<p>Home after three-plus hours at the ER. They told us the CT scan was normal. It was sent across the world to be read. The ER doctor seemed very young. I questioned him as to whether there was anything in the scan that could indicate Inflammatory Bowel Disease, which one of my other kids has (which puts all of my kids at higher risk for it) and he said no and felt DS didn’t have supporting symptoms, but I know you don’t need other symptoms initially. So for now, it’s unspecified abdominal pain and they told him to take some pain medication (he’s still in pain) and come back if it gets worse or see a GI doctor. Hopefully he’ll feel better tomorrow and this is the end of it.</p>
<p>mimk6, I don’t want to be alarmist, but please don’t hesitate to take your S back to the ER or to a GI doctor today if he does not get better. I am not a doctor, but my understanding is that sometimes the only way to definitely diagnose appendicitis is through exploratory surgery.</p>
<p>My own experience: I had terrible pain, fever, and nausea while pregnant with S2. This went on for the better part of a week, and I was in and out of the hospital. I did have an xray, but apparently they could not really see what the problem was. The working diagnosis was food poisoning, but really, they did not know what was causing my symptoms. My main symptom was excruciating pain.</p>
<p>Finally, I went into preterm labor. I had an emergency c-section with a vertical incision, to allow for an exploratory abdominal surgery. After my obstetrician delivered S2, the surgeon stepped up to do the exploratory, and found a ruptured appendix. S2 was 10 weeks premature. He was in the NICU for 4 weeks and a day. For the first two of those weeks, I was in the hospital as well, on 24/7 IV antibiotics.</p>
<p>Both S2 and I did fine, eventually – S2 is starting college next month – but it was scary at the time!</p>
<p>So again, if your S does not feel better, please bring him to a doctor, despite that CT scan result. (Can you bring him to your own doctor?)</p>
<p>My daughter had it over Christmas break (lucky timing) and was nauseous and complaining of stomach pain. She just could not get comfortable. And then she started throwing up. When we called the doctor he said to ask her if she wanted to go to the ER knowing she would get poked and prodded with needles and such. He said if she said yes to get her there right away. He said sometimes with teenagers it can be hard to tell where the drama ends and the problem begins. But she had her appendix out that night and was released from the hospital within 24 hours.</p>
<p>Nephew had appendicitis and the ER doc told them he did not have it; they went back and forth a good few times and finally determined he did have it and it came out. My sister and family dithered about going back to the ER I think it was the third time (they pay through the nose every visit) but it WAS appendicitis after all.</p>
<p>My son had a hernia that gave similar symptoms. He had to have a CT scan (drink the white goop) to diagnose it.</p>
<p>I myself get awful right side belly pain from milk. Lactose intolerance main symptom is right side mid belly acute pain.</p>
<p>Another vote for take him back if the pain returns. My son had lower right quadrant pain on at least 4 or 5 occasions when he was in the 4th-6th grade. We took him, on most of those occasions, to the doc, urgent care or hospital. Each time we were told that his lack of fever, and lack of extreme discomfort (high pain threshold) did not indicate appendicitis. On the last episode he was in such distress, yet the advice from the previous visits rang in my head. So…I waited. Until he yelled at me and told me he needed the ER NOW. This was at 1 am on a holiday. When we got there they did the CT and lo and behold it had ruptured. Poor kid. When the surgeon removed it he said that the appendix had “pin point perforations” all over it, and that all of the previous episodes, while not visible on the CT, had been very real, and that the appendix should have been removed at any one of those times.
He spent a week in the hospital with a horrendous blood infection. Truly scary. So, don’t wait if your son is in pain again. Really.</p>
<p>mimk6, I’m sorry that they were not able to diagnose the source of your son’s pain. It was a relief to me to find out I had appendicitis and that an easy surgery eliminated the pain. I hope that you can find out what is going on soon.</p>
<p>Appendicitis does not always progress through its list of symptoms in a nice straight line. I had appendicitis with ruptured appendix earlier this year, and it was not fun. The point is that I suffered occasional week-long bouts lower right quadrant abdominal pain for YEARS before it finally erupted into flown-blown, go-to-the-ER, appendicitis. </p>
<p>It was probably not until it ruptured that it finally convinced me and them that something was seriously wrong and surgery was called for. The surgeon then struggled to even find and identify the appendix to remove it. He he said it was so “shredded” from years of episodic bouts of inflammation that it no longer looked like an appendix. He had to call the pathologist down (on a Sunday night) to examine the tissues, while I was still on the table, to confirm that he had indeed removed the appendix and not some other random chunk of tissue.</p>
<p>Because it had ruptured I spent a long time in the hospital getting massive doses of IV antibiotics, sometimes as many as three different antibiotics going in at the same time. If you have a simple appendectomy you will go home from the hospital later that same day or the next day at the latest. if you have a ruptured appendix you will spend somewhere between one and two weeks in the hospital. And that’s no fun.</p>
<p>I was struck by your comment that the ER doctor seemed so young. I’m sure you know that the new residents just started six days ago. You might want to consider having your son examined by your regular doctor or someone else with more experience. You know what they way about never scheduling surgery in July.</p>
