Upper and Lower Endoscopy - what to expect?

[monkeyLFDTwench]

Ds2 (7) is being booked in for an upper and lower endoscopy with a paediatric gastroenterologist - just after Christmas.

Long history which I won't bore you with, but he's had tummy troubles since the age of about 3, initially diagnosed by a paediatrician as toddler diarrhoea (treated with immodium syrup) - when that didn't go away we were told it was constipation (treated with movicol - which made it much worse). In desperation earlier this year we took him off wheat and gluten and the diarrhoea and tummy aches disappeared. BUT our GP said it wasn't advisable to continue this elimination without further investigation, so here we are after four years of problems .....

The PG suspects either coeliac disease (although the blood test he had 4 years ago was negative) or a sugar intolerance, he also wants to check for inflammation (we have a family history of colitis and Crohn's Disease). No blood at all, but we can get a bit of mucous when he's having a bad patch.

Can anyone help with what we might expect? Have done some searching on here but it mostly comes up with symptoms rather than what he might expect. We've just been told he goes in the day before (presumably for some sort of um "clearance"), stays overnight and endoscopy the next day.

TIA.

My DS aged 4, had 1 done at 2yrs old. I can imagine how worried you must be, but you will be at a place where doctors will be looking after your DS, and they know what they are doing.
You will need to go in the night before, so they can prepare him, they will probably stop all food at a certain time, depending on what time, they fit him in, also possibly take bloods, will give him something to completely empty his bowels, will stop fluids at a certain time as well. Im assuming It will be done under GA.
They will put a camera inside, and it will show them any sort of abnormalities inside eg ulcers, inflammation etc possibility they will take biopsies to test. The lower scope will be at the same time. They will put a camera up, to show them what is going on inside. I can't really remember much more, but I hope that helps.
Hope it all goes well and wishing all the best for your DS.

Msamber1 thank you so much, that's really helpful. Yes it will be a GA apparently, he's had one before a few years ago for something unrelated (nervewracking for me but fine for him).

I do feel we're at last in the right hands after a few years of uncertainty - hopefully we can rule out the really serious stuff that's worrying me.

Thanks again.

Ds1 had the upper done at Easter to diagnose coeliacs. Bit different as he didn't need to go in until the morning but had no food after midnight and no water after 6 am I think.

The only thing I can think of as more advice to Msamber1 is that because of his age your ds may be last on the list and therefore be hungry all day. We found they did the children in age order, as it's hard to explain to a baby / toddler why they can't eat. I took in a new book he really wanted and had a new game for his ds. Meant he could be distracted during the wait.

As soon as he came too ds wanted to see the pictures (he was rather sad he was unconscious and couldn't see the screen I think!)

They might do a biopsy at the same time - we were told this might cause bleeding afterwards but it didn't.

Ds was fine afterwards - got the train home and then went to a friends for late tea and play. I was worried about the anaesthetic as they make me feel awful, but seemed to have no effect on him at all.

Thank you jicky, good point about the operating list. We were lucky last time he had a GA as his op was at 8.30 am, but I will definitely have to prepare him for the prospect of a whole day with no food or water .

Wow! Have you seen my posts in the same section from the last couple of days? We could pretty much have copied and pasted, although DS1 is only 3.5 years now after 18+ months of troubles. MIL has ulcerative colitis and DH has all DS1's symptoms. DS2 is suddenly starting to show them too.

We were initially booked for biopsy for DS1 but, after a little blood last week, may now be having both ends done and I personally feel that they may as well look at both while he's under a GA. We have a date for 29th December (having been back on gluten for 16 weeks by then, instead of the 6 weeks that our local paediatrician said we'd have to do). It's hideous. He was so well while GF and is now properly poorly every day. We haven't got to arrive until midday so not expecting him to go down before about 5pm!! It is day surgery though at Birmingham. Hoping it will be brought forward now we've had some blood but it's only a vague hope due to BCH being a very large and slow machine with lots of very poorly children to treat. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to keep in touch. (I won't be back on here until Wednesday now though). Good luck.

bethylou, no I hadn't, probably as I searched the archives. But it's good (if you know what I mean) to know of someone going through the same stuff at the same time.

The family history is worrying isn't it, we have colitis on DH's side, Crohn's on mine plus lots of diabetes . Ds3 has had anaphylactic shock from touching a cashew nut, so we do seem to have allergy/intolerance issues. Like you we saw a dramatic improvement on a gluten free diet and if we get no answers I think we will revert to that anyway. But as you say, we're now back on a diet that's giving ds explosive diarrhoea, and stomach cramps. Again.

No bleeding though - that must have been scary.

We've only had 6 weeks back on gluten, we have a date now for early Feb so will be stuffing ds with gluten till then. Good luck with your ds, oh and your DH seriously needs to pursue his symptoms further. I don't want to scare you but my cousin has been incredibly unwell with Crohn's (initially diagnosed for years as IBS) resulting in multiple colostomies which has had a severe impact on his life - had he got the right drug treatment earlier most of the damage could have been avoided.

Thanks Monkey. Once we've got DS1 through the next few weeks, I'll send Dh back again. In fact, I'll probably go too as I'm never quite sure how persistent he is alone!

We hear today at BCH that DS1 is slightly allergic to cows' milk protein. This showed up on a blood test 15 months ago and no-one told us. We carried on feeding it to him for another 7 months and I then got told off by the local paediatrician for taking him off it.

The gastro paed today said that having ulcerative colitis in the family is not a definite linking factor but does increase his chances of having it .

Unlikely to move the date forward and cancellations now highly unlikely as we have agreed to colonoscopy which requires the two days of liquid food beforehand. This means that we will have to carry on feeding DS1 the gluten through Christmas and go liquid from the 27th. Yikes!

Keep in touch.

Hi Monkey. In case you are still checking this thread, I've put some bits from our (very positive) experience on my own thread that I'd started a couple of days before you started this. People had given me some good ideas and I've added a couple of my own. If you can't find it, PM me and I'll repeat it for you. We now have a three to four week wait for biopsy results but DS1 is racing around now he's off gluten again and they found nothing obvious on the day. He came round within 5 mins and scoffed a massive bowl of pasta!! We decided to give him a few days on gluten afterwards to enjoy his favourite foods (weetabix, crusty bread and normal pasta) after a tricky 48 hours of jelly!! We took him off it again on new year's day and he's already doing better. Good luck.

By the way, we only went in on the day but you need to be caerful re blood sugar. Do PM me if I can give more detail.

careful - must check posts!