Last month I ended up back in the er with a BAD attack. I never thought it could be worse, but apparently I was wrong. I am sure the er staff thought I was acting like a crazed wombat. (In my defense, I was hurting terribly and they left me waiting 2 hours) It's hard to explain when something changes in a chronic illness but you don't know why, but there was something different during this attack. I also have started losing all that weight without anything changing such as my food intake, or lack thereof. I'm definitely not complaining, but it is just weird that all of a sudden I have started losing about 7 lbs every month. So anyway, when I was released, I decided to give IU another try.
I spent an hour discussing all this with Dr Watkins and I think we have a plan. Friday I had an endoscopic ultrasound and plexus block. They took a look at my pancreas and anesthetized the nerves to that area. The plan is to remove the pain so they can change the nausea meds around a little bit and see if we can handle this medicinally. So far so good. It's only been a few days but so far there is not alot of pain. I see Dr Watkins Sept 4th, so at that time we will see what medications he will change or add etc. Hopefully, he can make some sense of the ultrasound report. According to what I know so far, I have fibrotic tissue in the pancreas from the pancreatitis. I don't know how much or what this means, but I am hoping he does and can explain it to me. (I am a nurse, but I don't know everything)
If they aren't able to control this with meds, then Dr W wants to put in a feeding tube. this is supposed to give my pancreas a rest and allow it to heal. He says 6-12mos with the tube. If that doesn't work then we were looking at major surgery. They can remove the pancreas now without making you an instant diabetic, but it is still a major surgery. I truly hope it doesn't go that far!
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