What happens when you take a kid to the ER for abdominal pain?

July 5, 2020 11:16 AM

My 4yo has severe abdominal pain - she is currently en route to the hospital with my wife. Can anyone walk me through what will happen, more or less, once she arrives?

The pain has been going on since last night, on and off, but it’s been constant and very severe for the last hour or so, and over the last ~20 minutes seemed to get even worse - thus the decision to take her to the hospital. We tried to press on her stomach to see if it was in the appendicitis area but she was just sobbing and not able to answer coherently.

Thankfully we live very close to an excellent pediatric hospital. I’m not too worried about covid exposure, just wondering what the work up will be - is she likely to get some kind of imaging? Medication? What will they do if she can’t hold still or doesn’t let the doctor touch her?

posted by insectosaurus to Health & Fitness (6 answers total)

Here in Toronto, at a regular hospital, having abdominal pain would put someone in the “rule out Covid” area, with other patients who may have COVID symptoms.

Source: was asked this at the hospital recently

Sorry: The triage nurse would screen your wife and child for possible COVID with a series of questions. Abdominal pain is on that list, for adults anyway. Possible COVID symptoms = rule out area. Idk what happens once there, presumably they test for COVID and make whatever assessment is necessary.
posted by cotton dress sock at 11:21 AM on July 5, 2020

When my husband went to emergency with appendicitis, the first thing they did was give him pain medication so he could communicate with the staff. Your kiddo might get some pain relief to help with holding still for examination.
posted by Knowyournuts at 11:28 AM on July 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

We had an urgent care visit for abdominal pain last year with my 6 year old, and this was the routine: take vitals, go to room, talk to nurse, wait for doctor, doctor did a manual exam of the belly and asked questions, went to radiology for an abdominal Xray, drew blood for labs, waited a bit more in the room, and doctor came in to say it was constipation (visible on the X-ray!). I’m hoping things go smoothly for you!
posted by Maarika at 11:39 AM on July 5, 2020 [12 favorites]

With my son’s appendicitis, he had a very brief abdominal exam, an x-ray and an ultrasound, blood draw, pain drip and antibiotics on the IV. The IV insertion was the hardest point for him. Staff were kind and very used to helping kids in pain.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:58 PM on July 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks so much all. Like Maarika above, it turned out to be constipation - I didn't realize it could cause that kind of severe pain. And for anyone looking for answers in the future, they ruled out appendicitis right away (just from examining her I guess), then did an ultrasound and x-ray.
posted by insectosaurus at 3:18 PM on July 5, 2020 [26 favorites]

If you’re curious about the appendicitis rule out, what they do is press and release on the abdomen a certain way, and/or have you jump up and down. If that doesn’t make the pain excruciatingly worse, they rule out appendicitis for now. Source: been to the ER with someone for abdominal pain multiple times.

But yes, constipation can cause severe pain even for adults! The doctors have probably mentioned this, but if not: with bad constipation you can get cycles of constipation and diarrhea, and you can get pretty bad nausea too. Just a heads up. Also, if they’ve prescribed Miralax, Clearlax is the cheaper version, possible liquids to put it in are tea, lemonade, soda, juice, but milk won’t work.
posted by brook horse at 5:12 PM on July 5, 2020 [2 favorites]