G.I. + Endo?

[JenniferJuniper]

Since my son's Crohn's diagnosis last month, it seems that every day I learn more and more...with that comes more and more questions!

Before diagnosis, we were seen by endocrinology (for 2 1/2 years) for failure to grow. At the age of 13, he has delayed puberty and is super tiny (we just hit 70 lbs with supplement shakes!). Bone age x-ray showed he was about 11 a few months ago. Beginning Remicade, Methotrexate, Steroid on Monday.

With your delayed puberty teens, was your G.I. enough or did you also see endocrine?

 

[Clash]

Usually when the remicade works its magic he should start growing. There are some kiddos who see an endocrinologist I'll tag jmrogers4. I know her son saw an endocrinologist but I think now they are just letting remicade do it's thing since he is gaining nicely since starting.

 

[my little penguin]

I know more than a few that are followed by both .
Remicade should do its thing but given his age and the amount of time it takes to get an appt I would keep up both until endo releases you because his growth is normal again.
Yippee on shake weight gain.
DS went from 50 lbs to 86 lbs so shakes can work their magic as long as you have the right meds

 

[Jmrogers4]

Thanks for the tag Clash, my son was about 75-77 pounds at 13, we did the supplemental shakes and were able to gain weight, he made it to 100 pounds but once we slacked off on the shakes he dropped weight again and was about 90 pounds, he grew about an inch and we were hoping he would just take off from there but no such luck after. This was about 3 years after diagnosis and in that time he grew maybe a touch over in inch. He was 4'11" at dx and after 3 years was 5' and weighed 77 pounds. We started the supplemental nutrition and he put on weight and grew another inch and then stopped, nothing no puberty, no weight gain, no growth at which point we were referred to endo to see if it was something besides disease causing issues.
We ended up seeing the endo at the same time we started remicade in January. He quickly gained weight but height wasn't happening so we went through with all the endo testing to make sure it was not something else causing the growth issues. He was on the low end of normal so we decided to wait longer and see if remicade did the trick. He has grown and gained weight since then and is 5'4.5" just a touch taller than I am and continues to grow. Puberty seems to be taking a little longer but we're confident that we hit us like a ton of bricks any day. We still have check in's with the endo just to keep track of anything and jump on something if we need to since he is 15 we don't have a lot of time to play the wait and see game anymore.
So yes I vote for G.I and Endo since you are in prime growth time but I hope the remicade works wonders for you like it has for us. While he is still smaller then a majority of his peers the differences aren't as blatantly obvious as they were before

 

[Emily's mom]

My daughter is behind the growth curve and we do see an endocrinologist. Emily does take growth hormone as well. I would recommend consulting with an endocrinologist.

 

[Johnnysmom]

We saw both up until Johnny really started to grow again. Our endo would have gladly continued seeing us and I will not hesitate if growth slows again. I found it very helpful. Some GI's are hesitant to refer because they think the endo will just advise to get the crohn's under-control and that is the only way to address the growth issues. This was not the case for our Endo.

It can take about 6 months to more than a year once they gain some weight and are fairly healthy to see growth take off, but it does

 

[Jenn]

My son sees the GI about 3 times/year and check in once/year with the endocrinologist to make sure his growth is continuing and his treatment is continuing to succeed.

 

[JenniferJuniper]

Ok thanks for all the advice - going to check back in with endo since he has fallen totally off the growth chart at this point.