15 year old daughter newly diagnosed with IBS

My 15 year old daughter has just had a complete GI work-up for abdominal pain, weight loss, nausea, wretching, headaches, and mostly constipation(some diarrhea).  The first episode occurred with her period and she was in bed for a few days.  The second also occurred with her period but this time the symptoms never went away-especially the pain.

With two hospitalizations, testing was done: upper endoscopy, colonoscopy, upper GI, small bowel follow through, ultrasound of abd. and pelvis, chest and abdominal x-rays, MRI of brain, MRI of pelvis and abdomen, gyne evaluation and multiple blood tests.  All of this was completely normal, accept the gynecologist said she has a chance of having endometriosis and started her on birth control pills.

It has been 2 months since the pain (mostly at her belly button extending to the pubic bone) became constant.  She is on a myriad of medications ( bentyl, senna, miralax, naproxen with pepcid, birth control, zofran, and amytriptiline) but remains debilitated. 

She receives tutoring from teachers at home (if she is not too sick). For the past 2 years, she was in the top 10 in her class, so this is an incredible change for her. Most of her communication with friends is via text messaging.

My biggest concern is her pain which usually gets worse at night.  She describes it as, "it feels like someone is punching me in the stomach." As the pain level goes up the scale, the nausea, wretching, severe headaches, and dizziness begin. At this point I feel absolutely helpless!  It breaks my heart.

I have read that amytriptiline takes weeks to really begin working and she has only been on it 1 week.  I bought some peppermint oil time -released capsules and probiotics.  Does anyone have any experience with these?  I feel like I have to do something until, hopefully, this antidepressant begins working.

Also, since the severe constipation is adding to the pain, does anyone have any suggestions for this? Sometimes it is 4-5 days until she has an excuciatingly painful BM.

Any input would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

The senna was prescribed by her doctor.  Are you thinking that it may be too irritating? Her constipation is so severe (she sometimes vomits and then goes).  We also have her on Miralax.

As far as the endometriosis, she was going to have a laporscopy(only difinitive way to diagnose this) this past week, but we cancelled.  Her gynecologist is less sure of endometriosis as a diagnosis since her last hospialization where she required narcotics for the severe pain.  Also, she is really not in a state to undergo surgery at this point and we have been told that it may cause scar tissue buildup and more pain. Birth control pills would be used following a positive diagnosis by surgery anyway to dissipate the lesions. 

She is on 25mg of the antidepressent.  After almost 2 weeks, it has not made a difference yet.

The probiotic brand is acidofolus ?spelling with other cells added.

We could not get an appt. until Nov. 24 to start looking into behavioral modifications--hopefully hypnotherapy.

Do these people talk to you about nutrition as well?

I feel like she was diagnosed and we were scooted along--can't even reach GI doc.

Again thank you for your suggestions and I will check out these websites!