Zac’s Story

Zac is a young boy of 8 years old when his life is changed drastically by first a diagnosis of hypothyroidism November 30, 2007 and then Addison’s disease December 17, 2007. This is devastating for anyone but for a child and his parents it is tremendously difficult.
Here is Zac’s story.


Zac has been complaining of stomach aches over the past few months off and on, initially we took him to our pediatrician and visibly he couldn’t see anything wrong with him, maybe he’s got a virus, maybe it’s constipation, nerves, etc. We gave him some milk of magnesia and the stomach ache went away. About two weeks later, he complains again and this time, he’s doubled over in pain, he’s lightheaded and is having trouble walking. We call our pediatrician and ask that he do blood work and take x-rays, our instincts say something is not right. The x-rays show that he is constipated and his blood work comes back with some questions, his thyroid levels are off, his blood sugar is low, his sodium is low and 3 of the 5 pointers for Celiac are positive. We give him some more milk of magnesia and his stomach ache goes away. The pediatrician asks us to redo the blood work in a week; the thyroid results are still abnormal so he refers us to an endocrinologist at Mass General in Boston. His blood sugar and sodium levels seem to have normalized, however, the celiac results are still the same. We saw the endocrinologist on November 30th and she diagnosed Zac with hypothyroidism. Zac will take levothyroxine on a daily basis for the rest of his life. She also mentions the celiac results and tells us we should make an appointment with a Gastroenterologist and they can do a scope to get a definitive answer. Celiac is wheat intolerance, and is controlled by diet. We have an appointment scheduled for January 22, 2008.

On Thursday, December 13th Zac comes home from school complaining of his stomach again so we start him with the milk of magnesia on Friday after school and it really knocks him out, he’s very lethargic, tired, starting to get a cold so he’s got a dry cough and spends most of the weekend in bed and the bathroom. Sunday night a little after midnight I awoke to him whimpering, I went over to check on him and he is flat on his back, stiff with his eyes wide open. He is non responsive to my voice and talking to him, I yell to Chuck (my husband) who in turn comes over and I run for the phone to call 911. His breathing was very shallow and actually stopped breathing a few times, so Chuck gave him a few breaths. The ambulance, EMT’s show up very quickly and can’t get him to respond either. They try and take his blood sugar and get no reading at all, so they gave him something and he responds. The ambulance takes us to Lawrence General Hospital in Lawrence to stabilize him and then we were transferred to Mass General. They took all sorts of blood, x-rays, etc and had diagnosed Zac with Addison’s disease within hours. Zac spent 4 days in ICU and went home on the 5th day.

Zac will take 2 different steroids 3 times a day to replace the steroids that his body doesn’t produce.

Zac after further testing was negative for Celiac’s. Both Barbara and Chuck had blood work shows they both have a tissue type that would give their children a 1 in 10 chance of having celiac vs. the 1 in 100 chance for others. However, the good news is none have Celiac at this point.


Today Zac is growing and doing well...

If you would like to visit his webpage, he is Zacpokemon at http://www.carepages.com/