10yo DD Chronic Constipation and movicol

[Queenofcake]

For years Dd has had vague odd symptoms such as random tummy aches, flatulence, nausea, being off food, constipation etc etc.

All the symptoms were on and off and very vague until it kind of got to a point just over a year ago where we realised it was becoming more frequent and she was not right.

We were referred to the paeds at the local childrens hospital last summer and the 1st appointment we had was a total waste of time. Basically sent away to see how things went for 6 months with absolutely not treatment etc.

Thankfully at the end of March we saw the actual consultant who ran a load of tests for everything possible. Bloods for gawd knows what, xrays, stool and urine tests etc etc. All came back clear, not intolerences, no allergies, no coeliacs etc etc.

The Xray did show a particuarlar well loaded colon (constipation).

DD was put on paediatric movicol. 2 sachets a day. We were told we could up it to 3 sachets per day or reduce it as neccessary to 1 sachet per day. After about 2 weeks things settled right down and she was pooing reguarly and easily. This was fine until about 2 weeks ago when she was ill with a nasty cold and sore throat bug. Ever since then she said her stools were too loose so we reduced her movicol to 1 sachet per day. She is still complaining of "sloppy poo" and says her tummy aches are returning.

I am due to speak to her consultant this week (hopefully), but wondered of anyone is going through or been through anything similar with their DC and can offer me some advice or tell me whats worked for you or share your experiences of DC on movicol.

We had the same after a bug and ended up being advised by the gastroenterologist to stop the movicol for a day and then it went back to normal.

However you need to be certain that it is not overflow due to a build up of poo again as if that were the case you should be increasing not reducing the dose.

We needed a mix of movicol and picosuphate after extreme loading for DS to regain feeeling in bowels as movicol just softens and did not help him regain the sensation.

Thank you Gastro.

The consultant said that DDs bowel had stopped working properly and had lost some tone. It is hoped with the movicol and passing of regular stools her bowel will become re toned and re trained.

Also DD is a nightmare for not drinking enough fluids. She claims she rarely feels thirsty and therefore struggles to drink. I have a right job keeping ontop of her fluid intakes.

How would I know if it was overflow??? What are the sym ptoms?

My understanding is many children do regain tone with movicol alone. In our case we needed a mixture of picosulphate and movicol to start to help with regaining any feeling. We didnt get this mix of medication until we saw a gastroenterologist despite seeing several consultant paediatricians.

We had exactly the same concerns if it was overflow or too much movicol and really didnt know whether to reduce or increase dose. For us we only got it all sorted once we got referred to gastroenterologist. Felt like the paeds were just telling us to adjust dose by trial and error and really didnt know.

Once we were under gastro it felt like he understood, investigated that there was nothing more sinister and then told us what to do ie exact doses at exact times which is really what we wanted.