My 7 year old has had a stomach ache for two years

[Imsolucky1983]

I am at my wits end. My daughter started complaining of stomach ache and "sick" coming up her throat age 5. After a year of doctors visits I eventually went to a&e after being up for 8 hours with a screaming child. We were given a diagnosis of acid reflux. Gaviscon didn't help. Ranitidine helped about 50:/: we are now on lansoprosole which has helped about 75:/: but we are still having about 4 attacks of a "burning stinging" stomach a night, and about one episode of heartburn a day. My dd is now 7 and is so fed up, she asked me if she will feel ill forever sad we are under a consultant they have done an ultrasound of her stomach, tested for a bacterial infection with a stool sample and done a blood test. We see them again in a month. They are not overly concerned though. My dd is finding the pain so upsetting though she has even had to have a few days off school when she has been awake with the pain at night. She has said it's hard to concentrate on her work at school when the pain is really bad. She was even in pain on Christmas Day. I've noticed it is worse in the hours before she does a poo. We are currently trying a dairy free diet as her younger sister has cows milk protein intolerance but so far it has not made any difference. We have tried probiotics which help with her mild? constipation, although her ultrasound showed a lot of poo but they were not concerned. We have tried movicol but that seemed to make the pain worse. She has been tested for cealiac. We have taken her to a cranial osteopath. We have increased fruit veg fibre and water intake. We have tried gaviscon in conjunction with lansoprozole. I am at a loss. Does anyone have any experience of something similar? Or any ideas of other things we can try?

My DD had reflux as a (bf) baby, never slept, and has had tummy aches since being small. We've cut out gluten (after reading on here about it) and the difference has been huge.
She's just done the coeliac test, so we'll see what that shows.

I had dreadful stomach pains in my teens, I remember being doubled over in pain on so many occasions. I was referred to a gastroenterologist who put me on ulcer medication with little improvement. Eventually my GP sent me to a friend of hers from medical school who had just come back from the US and had taken an interest in food intolerance. This was the 80s so it was very unusual! Anyway after testing he told me to stay off dairy and wheat, and within days the pain had gone. I'll never forget the relief. 30 years on I have built up a certain level of tolerance to both, but I have had a few flare ups over the years.

My dd went through something similar aged about 8. I didn't want to jump to conclusions and assume it was food related, but after a few GP visits when she was 'diagnosed' with 'non specific abdominal pain' I decided to cut wheat out of her diet, and ta da, no more pain.

Have you thought about mesenteric adenitis? That could account for why it is worse when she gets a viral infection.

I just looked that up and that is really interesting. I wonder how we could find out if it is that? It's so bad when she is unwell then eases off to pain about once a day until she is ill again which is quite often since she started school, she's ill about half the time!

Mesenteric adenitis is an inflammation of the immune tissue in the intestines, it enlarges in response to an infection. Children have more immune tissue than adults and it can press on the intestines when swollen, causing pain and either diarrhoea or constipation depending on where it is. My daughter used to have nausea and vomiting too, it's not very nice. She grew out of it when she was about 12 or 13 but had suffered pretty badly until then.

How did you get a diagnosis?

To be honest, it was the first thing the GP said when I described the symptoms. It just seemed to fit, so we didn't investigate any further. All we could do is use painkillers and eventually she grew out of it. She had a lot of time off school though.

That's really interesting. Every time we see someone her neck glands are swallon, I wonder if that could be the case with her stomach too. She first got this pain after being at school about a month and each time before she is ill she is in so much pain, the heartburn also goes crazy while she is ill. I will mention this at the appointment thank you

Dd has got a chesty cough this weekend and has been screaming with stomach pains. I can't wait for the consultant appointment at the end of the month I can't send her to school like this so I'm going to try and get in at the doctors tomorrow. fingers crossed we get some help.

I took DD to a locum today who said she is very constipated. So we are trying movicol. The constipation could be causing the heartburn maybe? We will give the movicol a try and see what happens!

Longstanding constipation certainly can cause abdominal pain. If you give enough movicol it will help to clear the backlog of poo and hopefully help. She may need to be on it for a while.

So sorry to hear this OP. It's so hard for children and their parents to experience so much pain

Following with interest. My ds8 has had recurring abdominal pain over the last year. Twice we've ended up in a and e (latest last night) severe lower right quadrant pain, but no fever or d/v so docs ruled out appendicitis. There is crohns and coeliac in the family but cos of no d/v docs not considering them.

Both times we've ended up with a suspected mesenteric adenitis diagnosis. But ds hasn't had fever, or infection within three weeks preceeding.

He's also missed a lot of school....

Don't know what to do next really.