So my son is sick again today. He’s 13 years old yet what he’s sick over just doesn’t seem like it should be possible. Is there a connection between stress & getting sick?
But let me take you back a few years. In August of 2009 is when all this started. Our son started getting sick, usually in the wee hours of the morning, I’m talking 1-3 a.m. He would wake up & throw up, usually have to use the bathroom. He would try to drink some water, but within fifteen minutes that would come back up also. So I started keeping track of when he got sick, because it was starting to happen once a week or at least every other week. Never even thought about it might be stress & getting sick from it.
We started to wonder if maybe he had developed a allergy to some food he was eating or maybe brushing his teeth to close to bedtime was upsetting his stomach. So when he got sick I would write down what he had for dinner the night before, at what time he had brushed his teeth. The longer this went on the more we realized that there was no common ground on the days he got sick compared to the days he wasn’t sick. He doesn’t run a fever, if anything his temp is a little low. We took him to the doctor for an unrelated thing & they put him on some allergy pills. Of course he had been to the doctor for this strange sickness, but Surprise Surprise they had no idea what was going on.
This strange sickness finally seemed to stop, we had no idea why. Then when I had him back to the doctor to renew his allergy meds I realized that was, the one thing that was new & different. So I talked to the Doctor about it. He said let’s keep him on the meds & later try & take him off to see if he starts in again. I said alright, but I don’t want to take him off till summer so that he didn’t miss anymore school than he already had. He agreed that sounded like a good plan.
Come summer we took him off the allergy meds & things seemed to be good for a while. Then out of the blue he would get sick again. So we would think about the day before & the only thing we could think of was that he might of got a little stressed. Oh man was that a waking day! I mean who would of thought that child would have enough stress that would cause him to be getting sick.
Now when he had first started doing this he would have been 8 or so & I don’t believe at that time it was stress related. But now that he’s older & no longer taking the allergy meds, I think that when he gets stressed he gets sick. Last night he had a lot of homework, which for him isn’t the norm. He stayed up an hour past bedtime & still wasn’t able to get it all done. So I’m thinking he was stressing about not getting it done & made himself sick over it. I’m sure there’s probably a name for this condition in older people. But would it have the same name for a teenager? I have no idea & don’t really care, so I guess my question is how do you reduce a teenager’s stress, so he no longer is getting sick?
I mean we have pretty happy home, he’s an only child so no fighting with sibling’s. His dad is a gamer, so therefore he inherited that & loves playing video games. It’s not like he has a ton of chorus, he makes pretty good grades so we aren’t on him about them either. He’s a well behaved teenager & always has been a good child. So in my opinion he really has about the lowest stress level he can get.
You know it seems like he grew out of the being sick every week or other week on his own. The allergy meds did help it from happening so often, but I know that didn’t cure him from it. So hopefully he will grow out of this stress & getting sick also. As an adult I hope this is not a problem for him, because if it is. I’m not sure what he’s going to do. I deal with stress differently than most. But my son apparently didn’t get my way of dealing with stress.
In conclusion, if your child just keeps getting sick & you’re not sure why, believe it or not. It might just be stress causing them to get sick. I like you are not sure what can be done about it, but maybe my telling you about our son’s issues, it might shed a little light on your child. I know there are so many things in this world that can make a child sick other than stress. But this is the one thing that a doctor & no test can really diagnose.
