Opinions/advice?

[lonewolf]

I'm not sure where to post this, so I hope this is okay.

My 14 year old son, who has been gluten-free for over 3 years but never officially diagnosed with celiac disease, has been having bowel problems for several months. He just told me a few weeks ago that he's been having bloody diarrhea and blood with bowel movements since April. He's lost 13 pounds in that time and his appetite has fallen way off, as has his energy. All the stool tests from the pediatrician came back negative - no parasites, infections or anything obvious.

We just went to the GI doc this afternoon and he wants to do an upper endoscopy with biopsies and a colonoscopy. It's scheduled for next week. He's looking for Crohn's and anything else that might show up.

Here's some background on my son. He had serious digestive issues when he was a toddler and we took him off dairy, which seemed to help a lot. When he was in 5th grade, he started having some problems at school (and home) with attention and irritability. To make a long story short, he went gluten-free and all the problems cleared up. After several months we reintroduced dairy and he seemed to be fine, until now. I'm wondering if the dairy has something to do with the symptoms.

So, does this sound familiar to anyone? Any ideas on what it could be? It does sound like Crohn's maybe?

[lizard00]

So sorry to hear about your son. Hope they figure out what's going on soon... seems like I've read those same symptoms can go along with ulcerative colitis. I'm sure they'll probably check for that, but you know how these docs can be.

[curlyfries]

I used to bleed so bad all I had to do was sit on the toilet......didn't matter if I had a bowel movement or not. Two different colonoscopies showed nothing. I figured it out for myself. Sugar........especially fruit. No problems now.