During really nauseating days I eat oatmeal or cream of wheat for breakfast.

Soup for lunch.

By dinner I'm so hungry I eat whatever.

I am sorry for your daughter, but thrilled to learn of someone with a daughter that goes to Dr.J.

We live in Charlotte. In fact we live about 20 minutes from the clinic. We see an NP there.

My daughter is ten, soon to be eleven.
Email me if you like. My daughter has a lot of stomach troubles as well. It really stinks, doesn't it?

In fact her stomach symptoms came up at her last appt. She has sharp pain, G.E.R.D. and nausea. My daughter got some prescriptions for it. I will be glad to talk to you more via email about it, if you like.

How old is your daughter? It seems like I have talked to you before. Did you email me before? I thought I remembered someone's child having their gallbladder removed.

Sorry, I have a hard time keeping people straight. I think without a face it is more difficult trying to remember who is who.

This is an extract of aloe vera, much stronger than the juice.
The pharmaceutical drugs will all have side effects. This shouldn't.

Are you sure your daughter is taking a good probiotic? My daughter takes her probiotics 3 times a day. She also take Nature's plus Acti-Zyme. It is a digestive aid. I increased her Vit. c and it seemed to help too. For her nausea she takes a homeopathic made by Nelsons. It is the arsen alb. It says it is for upset stomach, diarhhea and vomting. It works great.

This is one of the best natural cures for stomach upset. Both have a positive effect alone, but together they are super-healing. Got this idea from an acupuncturist / herbalist.

I hope that she gets some relief soon.

My suggestion is to try to find out the cause, and not just treat symptoms.

Some treaments that are good for one thing, can hurt something else. For instance, zantac or prilosec can worsen overgrowths of baceria or yeast.

Has she had an endoscopy? If she does have one, make sure they biopsy for bacteria or yeast. Also, alternative GI doctors can do a lot of testing to find out what is going on.

My daughter's story is very long, and it has taken 18 months to figure things out, mainly because "mainstream" doctors had nothing to offer other than pills like Prilosec.

Kids who have been on Lyme meds are a special subset of patients that don't fit the formulaic picture most GI doctors go by. Believe me, before this I was quite conservative, but this experience has opened my eyes.

Even with a biopsy (and photos from endoscopy) that showed huge amounts of yeast, the GI doctor only prescribed two weeks of 100mg Diflucan and said she could eat anything.

As it turns out, she has needed much more Diflucan, and has to restrict her foods severely.

The Diflucan alone got rid of the burning sensations and GERD. But there were other systemic and gut problems to deal with.

If yeast is a problem, it often causes "leaky gut," also known a intestinal permeability- because it sinks roots in the lining and causes it to be porous. Foods and toxins migrate through the now permeable gut lining directly into the bloodstream, causing all kinds of problems that resemble food allergies.

For my daughter, this first caused stomach pain, nausea and diahhrea. Then she started having dizziness, weakness and other stuff. Finally, her capillaries became leaky from inflammation and she swelled up with more than 20 pounds of extra fluid collecting throughout her body.

The interaction between the yeast, gut lining and certain foods also causes a lot of inflammation of the gut lining, which causes pain and diahhrea.

So far, she has done the Diflucan, takes probiotics and Similase (enzymes) and is on an elimination diet. Avoiding dairy, gluten, corn, soy, sugar, citrus, eggs etc. has greatly helped her pain.

We are trying adding back foods one at a time to see if they cause problems. The first one, milk, was a disaster and has caused pain, nausea and diahhrea for two weeks now! She only had milk one day, 4 times, two weeks ago.

For more than a year, she was eating ice cream to soothe her stomach, and it was probably causing the symptoms she was trying to alleviate!

Your daughter's problems may be very different. The important point is to find out as best as you can what the cause is, because treatment choices should depend on this.

And, any MD involved should recognize that Lyme patients, who have been on antibiotics and other meds for a long time, pose special problems and can't be treated in a cookbook fashion.

Could you point us a little more directly to the type dr. you are speaking of when you say alternative GI dr.?

Do you mean like a chiro/naturopath or is there such a thing as a dr. that just specializes in the GI that is naturopathic?

How can we find such a dr.? We would need one in NC if possible. You can email me personally if you like.

I personally have been very conservative medically, very skeptical of "alternatives' and also not willing to pay for them!

A local chiropractor who also does nturition, tried to work with my daughter on these issues, but we balked.

I talked with her new PCP, who is young, Chinese-American, open to alternatives (also top of his class at med. school and wona state award for family practice). He had also brought up "leaky gut" and food allergies as a possible avenue to investigate (as well as gallbladder, and celiac,in fact he is the one who orderd the endoscopy).

I told him we had financial concerns w/pursuing any diagnosis outside the mainstream (like leaky gut).

He referred us to an alternative medicine center in the city, staffed by board-certified physicians who are covered by insurance. The MD my daughter sees is actually a family practice MD also.

He ahs a lot of resources and can order a lot of tests that the naturopath or chiropractor can't. So a combination of mainstream and alternative approaches is being used.

She told me to take wheat out of his diet. It took a few weeks, but he doesn't complain about his stomach anymore! When he eats wheat, he gets a stomachache so he avoids it on his own now.

Even though it's a pain to remove wheat from the diet, it beats adding another drug. It might be worth a try.

Without gluten in his life, his tummy had healed and he can now eat anything that is gluten free.

Any residual gi problems have then cleared up wiht treatment for Lyme and babesia, but he still refuses to try gluten as it flares everything up.

She sees an acupuncturist and takes herbs which has alleviated her stomach problems recently.

Diet also is very important.

Ask Dr. J what he recommends and it is always good to have the docs check everything out to make sure nothing serious is going on.

Has she had a colonoscopy and endoscopy yet?

Don't know if it was one of those wives tales, but I do know ginger is supposed to help with g.i. problems.

We saw C. at Dr. J. in Charlotte yesterday. She suspects a bit of gallstone lodged in the duct. Sounds right to me--she had many many small gallstones when gallbladder was removed in March.

So we will do a round of Actigall to dissolve the stone. They said that this medicine won't hurt her is there is not a stone in the duct. I want to give this a go
and avoid endoscopy and stuff like that if we can.