Intussusception

I have just returned from another trip to the ER feeling lost and was hoping someone could help me.

I am a 27 year old female. In April of this year, I was diagnosed with an intussusception of my small bowel. It was identified via cat scan. I was taken in for emergency surgery. When the surgeon opened me up, she found that the intussusception had spontaneously corrected itself. Therefore, she did not do a resection. I was slow to recover from the surgery. I was in the hospital for 8 days.

A month later I was still having pain. It is upper left sided pain right under my rib cage. Fearing a reocurrence the doctor sent me for a CT which came back normal.  About two weeks after that, I developed gall bladder problems. My gall bladder basically stopped working. They removed it. My down time was a week.

Approximately one month after THAT surgery, I began having more abdominal problems. My GI also began looking for causes of the intussusception because appently in adults, there is usually a specific cause for it. I have had a colonoscopy, an EGD, a small bowel series as well as multiple cat scans and blood work. All have come back normal. Yet my pain persists.

My ongoing symptoms are persistant upper left sided and upper right sided pain that's usually under the rib cage. The pain radiates to my shoulders and back. I have very high pitched bowel sounds, occasional nausea and vomitting, weight loss and fatigue. These episodes seem to come once or twice a month and each episode becomes more painful. My bowel habits are never normal. I'm either very constipated or have severe diarrhea. When I am somewhat "normal" I use the bathroom no less than 3 times a day.

Right now, my pain is so severe that I can hardly sit. They discharged me from the ER tonight stating that I have "unexplained abdominal pain". They wrote me more pain meds and sent me on my way. This is so frustrating. I feel like they will never find whats wrong. I am going to see a group of digestive disease specialists on the 10th for a second opinion. I was hoping maybe someone here might have some ideas of what I could ask them to test for. Thanks in advance.

Sarah