6 weeks ago, I suspected a small bowel obstruction when I finally when to the hospital in mid March. I had almost all the symptoms I had previous experienced with two prior small bowel obstructions except for not as severe of cramps as the first time. For a week in the hospital, I was told that that is was probably Ileus, just a 'standard' sleepy or uncoordinated bowel with no real explanation as to why it could happen spontaneously nor any real hope for the future.
We then hooked up with a GI doc who suggested other possible diagnoses and we proceeded to work through them, one at a time, trying to rule out reasons for poor behavior of my digestive tract. At least this was active diagnosing. Putting forward a hypotheses and then using non invasive testing to determine if the hypothesis was correct.
His last test was called a small bowel followthrough test and it is really quite simple. You swallow a barium solution and they take an immediate x-ray to see it in your stomach. They then x-ray at 15 minutes, followed by a series of x-rays at 30 minutes to track the progress of the barium through your digestive tract. Given you start with eating nothing for 8hrs previously, it should make it through your digestive tract in about 1-1.5 hours but I knew ahead of time that I was in this for the long haul.
At 3hrs, they extended it to 1hr intervals and, at 5 hours, they did real-time imaging and had me swallow some more barium to apply some pressure. Finally, at about 7hrs, they sent me home with the barium never reaching the large intestine.
Upon reading the report this morning, I see: "Under real-time fluorosciopic imaging, significant small bowel tethering is noted with basically fixed, variably dialated small bowel loops". In the Opinion section, he continues "1) Significant small bowel obstruction with non traversal of the small bowel, despite greater than 6-hour evaluation...". I did finally pass some barium that night, 10 hours after the initial dosing.
I am fairly certain that what this means is that I WAS RIGHT. 8 weeks ago, I suspected small bowel obstruction. 7 weeks ago, I started warning some of the doctors I see regularly, and 6 weeks ago, I was finally hospitalized. The obstruction must have loosened somewhat in the hospital because I could eat small amounts of food but it quickly clamps down again, causing yet more vomiting.
This makes me incredibly angry. 6 weeks ago, I knew this was what was going on. 6 weeks ago we could have been already starting on the true path to recovery. I could be recovering from surgery right now rather than enduring the continued weight loss and misery.
I don't wish for surgery, I know that it is not all fun and games and am already dreading having an NG tube inserted for days. I know there are grave risks with surgery but I know that a successful surgery leads to a much high quality of life for me. At this point, surgery is probably many weeks off (assuming this report is believed) and we lose much of another summer.
We still need to contact the doctors in New Orleans and have continued to keep them abreast of results up here. They should get these results tomorrow but I know Wednesdays are Dr. Boudreaux's surgery day so he may not do anything for a couple of days yet. So, flights to NOLA are in our near future and, hopefully, rescue from my current situation.
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