13 year old son - Immune Disorders Message Board

kimm66 · 03-06-2008, 08:49 AM

I have a son that is 13 yr's old that has been suffering from constant dizziness, nausea, and vomiting (with more movement) for going on 5 weeks. we have been to an ENT, eye specialist and have had an MRI with and without contrast of his head and ct scans done of his head and stomach. All these are said to be normal. He does have a sitting pulse that seems in normal range of 60 to 80 BPM, but upon standing it will go over 100 and still increase the more he just stands there it will not recover even after 10 minutes. We have been to our local hosp. Backus hospital in Norwich CT and also Yale New Haven children's and Connecticut children's medical center in Hartford. We are continuing to test GI, and Endocrine, but some appointments are not for another two weeks. In the mean time he can only handle school at 2-3 hours at a time. He mostly sits in a recliner all day. He is also starting to show muscle weakness after all the immobility. Before all this he was a normal thirteen year old boy slightly on the hyper side. If he had the stomach flue he would just get sick and go back out and play. What I was hoping if you could pass this off to your medical staff and see if they could come up with anything and see him or offer more help.
We do have medical insurance through united health care. His pediatrician that was handling this case just left for the country and handed his case over to a nurse practitioner. Not really sure why this was not handed over to another doctor. update to this is as of now we have been to GI and they cleared him of everything but we are waiting for biopsy's to come in. some people say this could have something to do with hormones or autoimmune problems. My daughter suffers from a autoimmune disorder and she has vitiligo because of it.

Karen W. · 03-08-2008, 12:03 AM

Hi,
He could have addison's disease, you may ask what it that. Your brain signals you addrenial glands to release a natural steriod which the body produces. When the addrenial glands don't release enough the body becomes sick. Your tired, weak, sick to your stomach or you vomit, you blood pressure drops whcih them cause's you to become weak and dizzy. This can be detected by having a blood test, my son was diagnosed at Childrens hospital, the test took are few days to get the results. Once they found out what it was, they started him on a steriod call cortef, it took a while to find the right dose that was right for him but once that was achieved, he started getting better. I wish you luck with your son, it's so hard and frustrating when they cannot find out what is wrong.
Karen W.

kimm66 · 03-08-2008, 06:39 AM

thank you but they have already ruled out addison's disease. I thought that is what it was but they did the blood work and again everything came up fine. we are going on 6 weeks of him in a recliner I just don't know how to keep strong somedays.

Karen W. · 03-08-2008, 09:29 AM

Hi,
When my son first got Addisons disease, he was very ill for the first year, we had to basically go for I.V.'s once a week or every other week because he was vomitimg so much. He became very week and after nine moths of this he actually had to go for therapy three times a week to build up his musel tone. I hope they find the answers soon, I know what your going threw, once they figured out what it is, then you can take the steps into getting him well. You know when my son was so ill and was unable to go to school, we went threw our pubic school system and got home and hospital tutoring. They brought in there own computors with a web-cam, he did classes on line, they also had group classes where you could see each other because of the web-cam and they also had a teacher come to the house once a week with books and gave him home work assignments, that was so wonderful because by doing this, he did not fall behind in his school work or fall behind in a grade, you may want to look into that,
karen

kimm66 · 03-08-2008, 01:00 PM

I guess the hardest thing to understand is why the doctors will not see him right away. Some of them say they can not see him until april or may. I try to impress on them that he has been sick for 6 weeks but it does not seem to matter. Where do you turn. I live in CT and I am thinking of even taking him to the mayo clinic in MN. I am afraid that the longer we wait the more things that are going to go wrong!! just trying to keep my head on straight and pray that a doctor will hear my story and help or at least wonot stop until we have answers and demand earlier appointments. Thank you for listening and giving your input