Transfer to Adult Gi

[my little penguin]

Ds is almost 20 dx at age 7
We avoided adult Gi land up to this point because we were told they keep “kids” till they are 24 or graduate college etc…
Switched to adult Gi land anyways
Highly recommend it
Adult Gi knew things ped Gi doesn’t focus on
Like vaccines (shingles ) that anyone over 18 and is immunocompromised should get
Even if they had chickenpox vaccine as a child .

a completely different experience for ds but in a good way
Highly recommend when the time is right for your adult child to switch to an adult Gi sooner rather than later

 

[my little penguin]

I did want to add the adult Gi specializes in ibd so that probably helped a lot vs ped Gi was not an ibd specialist

 

[Pilgrim]

No joke about Shingles! H had chicken pox at age 3 then Shingles while immunosuppressed - age 9 requiring anti-virals.

I'm glad your family had a good experience moving to an adult GI. It's encouraging. Although our peds GI is a respected IBD specialist.

 

[Maya142]

We had a good experience moving to an adult GI too. Found one who was great with young adults - I think that is the key - and was an IBD specialist. There is less support for adult IBD patients (for example, my daughter saw a psychologist who specialized in kids with chronic illnesses and worked in the GI dept at the pediatric hospital), so that is something to consider.

The other thing is medications - last year our insurance denied Remicade arbitrarily, even though we had 2 months left on our prior authorization. My daughter flared. The adult GI wanted to admit her for IV steroids but could not give her Remicade inpatient - they can only do that in really severe cases and apparently it has to do with billing. So my daughter had to wait for her doctors to fight with insurance and get Remicade approved again at the dose and frequency she needed.
When she was pediatric, she was admitted to be given Remicade when insurance was taking forever.

I would say it depends on the kid, how sick they are, how mature they are etc. It is certainly easier to be hospitalized in a children’s hospital vs. an adult hospital.

 

[Maya142]

MLP - was your son told to have the shingles vaccine even if he didn’t have chicken pox? I thought you cannot get shingles if you’ve never had chicken pox and have been vaccinated for it.

We were told about the pneumonia vaccine when my daughter switched to adult care (though actually I think she was given it when she was pediatric too).

 

[my little penguin]

He was told to have the shingles vaccine
Even though he never had chicken pox
Gi said
Varicella vaccine is a live vaccine so your body has tiny amounts of chicken pox floating around.
Which being immunocompromised means they are can develop shingles

 

[Maya142]

Oh that’s very good to know!! Thanks! Yikes - we had M on a JAK inhibitor (which greatly increases the risk of shingles) without having the shingles vaccine.