PSC/AIH/UC & vomiting - help!

Hi-

My teen soon was diagnosed with PSC/AIH/UC in March. He has been on prednisone and now prednisone and vancomycin (a la Cox). He has been tapering off his high dose of 60mg prednisone now for a bit - he's at 30. For the past week, he has had unrelenting nausea and vomiting. He has not had anything to eat other than a bit of rice here and there and it still comes back up after a couple of hours. We think he's managed to keep his meds going ok by timing the small bits of food he's taking so that if he vomits, it is well after the meds.

My questions... could this be due to the tapering at this dosage? He went from 35 - 30 on Wednesday and has been sick since then. Has anybody experienced this and if so, did you find anything to give you relief or do you just have to get through it.

Or could it be the cumulative effects of the prednisone for now two months?

Or, have any of you experienced this vomiting from the oral vancomycin. We really hope this is not the case - we are holding out hope for this treatment. He's at about three weeks now and his blood tests look good - continued reduction in all three enzymes. I'm hoping they will be willing to give him an MRI after about three months to see if there's been any improvement.

He's pretty miserable and not able to attend school. He's really hoping to be able to get credit for his year of schoolwork... He's taking 60mg of prevacid to help, but it doesn't seem to be doing the trick.

Thanks...

Hi Mom
Is he keeping some fluids down? He needs sips of fluids so that he doesn’t dehydrate but if nothing has stayed down since last Wednesday maybe you should take him to the ER.

How is he doing today?

His GI doc is great. He came in just to see my son yesterday. He wanted to rule out a possible neurological side effect of tapering. Has anybody had intracranial hypertension as a result of tapering? They got him in to see an opthamologist to look at the back of his eyes to see if there was any evidence of increased pressure - but there wasn't. We are keeping an eye on his headaches and confusion (he missed his subway stop yesterday and didn't notice until three stops later - and he was awake - this is very unusual for him).

So far, so good today. He did manage to keep down his first meal in a while last night. We've started giving him very small bits of food and drink every hour. It is hard because he is so hungry! But it stayed down, so that's good. He had a very small bit of food and went off to school today. 11am and the pickup call hasn't come yet. So I'm crossing fingers that maybe things are getting better...

On the positive side, they did another round of blood work yesterday and the liver numbers look great - almost normal! Don't know if it is the vanco or the prednisone...