Saturday, June 4

Another peeve

I've had Crohn's and the accompanying gut pain all my life. My mom first took me to a doctor for bowel related problems when I was 9 days old. I was ignored then and the doctors continued to ignore me until I finally found one to listen to me in 1998. Yes, you did the math right, that's 41 years. 41 long, painful years.

I realize a lot of people lie to get drugs from doctors. I run a forum where we help people detox from addictive drugs, so I'm pretty well versed in this area. HAD a doctor I went to for help thru my life had bothered to run tests on me though, they would have found my Crohn's and saved me a lot of pain and suffering. My question is why assume every young person who asks for pain relief is a drug seeker and not telling the truth?

I had been sick for a few years when I moved to Phoenix and was getting worse. I went from my normal 95 pounds down to 72 pounds. I was so weak I couldn't walk on my own and had to use a wheelchair. The ER referred me to a G.I. Doc, who instead of running tests, told me I was sick cause I smoked cigarettes. When I informed him I thought I had Crohn's and I had the gut pain years before I started smoking, he showed me out of his office.

At that point I could feel myself dying. I knew I couldn't just accept this doctor's bulls**t and had to press the issue. I walked across the street from his office to the office of the GP doctor and asked to be seen immediately. They were able to squeeze me in and thankfully he DID listen to me and ordered a barium gulp, iodine push, CT scan of my guts. That's when they found the Crohn's. The doctor also estimated I had about 2 weeks before I'd die if something wasn't done.

They put me on Prednisone, which stopped my immune system in it's tracks. That in turn stopped my body from thinking my guts were something bad and attacking them. They tried me on a couple of the Crohn's drugs, but I reacted badly to them and they didn't help anyway.

They put me on 400 mg of Morphine and 4 Vicodin ES a day and it still wasn't getting all of the pain. At least being on the meds I was finally able to eat something and not have to lay on the couch for an hour after screaming from the pain as the food passed thru my inflamed guts. That's when we knew I needed the surgery to remove the section of bowel that was so messed up. I had the surgeon take a picture of it after he removed it, be warned, it's not pretty.

http://www.xworld.org/pix/guts-03.jpg

The surgery did get me into remission for quite a few years, the problem was I still had gut pain ... but that would be another story and another surgery.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I enjoyed this story :) Reminds me of me in a way, but you already know all about me.

11:59 PM  
Blogger LComeno said...

Hahaha. It's been 6 years now since we met online KC. You were a 15 year old with a bad Crohn's flare happening. Since that time I've watching you grow up via the internet into the fantastic almost 21 year old you are today.

I know we are both flaring now and it's so nice to have such a wonderful friend that really DOES understand all I go thru. Just sucks to watch you go thru it too.

I love you KC!

12:14 AM  

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