Re: stomach pain- both sharp and burning pain, lumpy areas in ...

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 10/8/2004 10:48:46 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

karenw@... writes:

I am so frustrated. It is hard enough to deal with my typical panc pain.

These new pains are very hard to deal with. I keep trying to come up with

some logical reason for this new pain. If anyone has any ideas, I'd be very

grateful.

Hi : after reading all of the surgeries that you have had I believe

that you have an obstruction in your intestines. I had five major surgeries

all

in my belly and I have an obstruction in my intestines. When you described

the pain and the distended belly and how the pain moves throughout your

abdomen you described my systems completely. Obstructions are soooooooo

painful.

I found that certain medications changed the motility of my intestines and

when I took them I would have an obstruction almost immediately. I changed my

meds from the ones that slow down the motility to ones that don't effect the

intestines in that way. That has helped a lot. I don't eat nuts, peelings,

or anything with a lot of roughage. I get most of my roughage from

Metamucil. Metamucil moves the stool along and helps to keep an obstruction

from

happening.

I know someone else who had surgery to help with her obstruction. She had

many surgeries also. The last time I talked with her she said that the

surgery didn't help her and she is in constant pain. My heart goes out to her

since she was in so much pain. I hope she has found some relief since I last

spoke with her.

I will not agree to surgery for my obstructions due to the fact that more

surgery means more scar tissue. Some people develop more scar tissue than

others and we have had so many surgeries there surly is much scar tissue in our

bellies. I hope you feel better very soon and if I can help you in any way

let me know. Shirley

[Guest guest]

Shirley,

thanks for your post. It's a been a long time since we've 'talked', but I still

remember back in 2000 when you were fighting so hard to have Dr. Sutherland do

your surgery. When you say you have obstructions in your intestines from all

the surgeries, do you mean that the obstructions were just temporary and they

got better without surgery? As I'm sitting here, it occurs to me that your post

makes a lot of sense. Perhaps I've got several places where there's some scar

tissue built up so it makes it easy for things to get 'caught up' and disrupt

the flow of things. Of course, the problem with having surgery to get rid of

scar tissue is that any additional surgery is going to make additional scar

tissue. Of course, the majority of scar tissue doesn't cause any problems, but

there's always the risk that it could. My problem is that I have honestly tried

just about everything in the book to keep things moving and the problem has been

getting progressively worse. I've tried metamucil, benefiber, miralax, phillips

milk of magnesia, stool softeners, and even laxatives such as ex-lax, correctol.

For the most part, for the last couple of months, and to a much lesser degree

for the last few years, it seems it is either one extreme or the other. I

either can't go at all or I have almost totally watery diarrhea. I have told my

doctors I have problems, but I really don't think I've made them understand just

how bad it is. There is a medication called lactolose that some of the people

in my liver disease group have to take it every day because once you get near

end stage cirrhosis, your liver isn't able to clear the toxins out of your body.

Without taking the lactolose to clear the toxins, you develop hepatic

encephalopathy.

Thanks for your post. Hopefully, I'll find some way to get this problem under

control.

W

[Guest guest]

Shirley,

I think the worst culprit is my pain meds. When you take narcotic pain med

every single day, it's bound to slow things down. don't worry - I won't rush

into surgery.

take care,

W