Question from Lebanon, Pennsylvania, USA:

For a few years, my 11 year old daughter has been complaining of chest pains, and stomach pains. Her family doctors thought she had a heart murmur and had her go see a heart specialist last year. An ultrasound showed that one of the arteries that go from the heart to the lung is smaller which is what the family doctor was told.

About two weeks ago, during a basketball game (with10 seconds to go before half time) my husband noticed how pale and white my daughter was playing basketball team she was getting. As soon as the clock beeped, she went to the chairs and slumped down, and we ran over to her. She couldn’t catch her breath, her chest pain was unbearable, and she was complaining of stomachaches also. I think if she wouldn’t have been able to sit down, she would of passed out on the court. She was shaking, didn’t want to leave, and then started to cry as she didn’t want her coaches to know about her heart problem.

A few days lays, when she was still complaining of her chest pain and stomachaches, I took her into the emergency room. They took a chest x-ray, did an EKG, and everything was normal, but the doctor said she needed to be seen by her cardiologist. She was seen the next day by the cardiologist who couldn’t find anything wrong at all and told us she has no restrictions.

Five days later, we got a call from the school nurse that our daughter was down. She was at the cafeteria just starting to eat lunch when one of the teachers noticed that she was turning pale, and told her to go to the nurse. The nurse took her blood pressure which was 140/78, her pulse was 108 her respirations were 14, she a poking poking type of pain at level seven, and it was hard to take a deep breath. So we had to take her back to the emergency room.

She was seen by another doctor that didn’t even want to look at the note from the school nurse which told what happened. He only checked and listened to her heart, her lungs, and pushed on her stomach because of her pain. However, he couldn’t find anything wrong with her and said it is probably growing pains. He did ask if anyone has ever done any blood work on her and I told him that has never been done.

She does drink an awful lot, goes to the bathroom an awful lot, complains of stomachaches a lot, and she gets a lot of bad chest pains. She also complains of feeling nauseated, has a hard time breathing, and she’s either pale or flushed. She is also very tiny for her age. She gets a very fast heart rate at times just by sitting their doing nothing, she get’s the shakes and some sweating. She does get thirsty a lot, and is hungry a lot, and goes to the bathroom a lot also. She is also sleepy a lot, not her same self, not energetic. She does get bladder infections, and I do believe when she was two she was hospitalized for a very bad yeast infection. My mother and grandmother both had/has diabetes. Is this something I should call the doctors about and see about having them run test on her to rule this out?