Undiagnosed Abdominal pain

[okinhim]

My wife is having severe upper middle abdominal pain (epigastric) that started as we noticed after eating a salad with balsamic vinaigrette dressing. She had a total abdominal hysterectomy less than a year before the pain started. It would cause her to ball up into the fetal position and she couldn’t do anything to help the pain. She tried a heating pad that would sometimes ease the pain a little but she ended up burning her stomach with overuse. This has been going on for over 3 years with one break of about 2.5 months. She has been through several GI specialist and had all the test they could think of, Hita Scan (sp?), with and without avulsion fraction, numerous CAT scans, MRI’s, X-Rays, internal and external ultrasounds, upper and lower endoscopies, blood work and urine tests. They have checked for blocked blood vessels and she had a cardiac stress test.  She was in the ER every other week where she was given dilaudid and phenergan to ease the spike of pain and nausea. On a couple of the visits the medical staff stated that her symptoms all appeared to be gall bladder issues. One nurse had worked with a GI specialist and told us to check on something called sludge in the gall bladder. After the first 14 months a dr. decided to treat the symptoms instead of the test and took out her Gall Bladder. The surgeon said the organ was chronically inflamed and diseased so needed to come out.

She then had 2-3 good months where the pain was minimal and seemed only to occur after eating fatty foods so we associated it with her diet. But then she had a reoccurrence of the pain. It was in the same place, directly below the zyphoid process, and was a “gnawing” pain as she described it. Concurrently with the relapse of pain she had a problem with her hands and knees that brought her to a Rheumatologist who has been treating her for Rheumatoid arthritis with Fentanyl patches to also help with the epigastric pain. She has been on Anti-depressants for at least 18 years and seeing a Psychiatrist consistently for the last 4 years. Several time the GI docs have said they thought it could be a psych issue. We agree that stress makes it worse but the pain causes her to groan and shrivel into the fetal position even in her sleep, I can’t believe a mental issue would do that. Depression makes pain worse and pain makes depression worse so she is in a horrible loop. We are scheduled to see another specialist in the beginning of April at Johns Hopkins. We are looking for anyone with insight or ideas to bring to them. We know she will be going through all the test again and will do whatever it takes to find the cause. She can’t take NSAID’s so has a problem with the basic route of medications.

Please if anyone can help

[CalGal]

Okinhim, consider looking into sphincter of Oddi dysfunction (SOD): http****
It can cause the same pain and misery as gallbladder attacks. It's often overlooked.

Tell your wife this is not in her head - it's the doc's that should have their heads examined if they think it is.