<p>Yes to 2prepMom’s advice. If it were my son, I’d take him to his doctor today (preferably this AM) to check him out and test for infection or kidney stones. Pain from appendicitis can temporarily get better if the appendix perforates…and then you can get very very ill quickly. The symptoms sound like they were severe enough and potentially important enough that they should be followed up.</p>
<p>It could be any number of things, so if he is still in pain or if it comes back he should go to the doctor. If he has a PCP I would start there instead of at urgent care if possible. I had similar symptoms with some additional ones and it took 10 weeks and 4 doctors to finally get a proper diagnosis.</p>
<p>Thank you for all the replies. He was fine yesterday and did not have any problems last night. I was not going to follow up, but I will call the doctor now. He has not taken any medication at all recently. The kidney stone possibility really worries me. He is in school now but I hope I can get an appointment for after school.</p>
<p>My guess is gas. Gas pains can be very painful and masquerade as muscle pain also.</p>
<p>When I had low back pain a year ago I could not get any doctor or urgent care to touch me and they made me go to the ER. They wanted nothing to do with potential kidney problems and said I needed a cat scan.</p>
<p>The doctor hasn’t called me back yet, but S2 is home from school and we talked some more. It turns out that when he was woken up with the pain, he had to go to the bathroom (loose stools) before he woke me up. He said that this reduced the pain (although it was still pretty bad when he came to me). He had to go again the next morning. He thinks it was digestive, that he somehow ate something bad. With this new information, I’m leaning that way, too. Maybe the pizza parlor ziti was contaminated?</p>
<p>Ema, what was wrong? Did anything show up on the CT scan?</p>
<p>No, the scan was normal. It was weird. When I first woke up that morning the pain was very bad and constant, and I could’t urinate, which was what made us all think maybe kidney or bladder infection or stones. When I finally could, there was trace amounts of blood. But throughout the rest of the day I felt like I could run a marathon, save for the occasional random stabbing pain that was very severe but only momentary. I spent all day trying to get a doctors appointment and nobody would see me, and by the time I was seen by the ER doc all the tests were normal and the pain was gone. The doctors diagnosed muscle strain, which I don’t really believe being that I was sedentary at the time and muscle strain doesn’t cause difficulty urinating. But, whatever it was, it went away by itself. My doctor wondered if maybe I had a small stone that had passed by the time I was seen at the ER. After the initial crisis of the morning had passed it didn’t seem like that big of a deal anymore and I just wanted to be checked out to make sure I didnt have an infection, but the doctors were all telling me that if I had a stone it could cause a blockage and nobody but the ER would be equipped to deal with that, so nobody would even examine me.</p>
<p>I can get low back cramps with digestive upset, so that theory sounds plausible to me.</p>
<p>I had appendicitis for a month. I didn’t have a fever. The pain was not localized over the appendix. I didn’t toss my cookies. I thought it was an ovarian cyst that had ruptured. H, who had had appendicitis about age 11 confirmed that it couldn’t be appendicitis. The pain went away and came back almost a month later, at which point I went straight to the gyn. Who said, “I think you have appendicitis.” And I did. Surgeon and radiologist both confirmed that it can be transient, and that the presentation in adults isn’t necessarily like it is in kids. (And, in some countries it is treated with antibiotics vs. surgery unless it persists or ruptures.) </p>
<p>I felt pretty stupid – I could have been in a world of trouble had it ruptured. Bloodwork showed a problem, a CAT scan confirmed the problem, and a pathology report verified the problem after -the-fact, 29 days after I’d had the first attack. </p>
<p>When my daughter had these symptoms, she was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection. But I would definitely take him to the doctor.</p>
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<p>Interesting. I’ve had 2 episodes of right lower quadrant pain that I wondered about re:appendicitis. I work in a GI lab and I asked one of the docs if you could have a low grade appendicitis without fever and he said not likely. Maybe I should have asked another doc there (talk about the easiest second opinion ever). Both times the pain gradually subsided.</p>
<p>If it happens again, I’m talking a poll of all the docs there. :)</p>
<p>S1 had appendicitis for about two weeks and by the time it was diagnosed it had perforated. He spent a week in the hospital on IV antibiotics, had major surgery during which they took out a foot of bowel, and has had bowel obstruction problems ever since (going on 16 or so years now). His symptoms were atypical, and two pediatricians, an ER doc and even the surgeon didn’t diagnose him. They finally did an exploratory laparoscopy to see what was going on, then made a six-inch incision when they saw what was happening. That was a bad week.</p>
<p>OTOH, I know an older fellow (age 60, give or take) whose appendicitis was treated with antibiotics, and he never needed surgery.</p>
<p>What an awful story, VeryHappy! I did hear from the doctor, who thinks it is probably a muscle spasm or a digestive problem. I will be very quick to take him to the doctor if it happens again, though.</p>