What’s wrong with me, hospital clueless

[elm26]

Yesterday at 1pm, I put my 6 month old on the rug with his toys and went for a wee.

As I was walking back I had a sudden severe pain in my right side radiating into my lower back and up to my shoulder, I was in agony.

I called DH who was luckily only on a job 15 mins away, he came straight home and took one look at me and called ambulance, I was shouting out in pain they gave me gas and air and morphine.

I had an emergency CT when dye last night and also have a catheter as lost the ability to wee. Nothing showed on CT, they got me settled on morphine and today I’ve had a transvaginal scan which shows ovaries and womb look normal.

Gynae can’t find a reason so they’ve stopped painkillers and just giving me paracetamol but somethings wrong I feel like somebody’s twisting my insides. The gynae consultant was horrible and said the surgical team will come see me if they think it’s worth it?? So I’m waiting for that if they come.

I’m in so much pain and genuinely scared they’ll send me home not knowing what is wrong with me.

Has anyone has anything similar?

Dd has coeliac disease and was diagnosed as an inpatient quite quickly after becoming suddenly very unwell. She collapsed due to malnutrition though rather than collapsing in pain.

Are they talking about doing an endoscopy now? Dd had hers as an inpatient.

have to agree I don’t recognise the level of,pain you’re experiencing though. She felt sick, she was being sick, she struggled to eat and had bad stomach ache/cramps. I appreciate it could be different for others though.

Normally they wouldn't get the TTG (coeliac test) back for a few weeks. Total IgA is measured with coeliac tests as if it is low, it can make a coeliac return falsely negative.

High heart rate with pain is expected but the low BP/low sats are concerning.
Can you ask for medics review if no surgical causes found?

Perhaps this is a case of 'to a hammer, every problem is a nail.'

This is not a differential list - I'm just writing this to show that there are many many other/medical causes of abdominal pain outside what a surgeon may consider.
E.g. lupus can cause raised IgA, angioedema (swelling symptoms) and lupus can also cause mesenteric ischaemia causing abdominal pain (but you'd likely have other symptoms of lupus if you had this).

Biliary dyskinesia/sphincter of oddi dysfunction (probably falls under surgeons)
Lead poisoning, malaria, peptic ulcer etc.

Have they excluded adrenal insufficiency?
Are they considering angioneurotic oedema with abdominal pain as a manifestation (this would be a diagnosis of exclusion)?

"High heart rate with pain is expected but the low BP/low sats are concerning.
Can you ask for medics review if no surgical causes found?"

It can be a reflex response to pain. The vagal nerve is triggered and causes the blood vessels to widen, which drops the BP. If someone isn't taking effective breaths (the OP describes screaming in pain - you can't breathe well if you're screaming) then that can cause sats to drop. I suspect that given the OP's description of nurses putting cool packs on her cheeks and chest, she was having a panic attack prompted by the sudden pain with unknown cause. Perfectly understandable, but probably not related to the cause of the pain directly. What I mean by that is that, for example, a stabbing would cause extreme pain and the BP/sats drop because of blood loss. This sounds more like a physiological response to pain because the observations returned to normal or near normal (it seems) once the episode had passed.

Agree if episodic but I'd read from OP that BP and sats were consistently low in earlier posts. I'll go back and re-read in case I've missed something you've picked up on that I haven't.

The fact that OP has been having 'copious amounts of morphine', tramadol, codeine, etc., may contribute to low BP. This is why her medical team is best place to decide if it's concerning. Ultimately, if they were concerned, they'd do something about it.

I'm not sure it's helpful (generally) for people to decide that treatment is sub standard when they haven't got an accurate picture of the situation.

Sometimes it's really obvious that bad treatment is taking place ("I'm still covered in blood and vomit from last night, I can't walk to the toilet and nobody will bring me a bed pan") but this, I feel, is different. @elm26 is understandably concerned that she's experiencing pain and that the team aren't taking it seriously, but she's had lots of scans, presumably an exploratory laparotomy, and is being treated.

