Guessing Games

Well. I haven't written on here very much - at all? - about what has been going on in my life lately. Not that I have many readers - 2, 3? - and not that they don't already know...

Over the last two months, I've been having some severe stomach/abdominal pains. About a month and a half ago, it got so bad after three intense days that I had my parents take me to the emergency room. Some morphine and a CT scan later... they decided I did not have Appendicitis. Or a bad gall bladder (so they said). The word that they mentioned was Colitis, and possible Crohn's Disease. I was recommended to a gastro-intestinal specialist, given some Vicodin for the pain and some antibiotics to kill the inflammation they saw in my large and small intestines.

Well, I saw that doctor, and he recommended I have a test done where they stick a tube down my throat, blow dye into my stomach and bowels, and do a CT scan to see the results. He also said if I was feeling better, I could play the "wait and see" game. I didn't want to have to blow my system out with drugs to get ready for the test - I was already having lower bowel pain and issues from all the sickness, as it were - so I decided to play wait and see.

(INTERJECTION: for clarity's sake - I was not supposed to eat spicy or greasy foods, which I did my best to stay away from, for the most part. Also, the pain - my stomach hurts in general, but there is also a severe cramping and bloating that comes with it. Sometimes the bloating gets so bad that I feel like my insides surely will burst, and sometimes, I wish that would happen, as some kind of release from the pain. Read more below. End Interjection.)

Long story short: I was back in the emergency room within a week, almost two weeks exactly since the first time. I called my family doctor to get more meds, to no avail. The gastro-intestinal doctor denied me meds, too, and said to go to the emergency room (or so his nurse said). So, back to the ER I went, where I had another CT scan (this time with contrast dye) after a failed half-hour of trying to get my IV in. I ended up getting sick and vomitting in the hospital, after which I felt much better.

The second emergency visit prompted my stomach doctor to rush me in for... a colonoscopy. Now, I really had to blow my system out. This was about two weeks ago. It was miserable, I was and still am so sore from all the havoc wrecked on my system. Long story short: they found two polyps, sent away for biopsy, came back negative. No cancer, no evidence of Crohn's disease or Inflammatory Bowel Disease. I was given a clean bill of health - this past Tuesday.

So why did my pain return on Thursday? Part of it is surely my fault - I ate pizza on Tuesday night, I was so hungry (couldn't eat for 36+ hours) and I was craving something tasty. But, they said all the inflammation was gone, no trace of it. So, I thought, in essence, I was cured.

Turns out they may have been looking in the wrong place.

Since the ER does me little good - it's basically a chance to get high powered pain meds like Morphine, which works incredibly well but wears off and doesn't prevent the pain from returning - I decided to tough it out this weekend when the ailment returned.

Now I've got an appointment, as a consultation, to deal with my destroyed lower bowels on Monday, and the original Stomach Dye test that I turned down on Tuesday. Hopefully, we'll start figuring out what this IS, and not what it is NOT.

In the meantime... I am trying to keep my spirits up. This has been the first really bad medical thing I have had to go through. It's starting to get to me, to get into my head a little bit. I can't describe that... it's just odd to not be able to escape your pain. Pain medicines, the ones you buy over the counter, even the Vicodin they gave me, they all don't really work. They just tear my system up even more, which starts this whole thing over again.

For now, I am hanging in there. My life has been pretty disrupted, but I am game for the next steps... hopefully they can find out what is wrong, we can treat it, and I can move on. Keep your fingers crossed.