Carole/stents...

[Guest guest]

Hey Carole,

I must say, we have/had very similar symptoms! Before I was diagnosed,

I also ran a low-grade fever and had a headache (very unusual for me)

for about a month straight. The fever was pretty low (around 100 or so)

- I didn't even know I had it until I went to the doc to find out why I

was having such awful pains in my left side, so I might have been

running a fever for even longer than I know. Most of my pain was on my

left side at about the bottom of my rib cage. There were times that it

was so bad that I couldn't stand up straight. Other times, it just felt

like there was something swollen in there.

My doctor has never said why he thinks my cyst burst. My personal

feeling is that it probably had to do with my horseback riding, hay

lifting or some other horse-type activity. I was doing a lot of hard

riding even when I felt like utter hell, and that's an activity that

jostles you up a bit. As for the size of the cyst, I'm not sure. We

never " saw " it (never had the CT scan) until after it burst. I do know

that according to the doctor, there was about a 15x5mm thing of fluid

floating around in my peritoneal cavity. It had either been a big cyst

or it had been leaking for a while.

My doctor and I talked about talked about draining the cyst but he

really wanted to try to stay away from that option. I think he just

felt that it was more invasive than the ERCP/stent route. And he felt

that the reason my pancreas had a psuedocyst was because it wasn't

draining correctly. That's where the stent came in. A stent is a very

small tube that they insert into your pancreatic duct to keep it open

and help your pancreas drain. He said " stent " to me and I thought of

something like a straw. In actuality, they are much smaller than that,

of course... I didn't really know that he was going to place a stent in

there until after I woke up from the first ERCP. I think I'm kind of

glad because I would have been worried about the ERCP more if I had

known. By the time my second ERCP/stent time came along, it was no big

deal to me because the first one had gone so smoothly.

They don't leave the stents in forever. They have a tendency to get

blocked after a time. That's why I had the second and third ERCP - the

second ERCP to remove and replace the first stent and the third to

remove the second. During the last ERCP, my doctor decided that my

pancreas looked healthy enough not to need another stent so I've been

stentless since last December.

Sorry. I know this is all confusing and I'm not the best " explainer " in

the world. Please let me know if I can clarify any of this for you!

Hi ,

I'm sorry you had a pseudocyst but I'm very grateful to be able to talk

to

someone who has had a pseudocyst. Mine is also on the tail of my

pancreas.

, what is a stent? What did the doctors say made the cyst burst?

Did

the doctor say how large your pseudocyst was? The only option my doctor

has

given me so far is if the cyst continues to grow or I stay in pain (as I

have

been the last two weeks), they will go in and drain it with a needle.

The pain that I have been having is in my left and right side, across my

stomach and I even have pain in my lower abdomen ( I guess you might say

I

hurt all over). Also, I'm running a low-grade fever. Was your symptoms

like

this? As I've said before, I think I ask too many questions, but I'm

scared

and want to have as much information as I can when I see the doctor.

Thanks again for sharing your experience and I hope and pray the pain

you are

having now will go away.

Carole