Severe Constipaton

[christys99]

My DD was diagnosed with Celiac after about a year and a half of vague symptoms. In Jan 2011 she presented with severe constipation. Before Jan she was having a BM once or twice a day, She suddenly stopped and has not had a BM without medication since. She has been gluten-free since May and while her other symptoms have been alleviated (extreme fatigue, headaches, leg pain weight loss

[seezee]

We dealt with this. My daughter was always complaining of pain after meals. The first GI doctor we saw accused her of cheating on her diet which really upset her because she is amazingly diligent about it. So, we found a specialist in pediatric GI and celiac. Luckily, Boston has dozens of people like this.

I took her to a celiac specialist who order xrays which showed that that the situation was really bad. They xrayed her and the whole system was clogged. We tried several cleanouts which didn't do the trick. I think they also did another test that I can't remember that examined how well food went through her plumbing. This involved drinking barium and lying on a table while the technician snapped photos. We went back and forth and they were going to actually hospitalize her to do some sort of cleanout by inserting a tube from her nose through her espophagus, when the last clean out did the trick and the xray showed that things were cleared out. They also did a repeat endoscopy to look for food allergies in her esophagus and make sure her digestive system was healing.

The nutritionist helped us to increase fiber and once things were really cleaned out it got better.

It also took a very long time for my daughter to be robustly healthy. Although, she felt better after she started gluten free, it really took two years for her to put on weight and feel strong again. When she was diagnosed she had become incredibly thin and weak. She had never had body fat so I think she lost a lot of muscle. She was also Vit. D difficient.

Are you getting regular followup care on this? I had no idea that constipation could be so serious a problem.

One of the things the doctor said is stuff can get stuck and then other stuff moves past it and stretched out the colon. This can cause incontinence and other issues.