Re: Please........Desperately need advice!!!!!

From: Christine M. Smith (smithy@maine.rr.com)
Tue Aug 3 11:32:04 1999


At Mon, 2 Aug 1999, Valerie Gates wrote: >
>Thanks for reading this! I need all the help I can get!! I have been
>very sick again.....the fourth time this summer! My doctor finally took
>me serious enough to recommend some tests and I don't know much about
>them. On Friday I am supposed to have a Sigmoidoscopy? and a Barium
>Enema.......doesn't sound like much fun. The Friday after that I have
>to have an upper GI. If all of these are negative, he wants to schedule
>exploratory surgery. If I have to do that it will be my 9th surgery for
>adhesions. Should I have all those tests first? Will that just be more
>misery for nothing? I feel like I have to do what he says, at least he's
>doing something besides sending me home with antibiotics and pain
>pills!! What about more surgery? Is it worth making this worse to maybe
>get a few months of being better???? I have missed 17 days of work this
>year alone and I'm scared to death that I will lose my job! My boss
>thinks having more surgery is the thing to do, but I am so unsure!
>Please tell me what you think.....and any info you might have about
>these tests!
>
>Thanks
>
>Valerie
>
>--
>Valerie Gates

Hi Valerie: You can ask your doctor why he is ordering these tests and what he hopes to find out/rule out with them. As frustrating as it is to go through all these tests wondering if they are really necessary, it really is wise to rule out other problems that might be causing your pain. It seems that there is no easy way! In my case, I've had pelvic/abdominal pain in the right lower quadrant that started suddenly 2 years ago. Right off my gyn suggested a gi or spine source of the pain. I told him I had a great gut and back. A GI workup ruled out things like diverticulitis. At that point nothing was done about the back possibility. To complicate matters I did have a history of endometriosis. I insisted the pain felt gynecological so he finally did a lap and lo and behold, there were adhesions. He lysed just one of them, the one that was tying my small intestine to the abdominal wall like a sausage. He left the others around the sigmoid colon because he was sure they would not bother me. I had 100% relief of pain for 3 months, when the right lower quadrant pain returned suddenly. Three months later a general surgeon repeated the lap and found that the adhesions lysed during the first lap had not reoccurred. Yet the pain was exactly the same! The gyn did not lyse the adhesions around the colon during the first lap, so if the pain was coming from them, why did it disappear for 3 months?Do you see what I'm getting at? It would be very easy to say that my problems were due to the adhesions I had. A colo-rectal surgeon told me that surgery has all kinds of effects of the body and the relief I got could have been due to other reasons, such as mechanical. (I also had 3-4 months of relief after the second lap). He also said that anesthesia is known to affect the immune system, but did not elaborate on that. After 2 years, I finally developed back and hip pain and they (and myself) started to think seriously of something else as the source of the pain. The colo-rectal surgeon suggested the sacroiliac joint. An MRI was done, which suggested the lumbar spine might be the cause. If you read the section on chronic pelvic pain on the ob-gyn website you will see that there are lots of causes of pelvic pain. The point of this long explanation is that you really need to rule out the other possiblities or you may be fighting a losing battle, in terms of finding the cause of your pain. In my situation, no final conclusions have been drawn yet, but it is beginning to look more and more like my pain is from a muscularskeletal source rather than the adhesions, although they might still be involved in some way. I am on celebrex and feeling much better. As far as more surgery goes, as Peggy said, only you can make that decision. It never hurts to get another opinion. As confusing as this can be, it does have its positive side. Someone along the way might come up with something not thought of.

Chris S. >


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