Abdominal pain for over a year! Solved!
Hi everyone, I wanted to pass along a story from my sister in law. I hope that it can help someone else. She had a RNY about 5 or 6 years ago and had been doing just fine. Her weight was stable.
She has had abdominal pain for over a year. Nausea, vomiting, loose stools. I think that she is 5'4" and got down to 92# a couple weeks ago. Has seen many doctors in our community, had numerous tests, labs and medication. They blamed it on a number of things that never shook out. They even told her at one point that there was nothing wrong and that she had an eating disorder. Has been hospitalized a number of times this year.
We finally insisted that she be transferred to a much larger university hospital - U of Michigan. It took them a week but they finally did and sent all of her tests and records. Within 6 hours the UM hospital had it figured out - using the tests that were done at home. She had complete blockages of 2 of the 3 abdominal arteries - kind of like a heart attack in the belly. Her gut was not getting any blood/oxygen. They said that this is not real common but that it was a textbook case. The blockages did show up on one of the tests but apparently a radiologist *****ads it in Australia did not pick it up and neither did her doctors. UM picked it right up.
Anyway, she has had surgery and is on the way to recovery. We don't know how much long term damage there is to her bowel from the lack of blood supply. So to everyone that has persistant problems - don't give up and go somewhere with more resources if you keep having problems. My sister in law would probably be dead by now if she had not been transfered. Good luck and best wishes to you all...
I am about to have a CT Angiogram because I have had consistent pain/problems for almost two years now, is this how they found her problem? I have had every other test on the planet, except this one. I live in the Chicago suburbs, so I have a new GI doc at University of Chicago, and she wants to do a CT Angiography with Enterography to highlight the vessels and more detail of the small bowel. She is convinced, as am I, that I keep having intermittent small bowel obstructions. I am so happy that the problem was found for her, I hope this is it for me
Thanks!
Jules RNY 10/30/2007
