Giardia!! Please anyone with experience read this...

[keanz]

hi, I have a sick family and this is our 5th week of off and on gastro symptoms. I keep getting fobbed off by doctors that we have a viral gastro that has been going around.

Our symptoms are as follows (all the research i have been doing on my own points solely to Giardia, it seems so obvious to me!!!).

• Yellow smelly diarreah. And yellow stools in between bouts of diarreah.

• Recurring gastro; vomiting and diarreah. Fine days in between and then it starts again.

As i said this is week 5. One of my sons (1.5 years) had a stool tested for giardia at my insistence last week. It came back negative but i have read tonight that it is extremely hard to diagnose especially with one stool sample (which sat in fridge for 24 hours).

Is there anything else this can possibly be? I'm turning into a nervous wreck especially about our youngest who has lost so much weight.
thanks!.

I have had giardia, not nice.

My symptoms were:

Stomach cramps - disabling, couldn't walk
No appetite at all for days, not even pizza or cake!
Then huge appetite, could eat anything but kept losing weight (fab!).
Plus the diarhoea (sp?!)

I was abroad, got a liquid medicine that tasted foul but seemed to do the job.
It came back a few months later, back in the UK (the doc had said it might come back and to look out for it), went to the pharmacist/doc (a while ago can't quite remember) and explained. was given some tablets that started with a B (Boscopan?) that worked.

Never had to give stool sample as the docs abroad knew it from my symptoms and was going round at the time.

Hope you all get well soon

Oh and the friends who had it the same time as me had a little boy about 1 who lost lots of weight too, so keep a really close eye on him in particular, whether it's giardia or not.
Fill him up with anything high-calorie when he will eat.

Have you been anywhere recently? not sure how common giardia is in the UK??

could he have lactol intolerance ? my ds at 3 onths caught bad tummy bug from dd and after that , was milk intolerant for a good year or more , after bug tried to give him his normal SMA milk but went straight through him time and time again , so switched to ysoy ,from the advice of my health visitor and things began to improve , might be worth asking this to doc if you havent already ...
Hope things improve for you soon .

thanks you guys, yes we have had no appetite for the most part too. I've had minimal vomiting or diarreah but just had no appetite, feeling slightly off colour. Our 3 year old complained alot of sore stomach and our 1yr old has been waking crying alot in the night with a really noisy gurgling stomach, so i imagine its crampy.

I did wonder about lactose Iworryalot. We have actually weaned him from milk and formula during this time. And its the fact that we all have these recurring symptoms and funny coloured poop (!) that makes me think its giardia.

We live in NZ and giardia is apparently very common so i'm not sure why its taking so long to get anywhere.
cheers

I never realised until I visited a friend in Australia, who had it while pregnant, that giardia is actually quite common in Aus. and NZ! I got it while travelling in India, and it caused the most appalling stomach cramps, wind and frothy diarrhoea, but only mild nausea at most - never vomiting. I lost a LOT of weight and even after treatment had the most dreadfully noisy stomach and IBS-type symptoms for a couple of years afterwards. I think it is something that is prone to recur - washing all your underwear and bed linen at high temperatures and constant hand washing might help... Any ideas, if you do have it, where you could have got it from?

It does seem odd that it isn't being taken seriously. Viral gastroenteritis doesn't tend to recur in that way over a space of 5 weeks - you should have developed some kind of immunity to that by now. Why not ask for your stools to be tested, too - and make sure it's a nice fresh sample!!! Or you could try insisting on being treated for it to see if that helps...

I've just been treated and finished a 5 day course of antibiotics (Metrodionazole), spelling not sure, for giardia and can honestly say that from the third day of antibiotics it was like a light had been switched on and I was my normal self.

I was so glad there was a treatment as I had felt absolutely terrible for nearly 4 weeks. I lost 9lbs in the process and have never felt so ill in my life!

I had seen three different doctors at my surgery and because I was also getting palpations and breathlessness I phoned the NHS helpline in desperation and they said it could be panic attacks! Later found out where my body was losing so much fluid the heart has to work harder.

Don't know how I caught it (docs said it is usually food or contaminated water).

It's quite common for us out here in the tropics, in fact I think we are all perhaps suffering just now! Metronidazole usually sorts it out pretty quickly. Fwiw, a stool sample needs to be v fresh for it to be detected easily. Did you get it treated in the end?

exh had it years ago, it was treated with anti biotics easily

buscopan is to stop the spasms causing the stomach pain

My DD caught it in a filthy holiday resort in Corsica (Mark Warner) when she was 10 months old, she was so ill that within 4 days she couldn't lift her head (and I won't go into how useless the resort staff were GRRR).

She was ill for 4 months, she weighed less at 13 months than she had at 9mths. It is really difficult to pick up on a stool sample as it live high up in the duodenum, iirc. (she is now nr9 so a while back).

The stools are fermented and frothy yellowish, often breath smells revolting (like poo). You can have cycles of being slightly better then ill again.

I paid to see a private paed in the end, as her bottom was ulcerated from having D nappies for the best part of 4 months. He didn't do anytests just gave her the meds, it was fairly obvious what it was - best £200 I EVER spent! Within 3 weeks of taking the ABs she had put on over 4 lbs (just checked my red book.)

I would insist on treatment, if you can, I think the potential side effects of the ABs are much less than the ongoing illness.