Intesitnal parasite, not many answers and worried for my health!
Posted , 2 users are following.
Hi All,
I first noticed white strands in my daughters nappy and my wife was complaining of having an itchy bum, we clean the house regularly from top to bottom and have taken ovex a few times. My wife has been given the all-clear from the NHS but we're starting to lose faith in their tests. My wife tested positive for pinworms via a private health care provider and has taken medication but no good.
I've now found an alarming worm in my waste. Thinking back I have looked awful over the past couple of years. Have had a number of digestive issues. On several occasions, I've have had people comment that I look like I've been drinking too much and my liver is not coping due to signs on my face when i reality I haven't been drinking at all. I'm aged 33. It's now dawning on me that i may have been fighting this infection for upwards of 10 years without realising it.
Please, could anyone tell me what this might be? I can;t see anything like it on the internet. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Best Regards
0 likes, 1 reply
jennifer05838 Guest
Posted
This is going to be really lengthy, but I lost all faith in the nhs when it came to parasites & tests. I’ll post my daughters story (which I posted a year ago to ask a few questions but no replies)
September 2015 is when all the problems started for my then 6 month old. Repeated bouts of 'gastroenteritis', scratching her skin till she made herself bleed, night sweats and was generally really unwell with coughs & conjunctivitis. Doctors just kept saying gastroenteritis in regards to diarrhoea & viral for the coughs.
March 2016 things got worse, she started passing blood and mucous in her stool. However every time I took her to the gp they kept saying constipated, anal fissure. I tried explaining this was not a fissure but they wouldn't listen. This is when I started to take pictures, once they seen the pictures they knew this was definitely not a fissure & we then had a stool sample come back with a calprotectin level of 2700. We were finally referred to a gastroenterologist.
May 16. He preformed a endoscopy & colonoscopy everything came back fine. All bloods came back fine apart from slightly anaemic & slightly elevated levels of eosinophils. Her stool samples for parasites came back neg. At this point she was classed as failing to thrive & was losing weight. She had devolved PICA, she was getting into the cupboard eating salt, was trying to eat sand, mud, stones ect, as best as we tried to stop it, it was hard.
June 16, pale stools which were bulky in size, blood still, and it had an awful smell to it. Ultrasound came back fine. Again bloods and stool samples came back okay, apart from slightly anaemic & slightly elevated levels of eosinophils again.
September 16. Had more bloods and stool samples taken, again the results were the same as last time. Neg for parasites. A couple of weeks later I was doing my usual of checking her poop and I found a worm, a rather long earth wormy type thing! A dose of medication and a fair few worms passed and we thought that was it. But a month later there was another one in her nappy! We finally got a diagnosis of roundworm. It took me checking through her nappies in order to get a diagnosis. No parasite stool sample picked this up.
3 courses of mebendozole and a course of albendozole and we seem to have gotten rid of this parasite!
Since then, she has had really big oily stinky stools, sometimes pale, other times yellow & occasionally the normal brown. Her gastroenterolist said that the parasite migrated to her bilary system and now we are looking at a problem with her bilary tract and fat malabsorption. Her liver count is off and we are currently waiting for results from another lft, coagulation, vit a, e & d.......
Basically this was roundworm that for some reason the nhs stool tests for parasites wasn’t picking up. We only got the diagnosis because I took photos of everything, because I checked through her poop. Gross, I know! But they wouldn’t listen and i knew deep down something was wrong! We have gotten rid of the parasite now! Her problems stopped when I upped her dosage & gave her a longer course of medication, that seemed to do the trick. As for her bilary system, that is now fine! It just took a little longer to recover! She is still small for her age, due to the malnutrition she was going through during the parasite but she is making leaps and bounds! I have never been through so much of an ordeal due to these worms, the stress and uncertainty when we didn’t have a diagnosis was awful to the point had she not being diagnosed by the end of the year I was going to take a loan out and go private as it was so unfair on this little terror!
Your best bet, get referred to someone or go somewhere that specifically deal with parasite. Many of the doctors I came up against had admitted that parasites weren’t there strong point. One told me he hasn’t seen a child with a parasitic worm for over 20 years, he actually went away that day and reread about parasites. He said this was a learning curve for him as although he is a very experienced paediatrician, in the UK where it isn’t seen as often it tends to get overlooked & just that raised eonsiniphils was an indication for parasites. Her gastroenterologist kept asking if we had taken her out of the country as he said and I quote ‘i would expect to see this from a child in Africa, not a child that has never left the uk’
Anyways, sorry for the long post. Hopefully you get somewhere a lot faster than what we did, and if in doubt, keep going back again & again until you get your answers! Good luck!