Abdominal adhesions at age 23

From: Kerri (scubagirl87@msn.com)
Wed Sep 29 01:02:57 2010


I am feeling very disheartened and decided that maybe typing it out will help a little. I have been dealing with adhesions for almost two years now... It all started during my senior year of college when I was almost about to graduate with my B.S. in dental hygiene. I had an emergency appendectomy that went undetected for some time in the ER (Dr. couldn't find it on the ultrasound, missed it on the CT, and I waited for 9 hours before going to the ER because I wanted to take one of my finals and get it over with: overachiever and opposite of hypochondriac- yes). My appendix was down lower and more towards my back than most people's and the surgeon, although he did it laparscopically, had a difficult time getting it out. It had started to rupture, was gangrenous, and all the inflammatory fluid had caused my uterus to be inflamed as well.

Well, a couple of months later, when I was finally starting to feel back to normal, I kept waking up in the night feeling like my bladder was full, even though it wasn't. Then a month after that started, I ended up in the ER with severe abdominal and lower back pain. Long story short, I spent months and months trying to convince people I wasn't nuts. I was told by most people that the ER wasn't the place for me, that I was making it up, or was too traumatized by my appendectomy. Being the farthest thing from a hypochondriac, this was all very frustrating. Finally I found someone who believed that i was in pain but not that I had adhesions (because I didn't have a bowel obstruction, they said it was impossible), and I had a exploratory lap surgery again... sure enough, they found exactly what I knew I had had- adhesions... right where my appendix had been. I had been researching and whatnot for months and thought that that was what it would be, but no one would believe me. They lysed the adhesions but warned me they could very well come back. Sure enough, i'm back to where I was last year. I was going to start school to go back and take the pre-reqs for medicine, but I can no longer exercise, lift, scuba dive, or even sit in small cars very well. I'm nauseated all the time, had to drop out of school after the first few weeks because walking to class was killing me. I've been in the ER so many times, I'm fed up. I'm exhausted cause I can't sleep through the night because every time i lay down, it feels like something is pushing on my bladder. I have always been active, and at the age of 23, I don't want to look forward to the rest of my life being like this. i'm on the bathroom floor more than anything because the pain gets so bad, i can't stop throwing up. I really despise this and I want to believe that there is some hope. i have so much I want to do with my life and I want to be able to be active and pursue my dreams again. Sigh, well, I wanted to vent apparently. :)


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