Son with multiple autoimmune diseases

Lynda

Not sure if this is the right place. My son who just turned 8 right before Christmas was just diagnosed with another autoimmune disease after a week long stay in the hospital over the holidays. His battle with autoimmune disease started a little over a year ago when we found that he had Hashimotos disease after struggling with severe fatigue and joint pain. After that it was found that he has Autoimmune hepatitis and showed signs of primary sclerosing cholangitis. He was handling the prednisone treatment of this disease pretty well up until we tapered down to 2.5 mg of prednisone. Over the last month he struggled with off and on bouts of high fevers, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. He would get treated with a stress dosage of steroids during these times because it was believed these episodes were due to the prednisone tapering. I was concerned because up until this point he had been doing pretty okay considering everything going on so I moved up his GI appointment. His doctor was concerned too so she had admitted in order to do more testing and observation as well. It was found that he had pretty serious Inflammatory Bowel Disease and they are pretty sure it’s Crohns but his case is tough because he was partially treated through the liver treatment. We have started a liquid diet treatment in hopes of getting him into remission without loading him up on more medications and steroids which had already been taking their toll. Sorry this is so long, I have just been trying to find any kind of resource or information on having these multiple autoimmune diseases without much luck. We are being referred to see a geneticist now because it’s not typical for someone to have all these diseases and it’s possible that he could be at risk for others as well. I don’t know if anyone can relate in anyway or knows of possible resources but anything would be truly appreciated thank you.