Hi all, I know I am bad about staying in touch when I'm doing well, but I'm back again because something is going on with my system and it's starting to freak me out.

Let me start back a little ways. On Saturday night I was with my son across town at a function my oldest brother's wife works to setup. Since my son is now 14 months I decided to start heading home as it was going to be well past his bedtime 30 minutes later when I pulled in the driveway. Well, on the way home I stopped at a fast food place (Wendy's) near my house and picked up a burger.

I was in the middle of getting my son fed and wolfing down the burger when I started feeling like I had gotten punched in an area below the sternum and all the way down to my scar near my bellybutton. Yuck. Well, soon after, my wife made it back from the wedding she was doing photography for so she took over with my son and had me go to bed. I spent the next full day mostly in bed and didn't really eat much but I drank lots of water and gatoraide to stay hydrated and at occasional small handfuls of rice chex.

Monday I figured I would stay home from work just to make sure I was feeling better before heading back to the office. I should mention that I probably had a cold or virus at the same time as my nose got really stuffy, I had sweaty shivers in bed and was running a high temp of 102.6. Yuck.

Well, I felt a lot better Tuesday so I headed to work and not thinking to plan something bland ahead of time I made the dumb decision to grab a plan sandwich at Subway and eat some chips and a bit of lemonaide because I was feeling so much better.

Well, about 2.5 hours later I was having to lay down, feeling nauseous, chilled and the stomach pain returned but it was far worse.

I eventually ended up heading to the ER here and stayed there from 4 something until midnight while they gave me 1.5 MG of Delauded for the pain and we talked about what could be causing it. The doc ran my blood to make sure my CA-19-9 was good (I have PSC that was diagnosed 2 years ago) and he also tested for pancreatitis and other things even though my pain was pretty much isolated to my center of my stomach in front and radiating only a bit to my left side (maybe an inch) and only part way to my nipple on the right side.

I should also say I had been keeping track of my fever and on Tylenol to try to keep my fever down and it seemed to be working. I had a lot of mucous in my stool and at some point Sunday or Monday had one very bloody stool with a lot of mucous in it. I started feeling better at the ER after sitting up in bed (laying back hurt) so for some reason compressing my stomach helped. The ER doc didn't know if it was possibly my Prilosec not covering the acid in my system anymore so he had me double my intake of that and he put me on Percocet for the pain.

Well, I had yesterday off and everything seemed quite a bit better until today. This AM my wife left for over a week so it's myself and my son and an Aunt who just came over to help. I had a simple breakfast this morning of gluten free hot cereal with only a small amount of brown sugar and organic milk. Sure enough, it's 5+ hours later and my stomach has shooting pains, my fever is back and I feel dizzy as all get out.

I have an appointment with my GI later today that I think I'll see if my family can drive me to as Percocet (and nausea) can't be good for anyone who is driving.

The weird thing, if this was food poisoning 2x is that even possible when you forgo stuff like mayo the second time and would it give me the fever too or did my cold or virus seem to be gone and now it's back at full force?

The doc in the ER did say I had one heck of a gas bubble high up in my system and he thought that would explain why my chest hurt so much that it felt like it was going to explode. I couldn't even have him put his hands on my chest to check my pain until I had at least 1MG of Delauded in my system.

So, Jan, Roo, any of you much more well versed people have any ideas of what could be going on? I believe the doc said he didn't test my Gal Bladder but that it could be causing the problems though he wanted to test the bland diet to reduce gas and double Prilosec to make sure it's working well before going into something like my Gal Bladder.

Thanks very much in advance for any and all insights.

All the best,

-leo

The four main things that would come to mind would be a norovirus (such as the Norwalk virus) causing a gastroenteritis, a peptic ulcer, an adhesion causing a partial obstruction, or gallbladder attack. Food poisoning should have resolved with appropriate antibiotics and I would have assumed that they would have ruled it out if it was not the case.

Obviously, something is continuing to be wrong, and I guess the next step would be a CT scan. Good luck.

Jan

I'm glad you're seeing your doc again today. This sounds nasty. It could well be a gallbladder problem. My gallbladder was knackered by the time the docs found out that was the cause of my pain, and the attacks gave me fever, nausea and incredible pain. It could also be a bad stomach flu/food poisoning - that'll give you the same symptoms. But you're right to get the doc to check you thoroughly. Get well soon!

Thank you very much for reponding Jan and Soph. I appreciate it a ton. I am going to crawl downstairs and print out your posts so that I can remember to ask my Doc about all of those things when I go in to see him.

Well, I just went to see my GI and he's not super concerned about it. He thinks I have a GI bug that's going nuts or something else that Cipro is generally prescribed for so I just took the first of those in a long time. I am also going to stay on 2x dosage of Prilosec for a week now instead of a few days. I wish I could remember the technical term of what he thought it was but he thought I had a bacterial issue with my upper intestines/liver area so that's why he put me on Cipro.

Anyway, I have a call out to his nurse to remind me of the names, but it's hard to remember with my brains on painkillers.

Thanks again for your help today and I'll keep you posted.

-leo

Sounds like gastroenteritis.

Jan

Jan,
I do believe you are right. Thanks very much. Gads was that a lot of pain. I am used to the pain of gas over a long week recovering from an ERCP, but this kind of chest pain where it felt like my insides were trying to break out of my body!?!? Wow.

So I have had a Cipro in my system for about 4.5 hours now and I'd like to think that I am starting to feel better but I know it's really too early to know for sure.

Take care and thank you very much,

-leo

Well, you just insist on getting help if the cipro doesn't help. My defective gallbladder was diagnosed in the ER as "gas". In fact, I was sent crawling on hands and knees and puking in every rubbish bin along the way to take money out of a cash machine in the main building (a 10-minute crawl) because they "didn't like giving people a giro to pay, in case they didn't pay up"). Turns out my gallbladder was so infected the whole thing had to be removed ASAP, and the surgeon said "Wow - you must have been in agony"...er, YES!! So if you're still in pain, BE a pain until you get everything checked out properly. No sense in suffering in silence. Get well soon!

Anodyne, That sounds like some bug! LEt us know if it continues to subside...Always curious. Sue