Upper Abdominal Pain

[Wedinchi]

My wife was sent to the hospital about 5 months ago with what appeared to be a abcess in her lower colon.  Ever since then she has been suffering from increasing pain in her upper right abdomen (especially sever at night).  She also suffers from chills, nausea (recently leading to vomiting), and acid reflux (at night) into her esophagus.  She is also Type I Diabetic and suffers from CIDP.  Her gastroenterologist has performed a colonoscopy, capsule endoscopy, ultrasound, ct scan, and gastric emptying test.  He has not been able to find anything beyond a slightly fatty liver which he is not concerned about.  The pain is getting increasingly unbearable for her and the doctor said he might just write it off as IBS, but I am very uncomfortable about this.  Is there something else we should be looking at?  Thank you very much for your help.

[jlg17]

how old is you wife..?

[ggreg]

WEDINCHI,  You know, I had a perfectly clear colonoscopy, and yet not too long after, I had a scan that showed I had diverticulum (little sacs) thruout my colon.  Now, diverticulitis is when those things get infected and inflammation can set in.  And the symptoms of that, they line up almost precisely with your wife's problems, which the symptoms if diverticulitis are:  nausea, vomiting, severe abdominal pain, fever, chills, weight loss.

Diverticulitis can also lead to abscess, which they had thought initially your wife might have.  Small ones can respond to antibiotics, but if not, they've got to drain that thing and perhaps surgically remove some of the tissue.  But this is not an absolute outcome of diverticulitis, so let us set that aside for now.

I think you and your wife should either go to a different doctor than before or go on over to the ER, and I think she needs to be looked at in terms of having diverticulitis, and a physician there should palpate her abdomen (thump and push), do a CT scan and ultrasound, and also bloodwork is needed to check if her blood cell count that indicates infection.  Diverticulitis cannot just be allowed to go on like it is.  She may need to be hospitalized and receive intravenous antibiotics, and I personally think her symptom level is so high that this may be what the physician decides.

Now, some docs will automatically think she has a problem with her appendix, so it's important that this poss abscess and diverticulitis be mentioned so they don't go too far over in that other direction and miss the diagnosis of diverticulitis.  Now, for all I know, this is not the situation.  But I agree with you, I am not comfortable AT ALL with how that doc bases his opinion on a bunch of tests and doesn't even do the ones that are SUPPOSED to be done with her symptoms, which I've told to you, AND this same doc apparently does not know how to listen to a patient and determine a tenative diagnosis based on those symptoms, which a good doc would at least THINK of diverticulitis.  And THAT is why I told you about my colonoscopy turning out just fine, and yet a scan showed I have all these diverituculi in my gut.  And I DID get written up as having IBS.  Keep us posted, hope she gets the help she needs soon.  GG