- Location
- East Prairie, Mo
This morning, well yesterday now, I finally had the opportunity to get to a GI.
My story starts back in June of 2010, I had been married for 3 months when out of no where I started to have extreme pain in my RLQ, but I am a pastor and that week was Bible School so I decided that I was too busy to go to the hospital. I toughed it out and preached my younger sister's wedding two weeks later, still having not gone to the hospital. Then 2 weeks later I was blessed to still be around to take my High School students to a Teen convention. During this whole time I was losing weight, in severe waxing and waning pain in my RLQ and back, vomiting often and constant diarrhea.
Finally my wife talked me into going to the hospital as I crawled up the steps to our bed room. 8 hours later I left the hospital with a diagnosis, community acquired C. Diff. 30 minutes later as we sat at breakfast the hospital called me to come back and be rechecked because the second reading of my CT was suspicious. 3 hours later, having still never seen a surgeon with a rock hard abdomen I was released with a confirmation of C. Diff.
After a month and two clear C Diff tests with the same pain and problems my wife forced me to go back to the ER, it had gotten bad enough she called my mother and a retired pastor friend to help her. That afternoon I was blessed to have a Doc that I worked with often attending to me, I volunteered on one of the Fire Departments he oversaw. Knowing me, he took more time and was determined to find the issue, EMS providers don't just come to the ER.
During that exam he pulled the CT from the month prior and saw inflammation, 2 minutes later I am getting pain meds and the surgeon shows up and diagnosis me with appendicitis. My first hospital stay was 14 days, halfway through I had a resectioning. After that they told me I was fine and life continued as normal, I still had Diarrhea but I assumed that was because of having a shorter colon and my PCP nor surgeon never seemed concerned.
Fast forward to July 2013, we had moved half way across the country less than a year before, our second child has just arrived and we are doing our best to love on our little ones. My In-laws had come to visit, and I love my in-laws, but I am just not feeling right. I end up laid up in bed chugging MOM hoping to clear this constipation and things end up better. That is, until they didn't I had progressively begun feeling worse through to late August. Then it hit me hard, I couldn't sit, stand, lay down or do anything to find comfort. I swore my bowel resectioning had come apart. It got so bad I called for an ambulance and scared my dispatcher because she could hear it in my voice.
The local ambulance here can not give pain meds for abdominal pain so I sent them home and had my wife take me to the ER. The ER started with morphine and shortly there after I had a CT done and they were pushing Dilaudid and a surgeon was coming in. I had a bowel abscess, 13 days, 4 JP drain and 2 failed interventional radiology drains later I am sent home still not knowing what the issue is.
Late September I had a colonoscopy and the words of doom hit me, Crohn's Disease.
Since then, due to not having insurance and waiting on the state to approve Medicaid, I have been limping along on sulfasalazine, which did not work, prednisone and hydrocodone. Until this passed morning when I finally am able to see the GI because the state finally came through, funny how it takes so long for the working man.
Things seem to be moving fasted and are scarier now, but they are moving. This coming morning I go in for an Upper GI and Small Bowel Series followed by blood work and TB test. My GI has said it seems like I have a Stricture and if that is the case I would have surgery again, but he wants me ready to start biologics ASAP.
The idea of going straight to the "big guns", as he put it, both concerns and comforts me. It concerns me because I want to have more options, I am not quite familiar with the meds on either way and it gives me concern that I am worse than I believed, but it comforts me in that he wants to manage this aggressively.
At this point my head is just spinning and I am trying to learn as much as I can.
I know my TB test will come back exposed, after 13 years on the ambulance that's no surprise, and that a chest x-ray will be the next step there as well as Hep B test since I can't locate my shot records. Otherwise at this point I am just having my head spin around me in circles.
But through all of this my wife has been my rock and my world, it is for her that I praise God the most.
Grace and Peace
Mark
My story starts back in June of 2010, I had been married for 3 months when out of no where I started to have extreme pain in my RLQ, but I am a pastor and that week was Bible School so I decided that I was too busy to go to the hospital. I toughed it out and preached my younger sister's wedding two weeks later, still having not gone to the hospital. Then 2 weeks later I was blessed to still be around to take my High School students to a Teen convention. During this whole time I was losing weight, in severe waxing and waning pain in my RLQ and back, vomiting often and constant diarrhea.
Finally my wife talked me into going to the hospital as I crawled up the steps to our bed room. 8 hours later I left the hospital with a diagnosis, community acquired C. Diff. 30 minutes later as we sat at breakfast the hospital called me to come back and be rechecked because the second reading of my CT was suspicious. 3 hours later, having still never seen a surgeon with a rock hard abdomen I was released with a confirmation of C. Diff.
After a month and two clear C Diff tests with the same pain and problems my wife forced me to go back to the ER, it had gotten bad enough she called my mother and a retired pastor friend to help her. That afternoon I was blessed to have a Doc that I worked with often attending to me, I volunteered on one of the Fire Departments he oversaw. Knowing me, he took more time and was determined to find the issue, EMS providers don't just come to the ER.
During that exam he pulled the CT from the month prior and saw inflammation, 2 minutes later I am getting pain meds and the surgeon shows up and diagnosis me with appendicitis. My first hospital stay was 14 days, halfway through I had a resectioning. After that they told me I was fine and life continued as normal, I still had Diarrhea but I assumed that was because of having a shorter colon and my PCP nor surgeon never seemed concerned.
Fast forward to July 2013, we had moved half way across the country less than a year before, our second child has just arrived and we are doing our best to love on our little ones. My In-laws had come to visit, and I love my in-laws, but I am just not feeling right. I end up laid up in bed chugging MOM hoping to clear this constipation and things end up better. That is, until they didn't I had progressively begun feeling worse through to late August. Then it hit me hard, I couldn't sit, stand, lay down or do anything to find comfort. I swore my bowel resectioning had come apart. It got so bad I called for an ambulance and scared my dispatcher because she could hear it in my voice.
The local ambulance here can not give pain meds for abdominal pain so I sent them home and had my wife take me to the ER. The ER started with morphine and shortly there after I had a CT done and they were pushing Dilaudid and a surgeon was coming in. I had a bowel abscess, 13 days, 4 JP drain and 2 failed interventional radiology drains later I am sent home still not knowing what the issue is.
Late September I had a colonoscopy and the words of doom hit me, Crohn's Disease.
Since then, due to not having insurance and waiting on the state to approve Medicaid, I have been limping along on sulfasalazine, which did not work, prednisone and hydrocodone. Until this passed morning when I finally am able to see the GI because the state finally came through, funny how it takes so long for the working man.
Things seem to be moving fasted and are scarier now, but they are moving. This coming morning I go in for an Upper GI and Small Bowel Series followed by blood work and TB test. My GI has said it seems like I have a Stricture and if that is the case I would have surgery again, but he wants me ready to start biologics ASAP.
The idea of going straight to the "big guns", as he put it, both concerns and comforts me. It concerns me because I want to have more options, I am not quite familiar with the meds on either way and it gives me concern that I am worse than I believed, but it comforts me in that he wants to manage this aggressively.
At this point my head is just spinning and I am trying to learn as much as I can.
I know my TB test will come back exposed, after 13 years on the ambulance that's no surprise, and that a chest x-ray will be the next step there as well as Hep B test since I can't locate my shot records. Otherwise at this point I am just having my head spin around me in circles.
But through all of this my wife has been my rock and my world, it is for her that I praise God the most.
Grace and Peace
Mark
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