oddy (I promise that's what it is called) issues.

Please don't let them fob you off, I've had to go to a and e 8 times over 3 years to get told various things, including we don't know what it is just live with it. Push for all the tests you can, mri, ultrasound, blood tests etc. Good luck to you both.

This isn’t a thread where the OP is at home and not getting medical help. This is a worried parent asking for others’ experiences as women and girls are the demographic notoriously ignored/misdiagnosed/fobbed off due to endemic misogynistic attitudes and systematic faults in the holistic care of women.

Here, here. DD was unwell in January. Took her to A&E where the male doctor tried to convince everyone that she had a gynae problem simply because when asked if her stomach hurt she said yes. Turned out that she had sever Glandular Fever for which she was admitted twice, first time for fluids, second time for steroids to reduce the swelling in her throat. She would have potentially had a much easier time of it had the original doctor actually checked her throat. The second time the ENT consultant didn't look either despite his junior telling him was was really bad.

Women are definitely overlooked. They often don't shout as loudly as men so aren't taken seriously.

It sounds very similar to what my daughter went through when she was 14, four years ago. Discharged from hospital with no proper diagnosis. Readmitted a few weeks later. It was a burst ovarian cyst which caused an infection and she ended up getting her appendix removed too. She was lucky that due to the skill of her surgeon and a heap of prayers that she kept her ovary. She has suffered on and off since but nothing to that extent

Hope your DD is ok, OP.

I hope your DD is feeling better today.

From when I was 16 I kept getting severe abdominal pains. I would often pass out from the pain and vomit too. Had my appendix out, no cysts found etc. the doctors said it was stomach migraines. They stopped when I fell pregnant a few years later then started back up again after a couple of years but wasn’t so severe and wasn’t often at all
Mentioned it to My doctor who sent me for tests and I have endometrosis and IBS but not sure if that was connected to the pains as that was a good 15 years prior although I do now suffer with headache migraines which is more likely to happen after suffering with stomach migraines as a child apparently.

I don't know why you have been criticized. As you say, you aren't sat at home relying solely on Mumsnet.

But actually sometimes with abdominal pain it takes lots of different heads to figure out what it might be.

I was discharged multiple times after going to doctors/hospital with agonizing abdominal pain. Nothing shown in bloods, on x ray etc.

Eventually my mum picked the brains of various doctor colleagues and then went full battleaxe and persuaded the doctor to sort an urgent endoscopy. It turned out I had severe duodenal ulcers. And he apologised for all the delay and said he was glad my mum had insisted I wasnt discharged again. In my case they actually did have all the clues they needed - I read the symptoms later and thought I had actually described them perfectly!

I was diagnosed with sphincter of oddi dysfunction, it was the most painful thing I have ever ever experienced, haven't got that part of my pancreas now so it won't be happening again.

@Stath I hope you have some answers for your DD and that she's feeling better

The exact symptoms I had with appendicitis. Have they scanned for this yet?

I had a water infection that spread to kidney it was agonising I was on morphine for the pain but intravenous antibiotics helped.
My dd has a grumbling appendix which is basically appendicitis without the eruption

Oh I feel for her. Stomach problems are always so hard to diagnose and with girls I tend to find they jump to gynae straight away, not always considering other possible causes.

From about 21 to 23 I had recurring tummy troubles with severe bouts of pain and a couple of hospital admissions. Every time I was sent go gynae when I knew it wasn't that. Eventually my mum insisted they check for appendicitis which they had ruled out because of my age, gender and the fact the pain wasn't as severe on the right hand side only like in most cases. Guess what? Severe appendicitis that had led to it fusing to my bowel and a 4 hour surgery. Funnily enough never had a problem since. I do think it's incredibly tricky to diagnose and most doctors I've ever spoken to say scans just aren't reliable enough to diagnose and the only real way to tell is an appendectomy which they will avoid at all costs. My symptoms sound very similar to your DD.

I do also have a DS who had Mesenteric Ardenitis earlier in the year which I was convinced was appendicitis. This too had been going on for 18 months or so before diagnosis. Turns out every time he had had a cold or upper respitory infection he then gets an attack of MA. Awful as absolutely nothing we did seemed to help. Even pain killers didn't touch the sides and he was sick after everything he ate. We did eventually get some aloe Vera gel and after one lot of it he made a huge improvement. Could be complete coincidence but I keep it in the fridge now just in case. Best of luck with it all and I hope you get a solid diagnoses and treatment plan ASAP.

Ovarian cyst? Mine took a while to diagnose because I would be admitted and then it would burst before they did an ultrasound.

The pain was similar to gallbladder pain.

I suppose the point of this thread isn’t to get a Mumsnet diagnosis (we’d all be dead/have hidden disabilities/be logging everything with 101 if we followed that 😊) but to enquire about shared experiences to help a worried mum to perhaps have a more global outlook on a situation.

What help are these shared experiences though if not looking for a diagnosis? Your daughters team will be starting off with most likely and narrowing down to less likely based on exclusion. Unfortunately this takes time, also with the luxury of not being an emergency as they are in the correct place should there be a deterioration and life-threatening emergency so they only real need for speed is to get it sorted to get the bed back realistically.

To those saying women are always fobbed off vs men and medicine is misogynistic, I don’t agree. Females are more complex biologically, you generally have less to work through with males and they are therefore dealt with faster overall. Abdo stuff in particular for obvious reasons.

I also had severe appendicitis that a (male) doctor tried to tell me was period pains when I was a teenager. It does sound very similar.