I understand the comment. But I pity the patients who have doctors so afraid of admitting they don’t know what the problem is yet, that the doctors try say it’s in the patients head.

Dr Google can be helpful. “Hear hooves, think horses… but remember that zebras exist”.

My GP used a similar phase when my son had an unusual diagnosis “looks like we have found a zebra” he sounded almost excited.

It is exciting. I'd say the majority of my colleagues (vets) are more interested in problem solving and pondering than the actual patient per se. Of course they care, but the driving force is the challenge.

Gosh I am so sorry your nightmare continues. You mentioned antidepressants - have you by any chance reduced or come off these? My daughter was coming off sertraline with an advice of a psychiastrist, but as she started to lower her dose she suddenly got severe stomach pain which she unfortunately still has daily several years later.

Some of us mentioned mast cell activation syndrome. If you have ceoliacs (I have ceoliacs) but you are not on a ceoliac diet, the ville in your stomach have been wearing away and you likely have leaky gut. I am guessing then you have too much histamine in your body. My daughter has a diamine oxidase blood test which suggested has an issue with histamine. She also gets stomach migraines.

"Dr" Google doesn't say you're lying or dismiss your symptoms. I'm so sorry you're going through this OP 💐

my mum has diverticulitis and what you describe as the twisting pain sounds like her in a flare up. You need gastro and fast? Gynae won’t do naff all. I also have bowel disease and celiac and the attacks I get are horrific and only morphine controls them. I’d be asking for a colonoscopy aswell to see what’s going on.

FFS things have moved on a bit

RTFT or at least all the OP's posts.

Wow I didn't realise this existed so interesting and yes op h needs to use this,

Thank you for the information 👍

They have decided to do another CT scan of my kidneys to check for stones as I couldn’t keep still during my first one (when I was admitted the very first time) I was screaming in pain and wriggling around so they think now they may have not got good enough images.

It's good they are being thorough a d rechecking stuff. Keep positive.

That's good, you definitely have to keep still for scans to be any use. When I had my kidney issue they just abandoned a scan half way through because I couldn't keep still due to pain (they made sure they dosed me up really good before they did another scan!)

With the swelling OP have you looked up MCAS?

Another thing I'd what them to look at his Ulcerative Colitis,I have it and when I have a bad relapse it's worse than being in labour(and I've had 5 DC and I have a stupidly high pain threshold)Ulcerative Colitis pain can be unbearable and it can make you really seriously ill.

I hope you start getting better treatment and they find out what's wrong.

Have they ruled out a hernia? I know someone who had one attached to her bowel that used to spasm & cause her agonising pain

Imagine if it is a kidney stone now like loads of people said and they are too incompetent to diagnose that 😡 well I hope for your sake it is, as treatable and you can get sorted but I’d be so cross!

Difficult to judge when op has said she couldn’t keep still and so results wouldn't have been as clear as hoped. But the pain she’s describing doesn’t sound typical for kidney stones so maybe initially it was discarded as a possibility as they searched extensively for other causes

As a veteran of stones I can tell you that one day they show up, and the next they dont. Scans are not fool proof and doctors dont have xray vision.

I would agree with this.
A friend of mine had a lump on one side of her tummy. A scan was done and the sonographer diagnosed an ovarian cyst. It was the size of a small tangerine, apparently. 😮
She went in for an op and was surprised when she was back on the ward so quickly. It seems the surgeon couldn't find it !
She's had no problems since and the lump has gone. Go figure 🙄

Yep, Ive had this with various kidney stones, yes it is, no it isnt, yes it is, no it isnt, then gall stones, yes it is, no it isnt yes it is.

It currently isnt.

Had similar. Had a ct scan for abdominal pain and they told me they saw a mass there so I was really worried thinking I had cancer. They kept me in the hospital waiting for a free emergency slot for surgery for a couple of days (then let me go home for the weekend then back in on the Sunday night) then I had surgery and they found nothing. Then I was in even worse pain afterwards and they wouldn't let me eat in case food was making it worse. Horrible couple of weeks for absolutely nothing!