What Causes Stomach Pain And Constipation In A Child?

Hi, I m Premkumar and this query is related to my daughter s health Problem. Her name is P. Srinitha and we live in Bangalore. She is 7 Yrs and 5 months (DOB: 18/7/2003) old. She is suffering from stomach ache since Dec 2009. We have consulted with the pediatricians and she was medicated with the de-worming tablets, stomach pain medicines and Gas/acidity related medicines for her stomach ache problems. All these medicines were given one by one without knowing the actual cause of the problems. This was continued till April 2010 till the time she got a very high fever. The first symptom before she got the fever was high stomach ache. This was followed by sever loose motion and then vomiting followed by high temperature. She was given normal fever medicines and some antibiotics. Within few days, the temperature was rising and she was given Nemulid syrup. Almost 8 to nine dosages were given in the span of 3 days. We have decided to take a scan of her abdomen with all the blood tests on the 8th day of the fever (We have taken all these test on our personal interest and not recommended by the doctors). We have found that she was infected with Appendicitis. Immediately we have taken her to the children s hospital in Chennai and was treated for curing the infection on her stomach. For almost three days she was on Intra Venus medicines and from 4th day till the 8th day she was on oral medicines and few injections. After this she was completely recovered and we were told that she needs to be operated ASAP. since she was on antibiotics we have waited for almost 3 weeks to get her back to normal after which she was operated (laproscopic surgery) for the removal of her Appendics. She was normal for two months after the surgery and during August 2010, she was complaining again about stomach pain. The doctors confirmed again that everything is ok. But even then she used to complain about the pain. The pain became worse during Nov 2010 and we did all the Ultra Sound scanning again and the reports seemed to be normal. We had visited the surgeon who had operated her and instead him to do a thorough check and he had said that she had got a severe constipation problem which we need to look into and it has to controlled through our food and he said he had given a medicine of low dosage (duphalac) which we need to continue for 3 months. Last week we have observed her bringing the water bottle as is from her school. This means she didn t drink water. On investigations we have found that for many days she had not even passed urine in the school. We have found out that she is not drinking enough water. Though we already know that she had a constipation issue, we don’t want her to face the urinary infection related issue and hence we have completely changed her intake habits in the last four five days by including more fibrous food in her diets and also included 1 banana during her dinner and evening snacks. Also ensure that she drinks atleast 1.2-1.4 Liters of water daily. We have seen a remarkable change in the last two three days after implementing the above changes. But still we are seeing that she is facing difficulty while passing her stools. I mean she is passing it in a very low/medium quantity. We still feel that she is not passing her stools completely. She is complaining about her stomach pain only during passing the stools. This is the entire case history of my daughter s stomach ache problem. Now my questions are as follows: a) How to improve the quantity of her stools without increasing her food? How to ensure that she passes the stools completely? Is there anything else to be followed? b) It seems that we have identified her problem. Now we need to understand how to cure it. Kindly let me know if our analysis is right? Is she got the stomach pain due to constipation? Or could there be any other problems - Kindly advice. c) If it is due to constipation - Then how do we cure this constipation problem? Will taking 15 ml of duphalac daily during the night after dinner for the next three months cure constipation? Or is there any other way for curing it earlier? Once if it is cured is there any chances that it can recur again? How to avoid it in the future? d) What are all the other causes of stomach pain? (Other than appendicitis, gas problem, worm problem and constipation).