Can anyone help me with a gastroenterology mystery ?

[CMOTDibbler]

My mum has dementia - with specific problems about language, both expressive and receptive. She was found to have very low Hb/ferritin along with nausea/vomiting and other things during an admission three weeks ago, and was referred urgently to the Gastros.
Last week she had a CT and an endoscopy.

Due to her issues, she has no idea what they are looking for, and if anything has been said in front of my dad, he doesn't understand either.

Today someone rang her and told her that in two weeks she is to go to the day case unit and have 'an injection for her stomach' which she will need to be there an hour for.

Does anyone have any idea what this might be ?

This could be a fine needle aspiration which means they might have seen something on the scans that requires further investigation and they might want to test some tissue. Could you speak to her GP and nominate yourself as her carer then they will keep you in the loop on all of this. It sounds awful that someone with known dementia is being expected to remember or understand these things.

I can't think what they would biopsy like that with a short stay - liver biopsy is a 6 hour stay.

But I'm very aware that these investigations are looking for a tumour - mum and dad aren't though.

Are you sure they didn't mean an injection to help with a stomach problem? Could be vitamin b12 if she's anaemic because her stomach can't absorb vitamin b12?

Sounds like pernicious anaemia - possibly that's what the injections at the hospital are for?

Meant to add - the injections would be vitamin B12 injections

At a guess, it might be that she has a small bleeding blood vessel in her stomach lining that might be bleeding and causing her to be anaemic. They can inject the blood vessel via endoscopy to stop the bleeding.

Contact the hospital and see if one of specialists can clarify what treatment she will be getting.

TBH, they could have meant just about anything Mums ability to process and retain anything said to her is pretty low.

I don't think she'd need to go to hospital and have B12 given on a ward though - looks like that could be done in outpatients or by GP

Second jalopy

GP would sort out B12 injections via the practice or district nurses.

Would they do the bleeding vessel injection separately to the diagnostic endoscopy ?

Oh, and thank you so much for replying. I'm beating myself up that I can't be with them for all their appointments, or there to care for them, so all I can do is worry

Turned out that it was for an iron infusion. And now she has an appointment for a sigmoidoscopy on Sunday, so they are obv still looking for something

I highly doubt they can do an iron infusion in an hour! Mine take all day and I'm often not out until 7/8pm ish

Well, thats what they told dad it was, and he's pretty reliable

quite possiblyit is an infusion if she has low ferritin but be warned it takes hours and hours. They have to do blood tests to decide exactly how much to infuse then wait for the results to come back then get the right infusion made up. Then they infuse very slowly and stop every 15 mins for the first hour to check you aren;t going into anaphalactic (?!) shock then speed it up gradually. But I can;t imagine even a small amount would take less than 4/5 hours. I'm normally there 10 hrs!

From a quick google, it seems Venofer only takes an hour, which is how long she was having it - it delivers less than Cosmofer which must be what you have.

I guess they may just be topping her up while they try and establish what is going on, rather than doing a big correction, but I'm guessing madly !

must google Venofer - would be much better to go in more often for an hour than be there all bleedin' day less often

OP - can you not write a short note for your parents to sign giving permission for proffesionals to discuss their care with you ?