To Tammy

[Guest guest]

Hi Tammy,

Hope you are feeling better back on enzymes. It won't take as long

for you to get a diagnosis to-day!!

What did the docs think was going on with me?

Childhood : " gastritis " , despite the fact that I would spend a week

at a time in agony, curled up in a ball. The think was, it didn't

happen more than once or twice a year and I appeared and felt

totally normal in between attacks.

In my 30's and early 40's : when constant pain and symptoms of

malabsorption were added (steattorhoea, weight loss etc.) : coeliac

disease. This is another malabsorption syndrome. It is treated very

successfully by adopting a gluten-free diet. Oddly, the GF diet did

help me but it was probably just coincidentally as it also led to my

adopting a lower fat diet as I cut out cakes, biscuits etc. After 15

years on a GF diet, I haven't yet dared to try gluten again

properly! My consultant thinks it's 99% unlikely I have coeliac

disease as well as chronic pancreatitis. The CP is definite (CT scan

showed all the damage and calcifications and atrophy of the

pancreas) so it seems likely the coeliac diagnosis was simply wrong.

I'll have to try gluten soon but I keep putting it off!

All through my adult life, from 35 onwards, I'd also been told I had

IBS.

CP is rare, so most docs don't think of it until late on, especially

if, like me, you haven't been hospitalised with acute pancreatitis.

Hopefully today docs are more aware of CP than they were in the

1950's and 60's.

Good luck and good wishes again, Tammy.

Fliss