> Health and Disease > Gastrointestinal > ulcers

This is the story of our 12 year-old daughter Sharon’s battle with Heliobacter pylori (H. pylori), the bacteria that cause stomach ulcers.

Sharon has always had a delicate digestive system. From infancy we noticed that she was sensitive to milk products and often avoided them. Whenever she was ill, her first symptom was vomiting, but nothing prepared us for what happened in April 2000.

It was spring break. Sharon was shopping with cousins from Florida when she suddenly felt weak. Complaining about her stomach, she nearly fainted in the mall. The pain bothered her all week and when school resumed, she wasn’t well enough to return. For the remainder of the term, Sharon’s severe stomach aches kept her at home clutching a hot water bottle.

Sharon’s pediatrician could find no reason for the stomach aches and recommended we see a pediatric gastroenterologist. It’s difficult to find one in Montreal: there are few of them and they’re overbooked. We went to emergency at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, where a number of tests turned up nothing. Our pediatrician then recommended an adult gastroenterologist.

A Light Goes On

I told our new specialist I wanted every test under the sun because Sharon had already missed months of school. He went over a long list of tests. At some point I suggested we do an H. pylori test because Sharon’s "burning sensation" made me think of an ulcer. Apparently this test hadn’t occurred to him. (Is it not a common infection in children?)

It turned out that H. pylori was the only positive result in all the tests. The doctor seemed quite discouraged–he was very skeptical that it had caused our daughter’s symptoms. Nonetheless he wrote out a prescription for treatment, one of several for H. pylori which mostly involve two antibiotics and an antacid. We used the antibiotics Biaxin (clarithromycin) and Flagyl (metronidazole) and the antacid Losec. The treatment is only for a single week, but it’s very difficult to tolerate.

All of these medications come with a long list of possible side-effects. Flagyl is very unpleasant tasting and can cause headaches. Sharon could barely swallow it without throwing up. Even worse, after the very first dose, she felt like she had "lightning" in her head.

Like me, Sharon had always suffered from occasional migraine headaches. Now they were chronic. She stayed in bed the whole week of treatment and was totally miserable. Her headaches continued even after.

A few weeks later, she was re-tested and found to be still infected. Finally a pediatric gastroenterologist looked at her case and prescribed a second round of antibiotic and antacid therapy. This time it was Novamoxin (amoxicillin), Biaxin (again) and Prevacid. These were much easier to tolerate but didn’t work either. Sharon was still infected by the H. pylori bacteria.

Now we were desperate. Although Sharon’s stomach was a lot better, we were afraid that it would get worse again. An even bigger fear for us was that long-term H. pylori infection is associated with a dramatically increased risk of stomach cancer. And Sharon’s headaches were an ongoing problem. Now mid-summer, we were afraid Sharon would start off the school year the way she had ended the previous one–at home, sick.

A Knight in Shining Armour

David Diamond is a reader of alive living in Montreal, Quebec.

Source: alive #224, June 2001