Post Pancreatitis pain

[jane417]

Hi,

My daughter, age 14 1/2 at the time, came down with pancreatitis this past July.  It was acute, and painful but her amalase and lypase levels were not extremely high.   Nevertheless, she was hospitalized for 4 days on IV until her levels returned to normal.  They said they didn't know how she got it.  Ever since the pancreatitis she has been in pain just about every day (and missing quite a bit of school).  It doesn't seem to make a difference as to the types of food she eats.  She has tried going without milk for  4-5 days and without wheat for about a week.  She was tested for food allergies also, which came back negative.  The most pain she has is in her abdomen area, running horizontally from side to side and it is tender to press on.  She has had some nausea periodically, also.  She describes the pain as "always there" with intermittent "sharp, knife-like" pain.  She does not have diarrhea or vomitting, but ultrasounds and x-rays did show some constipation (she "goes" every day though, despite the constipation), so she takes colace every day.  Other symptoms that she has are back aches, bad headaches, she has had tingling/numb sensations several times in her face, legs and hands, random joint aches, and several episodes of a very painful jaw ache.  Before the pancreatitis she was always VERY healthy and not a complainer kind of kid. Now she feels sick every day.  Over the last 5 months she has seen numerous docs.  We are currently working with a pediatric GI doc.  She has had bloodwork done many times to recheck the pancreas enzymes, which have never been elevated again.  They have tested her for Lyme, H-Pilori, autoimmune, and a whole lot of other things too - and everything has come out normal.  She had an endoscopy and a colonoscopy too.  The colonoscopy revealed she had elevated eusinophils all through her intestines, so there's inflammation.  But now what?  They have had her taking all different kinds of medicines (Pentasa and pamine to name just 2) that don't help her at all and some even make her feel worse.  Has anyone out there had a similar experience??  Any thoughts of what this could be?  We are at our wits end and without a diagnosis still after 5 months of this.

Thanks,
Jane

[jane417]

Thanks for your response.  We just this week found out that she has 2 parasites and a bacterial infection in her gut.  Not sure which came first the parasite or the pancreatitis - or if they are even related.  It took us months going through "regular" GI doc - they never even suggested doing a stool sample because she did not have the typical symptoms (diarrhea mainly) for a parasite.  We finally brought her to a highly recommended homeopathic doc who found this in pretty short order.  We're still dealing with it all but at least we have a diagnosis and a plan of action.  Thanks for taking the time to send along your thoughts to me.

[CalGal]

Jane, has she been tested for autoimmune pancreatitis? Just a thought. Have you read through anything on eosinophilic conditions in general? There's a decent link that might be of some help: http://www.apfed.org/ee.htm