Out of curiosity, anyone had pain like this?
I'm not really here looking to be diagnosed. I'm going through the processes right now with my physician. I'm just curious if anyone else has ever had the same problems because my physician is kind of at a loss as to what's wrong with me.
It began last Thanksgiving. A few days after, during an argument, I started feeling light-headed, couldn't breathe, and my chest hurt. My brother-in-law called 911 (even though I told him to refrain from doing so because I do have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and am not unknown to have panic attacks... just never had one that badly), I went to the hospital, and they said it was probably a panic attack. A few nights after this, I went to bed, laid on my left side, and pain shot up and down my body. I thought my appendix had ruptured or something because I was running a fever and having the chills. After arguing with my husband, I went to the hospital again. This time, they did some tests (MRI, CAT scan, etc.) to rule out a tubal pregnancy and other stuff, and after an ultrasound, they told me that my problem was my gall bladder. Saw a surgeon after returning home, and without doing any sort of testing that I've read about, the guy just decided that it needed to come out, so out it came on December 12th of last year. I guess it was the right thing to do, in the end, because he told my husband that my gall bladder was the 3x the size of a baseball, and if it had burst, I'd be dead.
In any case, I thought the worst was over. I was wrong.
A few days later, I got the normal problems associated with gall bladder removal: diarrhea, too scared to eat food, painful gas, etc. I even learned that I was allergic to some of the medicine they put me on during the recovery. Big shock. In any case, I thought I was on the road to better health, but around the end of January, something changed. I started feeling constipated all of the time. See, diarrhea was normal for me. I'd been dealing with it all of my life as sort of a side effect to being lactose intolerant (and still drinking/eating milk-based stuff). So to suddenly change like this was more than shocking, to say the least. Because it's not constipation as you know it. I take bisacodyl (two 5mg tablets a day), and I've been taking it since this started... every frigging day because otherwise I can't use the bathroom. It feels like constipation, but it still comes out diarrhea. It's like those muscles in my intestinal walls have stopped wanting to push out the waste. Then this god-awful pain started in my back. I still had gall bladder-like attacks, too, where my stomach and chest would feel hot, and my stomach would be tender to the touch. I kept going back to the ER because the pain would make me feel faint. The doctors couldn't figure it out. They did all of these MRIs and CAT scans to make sure nothing else was flaring up, but other than the pocket of fluid where my gall bladder used to be (which I've been told is normal), they couldn't find anything else.
I saw a new surgeon recently (because my new physician thought my pain might be related to the pocket of fluid leftover from surgery), and the guy told me that the fluid is normal (again), and that it should go away on its own. However, he wanted to do another CAT scan to make sure it's going away, and he wanted to do blood work to make sure my liver is OK. Which of course, my new physician knows about, but she hasn't done anything about it. He also mentioned that he thinks that whatever is wrong with me wasn't related to the gall bladder. He mentioned IBS and Sphincter of Oddi Dysfunction (which I had done my own research and had thought that one of these might be my problem... or worse, both).
I've got an EGD (the old scope down the throat thing) scheduled because my physician now thinks my pain might be ulcer-related (considering it's in my stomach, around the surgery site, and spreading to my lower back). I guess this shouldn't shock me because my dad was hospitalized for bleeding ulcers when I was a kid. However, I don't have any bleeding. Just this tremendous pain in my lower rights side to middle of my back, the loss of appetite (because it hurts to eat anything at all... and even drink liquids), the loss of weight (I've shed over 60 pounds in a few months time), the fever that comes and goes along with the chills, sweating/clamminess, and sometimes headaches and shortness of breath (got an inhaler for this now). The EGD doesn't take place until September 7th. I guess if that doesn't find anything (though I'm sure it might considering that I've dealt with acid reflux disease for years), then I'm off to do a colonscopy (which I may be doing anyway since I still can't use the bathroom properly without taking medication).
I'm a little scared to have more things shoved into me (I've been through ankle reconstructive surgery and 3 c-sections, too, in the past), but if it finds out what's literally killing me, then I'll do it. I can't die right now... I've got three little kids (one who's disabled) to take care of and a husband who wouldn't know what to do.
Anyone else had pain like this?
