March 25, 2014
A 9-year-old's 'avalanche' of ailments confounds specialists
By Sandra G. Boodman The Washington Post
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Groah, a physician specializing in spinal cord injury and an associate professor at Georgetown University, had watched with increasing anxiety and helplessness as Zach vomited as often as 50 times a day and doubled over in pain after eating.
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For Groah, who was at her son's side throughout his months-long ordeal, the experience left emotional scars. "Being a physician and knowing how the system works - and all the ways it doesn't - got us through this exponentially faster," she said. "But it hurt my relationship with a lot of doctors. I think some of them listened less to me because I was perceived as the crazy mom who knew too much." For a while, Groah said, she was so disillusioned, "I really didn't think I'd be able to return to medicine."
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After two days in the hospital, doctors found neither appendicitis nor anything else that would account for his stomach pain. His diagnosis was "post-flu enteropathy," a condition that occurs when influenza temporarily affects the gastrointestinal tract. Improvement would take several weeks - six months at most - his mother remembers being told.
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After another round of research and consultations, they decided to proceed. Zach is being closely monitored and is expected to undergo surgery, although no date has been set.
So what caused the avalanche of unusual GI problems - and were they interrelated? Sirlin said that doctors simply don't know. "It sounds as if he was very, very stable until he got the flu and everything broke loose. It's very hard to say what's what. It's an extremely complex case."...