<p>I would definitely schedule a followup appointment with his regular doctor, just to be on the safe side. Also make sure they did blood work in the ER, and have his regular doctor get those results. As others have said, this is nothing to fool with!</p>
<p>Blood and urine were okay. Actually, while I know about the July rotation, I didn’t actually remember that last night while various dramas were playing out around us in the hallway of the ER. (Yes, they had gurneys lined up in the hallway because they were so busy.) DS will be a young doctor some day and I know they can be good, but this doctor’s information on IBD was clearly out of a textbook and not born of experience. Inexplicable pain is often the first clue. I am not saying that is what is wrong with DS, it’s just that the doctor lost credibility with me when he showed his inexperience although, as DS pointed out, I’ve had years to educated myself on one illness and he’s an ER doctor who is not specifically trained in GI disorders. The doctor did say if he got worse to return. If he has pain today and/or tomorrow I will take him to my GI doctor as I know that is what his pediatrician would say to do. I don’t know how he is today. He took a pain pill at 2:00 a.m. and is still sleeping and I don’t want to wake him. DH has his own nightmare appendectomy story. He nearly died. He went in with pain and was left in a waiting room for more than 12 hours in agony. By the time they got him in a room the pain had stopped and he was literally gray when I saw him (we were dating at the time) before they took him to surgery. After they sent him home, he was in agony. He went back to the ER and the doctor told him he could resume jogging and was fine. He could barely walk. His parents finally took over and took him to a doctor who reopened the wound so all the infection could drain out. He said in another day or two he would have died. He had a massive infection which, I suspect, was because the appendix had ruptured. So I’m not going to mess around if he doesn’t seem better. </p>
<p>SodiumFree, what a frightening story. I am so glad your baby was all right and that you both recovered and also I’m glad for all the other stories that ended well as well as for the amazing support that CC provides.</p>
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<p>ER docs are trained in GI disorders, particularly ones as commonly seen in the ER as appendicitis. Was this an intern?</p>
<p>If it turns out he does have it, you have reason to be rather T’d off. Appendicitis should be one of the first things ruled out when symptoms such as your son’s are present.</p>
<p>About 25 years ago, I had the classic symptoms of appendicitis. Pain in the correct place, low grade fever, high white blood cell count.</p>
<p>So, they opened me up (no CT scan, pre-laproscopic surgery), and it turned out to be diverticulitis. It had perforated, and they took out about a foot of my colon. And took out the healthy appendix too, while they were at it.</p>
<p>As others have said, I would have him follow up with a GI specialist.</p>
<p>Nrdsb4, I meant that an ER doctor does not have the same amount of training in GI disorders as a GI doctor. I know they have general GI training. He did rule out the appendicitis based on the CT scan. </p>
<p>Update, DS, while feeling better, is not pain-free. He still has some pain. If he has pain tomorrow morning, I’m going to try to get him into a GI’s office. We’re getting a copy of the scan so we can take it with us to the doctor if we need to.</p>
<p>^^^Glad to hear he did a CT scan…That’s pretty standard and it wasn’t clear to me that he had actually investigated and definitively ruled out appendicitis.</p>
<p>Hope you find out what the problem is very soon. I work in a GI lab with experts in GI problems, and they can’t always figure out the cause of some peoples’ problems. It is very frustrating for the patient and physician both.</p>
<p>My daughter had her appendix out while we were on vacation in florida. the docs there said they get a lot of kids with this issue speculating that flying exacerbates the issue. A year prior to this she had the same symptoms, but in retrospect she reports were not as severe. We took her to the ER and she had all the testing and they diagnosed her with mesenteric adenitis. they sent us home with the cautionary note that it could still be appendicitis that had gone down and could come back. I think we were given a time frame of close to a week. This did resolve but as I said she left her appendix in Florida a year later mesenteric adenitis is caused by a virus. I have also heard that some doctors speculate that appedicitis is caused by a virus as well, and so perhaps that speaks to the twins and then your son getting it??? They also say it goes in cycles.</p>
<p>Last night the pain came back. As with the day before, it intensified as the day wore on. We have an appointment with a GI doctor this afternoon and will get a copy of the scan from the hospital. I’m just going to feel better if he’s checked out by a GI doctor because, as Nrdsb4 said, GI issues can be tricky.</p>
<p>Good luck mimk6! Maybe it is diverticulitis… keep us posted.</p>
<p>I had a coworker whose young adult daughter had similar pain. It turned out she had eaten a small piece of a toothpick which must have broken off in some food (like the decorative toothpicks restaurants use to hold your sandwich together). It had perforated her intestine. Once identified and corrected, she recovered nicely.</p>
<p>We saw the GI doctor who was very nice. He told me the doctor in the ER was 20 years older than he looked but that, unfortunately, the hospital ER procedure is to run non-contrast scans. He said that’s fine for ruling out appendicitis, which he feels certain based on the scan and bloodwork DS doesn’t have, but is useless for everything else a GI doctor wants to check. So he wants to do a contrast CT scan and I’m very upset about the additional radiation. He says it is almost certainly nothing, but he really wants to run the test and I’m pretty sure that’s because of my son’s elevated risk for IBD. I’d prefer he hold off for a day or two, but it’s DS’s choice. Since the test needs to get authorized by insurance, it won’t be today and I’m hoping he’ll feel better tonight and not need to take it.</p>