Ive been in the hospital

[meirish]

Im going to just do some ad lib here regarding the bleed and current health.This posting may help keep me from having to start another thread. I have continued to get stronger only to become weaker at times. My hgb continues to drop and I had some weird stuff going on this fall. Oct 2022....

Had hgb of 10.4 and then down to 9.6 but these numbers have not made me feel really bad in the past. BuI have had bad pounding of my heart and shortness of breath off and on even when sitting and reading and not feeling stressed. My heart rate will go up at times but I am on a Beta blocker so that keeps pulse below 100 usually during these spells. My doctor can't figure this out and on one visit a PA told me you have complained of the same symptoms for the last 3 visits.

So I ended up with 14 days Holter monitor plus had to see pulmonologist who ruled out any breathing issues that would cause the shortness of breath and pounding heart. Scheduled to see cardiologist next month. Amazing how we have to wait so long to see specialists these days. Since Covid it seems like the whole world is in a hurry, stressed and unorganized plus short of help...a big problem for sure.

Also, the latest hiccup is I got a call from the radiology department at local hospital who is bum/with another bigger hospital where I was treated for GI bleed. I had an MRI on admit with the bleed and they found a couple small lesions on my pancreas and the call was to schedule me for a one year MRI recheck. So, had that done today. We had 15 cases of covid in the senior living where I am at so I put myself in more or less quarantine for about 2 weeks prior to this MRI so I didn't get the covid and have to reschedule the MRI...which I have had to do once already due to illness.

I have had issues with stomach and colon besides my bleeders and this has been since 2016. Lots of issues and hard to assess stuff. I keep telling docs that I am of the opinion that this is involving my pancreas and related to the sjogrens. I have done research on this and my symptoms are pretty suspicious. I even wondered if I had a chronic pancreatitis at one time. Asked PA to do blood work and one pancreatic enzyme was a little elevated which made me more suspicious. And then I started to feel better.

So, I am better in some ways and worse in others. Ain't that the way it is with autoimmune diseases.lol Enough of this for now. Hope all of you are enduring and have not been affected too much by the covid this past year. I just read last week that another variant is into the US now and shows signs of causing more hospitalizations. When will this burn itself out??? May we and our families and friends all stay safe. Take care and stay warm and safe with this crazy winter weather. Hugs to all. meirish

[meirish]

A person just has to pay attention to their health issues. This was never more apparent than after having the MRI of my pancreas on FEb. 6th this month. I kept thinking I would hear from somebody about the results by the end of the week. Nada!

So waited for something the next week. It is now 10 days since the MRI which lasted close to an hour. Have heard nothing. It has occurred to me that the hospital where I had first MRI done just let my hometown hospital know that it was due and hometown hospital scheduled it.  I figured hometown hospital would send results to my primary clinic in the same town. Then it hit me that the big hospital that ordered the smaller hospital to do the MRI was maybe the one that all the info was sent to. And....you know, they probably thought the hometown hospital sent the same info to my primary doctors or my GI doctors. Apparently someone is sitting on this info!!

So, I sent a message on my portal to my PA (my primary hasn't returned from maternity leave yet) and will see what she can come up with. Let her know that I wasn't worrying yet cause no one has told me I needed to. One would think that if this report on my pancreas was bad news I would have heard by now from some soul out in the big world.

Sooo, this is the way the world operates at times and that means we all have to really keep track of our tests and info. Maybe the doctors should be paying us a percentage. One can only hope.
Take care all and stay warm or dry or whatever you need with this crazy weather. meirish

[sixty]

Yes!  There have been so many times where I thought a Dr's office or a pharmacy should've put me on their payroll!

[Carolina]

Irish, my husband had the exact same thing, except we caught it early.

When the told me they might have to do 'exploratory surgery' (they could not believe it was from the removal of a polyp in his colon NINE DAYS EARLIER) I got dizzy and they put ME on a stretcher until I recovered.

This was about 6 pm.  At 12 am they realized it was his colon and used a medication which shuts down the bleed.  It worked.  He had to have two units of blood.  And recovered quite well. He was only 45 years old.

Scary to realize how bad it could have been without going through ER at Harvard's Brigham hospital in Boston.  This is we live near two medical centers, Duke, and The University of North Carolina, Irish.  The best makes a big difference.

Elaine

[meirish]

Well, I sent a message to my PA and she got back to me. She had gotten the results of the MRI just that day. Everything is ok with my pancreas. The areas are still there and I have to go in next Feb and have the same thing done again. My insurance company will love that. I have cost them a fortune over these past 20 years but it has been a very good policy for me.

Come to find out my oldest son who also has very severe Hashimotos of thyroid and is on cellcept had a couple small lesions on his pancreas a few years ago and had to have a scan and then a scan of some sort months down the road. They said it was something not worrisome and he did not have to go back. He never remembers or even thinks to ask for the details so I will never know for sure what his was.

We had 3 boys...hubby had celiac sprue and a type of colitis that went with the sprue. Each of the three boys have autoimmune diseases. One son has celiac disease and his son got it when he was 3 years old. Both are on gluten free diets and do well. One son has Hashimotos plus Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and something weird with B cells that have to be checked every 6 months as they feel it can turn into leukemia...so says the oncologist who sorted all this out. This was diagnosed at Mayo Clinic. They thought he had leukemia and then lymphoma so he was glad to settle with these diagnoses. Very odd to have chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia in men as that is usually a woman's disease.

It is hard to have this happen to our kids as many of you probably know. Makes a person feel so guilty but there is no way to prevent it. Have to make sure the family is well educated on the autoimmune diseases that are out there and get to doctors for any symptoms. Take care all. meirish