My son was diagnosed with hepatitis last week. He is 17, and has absolutely no risk factors for A B (immunized) or C, and those tests came out negative. His liver enzymes, however, went up overnight -- AST was 45, went to 566, ALT was 766. Abdominal pain, vomiting lots of bile, and a fever for a little while. His urine was dark, and was + for bilirubin twice. Gallbladder ultrasound was negative.
They aren't sure what has caused this. We are waiting CMV and Epstein Barr results. Meantime, he is still having right side pain that hasn't gotten better, but isn't worse. Nausea, but manageable, and is drinking a lot of fluids. He's not eating hardly at all, but that's expected, our pcp tells us. He has an appt with a GI guy tomorrow, which our pcp said we can cancel, but I think I'm taking him anyway, just for another opinion.
Thing is, his urine is still dark. Thursday it was better, darker again Friday and "thick," as he said. Same thing Saturday, yesterday was better as far as the thickness (not positive what he means, maybe concentrated), but it's still quite dark.
Hubby and I are both nurses, so we kind of know a little about this, but we don't know about this type of situation -- for a 17yo to develop this is a little crazy, because this is a kid who just never, ever gets sick, and hardly comes out of his room except to go to work, so it's really weird, cause he had no risk factors.
How long should his urine stay dark in a situation like this? I know that the pain can last quite a while, but I don't know if I should be concerned about his urine or not?
If anyone has experience with a case like this, I would love to have some input.