I am 33 years old and in constant pain. I can no longer have intimacy with my long time boyfriend due to the pain it causes. It hurts to empty my bladder. My stomach swells up if I eat or drink. I have nausea all day every day. My stomach hurts after meals. I am having trouble having a bowel movement. My lower back hurts very much. I do not have my appendix or gall bladder, and I have had 2 c-sections. I had laproscopic surgery in Nov. 2007 and they found endometriosis and my ovary was adhered to the abdominal wall, they did a DNC and hoped I would get better. I did not and so we scheduled a hysterectomy for Jan. 2008. I had my tubes tied in 1998 after my son was born and had been having horrible periods. After the hysterectomy I began recovery and about 3-4 weeks later pain started and I got constipated and they did a cat scan to make sure I didn't have a hernia and I didn't. So, they told me to wait and 2 months after that it had gotten worse and my OBGYN went in laproscopically and found so much scar tissue and it was really dense and several loops of my bowel were adhered to my abdominal wall that he had to do a large incision to take care of it. 4 weeks later I had terrible pain and constipation and nausea like the last time and I ended up in the ER and my bowel sounds had stopped and I had a mass larger than a softball in my abdomen. They went in vertically to remove it and it was adhered to the bowel, bladder and ovary. It was benign. They took both my ovaries out and tubes and lasered more endometriosis. I am now 2 months out doing horrible. They continue to find nothing on the cat scans and x rays. They had put Seprafilm in me on the last surgery and my OBGYN let me go due to the fact that I had no other female parts and he could do no more plus he didn't feel that it was adhesions since I had Seprafilm used. I was later referred to a general surgeon who discredited all of my surgeries and told me there was no proof of pain. He recommended a pych. evaluation. I had just seen a urologist and there was no infection and he scoped my bladder and there was nothing wrong but he said he would only assist someone if they did surgery, he wouldn't take the lead. I was referred to a gastro. doc and he scoped my stomach and found nothing, he did a small bowel series and found nothing, he did an ultrasound of my liver and pancreas and found nothing. I do have IBS and so that is what everyone has decided is the problem however I never had this much trouble with IBS before my surgery in Jan. I do have anxiety and depression and am in therapy and have been for several years. They have decided that it is all in my head and I am losing hope. Can someone please offer me some support. I need someone to take me seriously and help me. I can't take much more of this.
Scaredma,
Thank you for contacting our center. Your story is not one we have not heard before, so please don't feel like you are alone on this. We will be happy to help you.The first step will be to complete the forms already sent to you via email by Paulette. Once we receive them, with your medical records we will then review it and get back with you asap. Please feel free to write me at any time with any questions.
Cristiane R Silva RN
CAPPS Coordinator
cristiane.ruiz@flhosp.org
Hi Scaredma,
I understand where you are coming from. I am a former patient of CAPPS and am doing much better because of how great the doctors and staff are at CAPPS. No one was able to treat me successfully until I met Dr. Redan and Dr. McCarus. I encourage you to call Cris, the nurse coordinator for CAPPS....she is awesome and very understanding. I truly believe if anyone can help you, the staff at CAPPS can! I have been pain free for 2 years and still going....Best of luck to you!
Sarah
Sarah,
Thank you so much for responding. I truly hope that CAPPS can help me. I emailed Cris and am hoping to hear back from her soon. I have lots of questions. I don't live in Florida so I am worried that an option to go might not be available to me. I am so happy that you are pain free, it gives me so much hope to hear that.
My partner has had some of the same symptoms as Scaredma. She has had 8 surgeries to get rid of the adhesions. All the surgeries do is cause more adhesions to grow. The newest development is that she has been constipated for 4 months. All the doctors say it is from her pain meds. They have given her suppositories, go litely, merilax, lactulose, had her drink magnesium citrate and nothing works. None of the doctors her in Idaho want to explore any further or even look to see if the adhesions have closed off her bowls. We are afraid that the adhesions have closed off the bowls and need someone to care enough to look into this. She is to the point of giving up. We don't know what to do. She has family in Florida so she could get there but there is a problem. She is on Idaho Medicaid and if she is out of state she has to go to the ER and can't go to a clinic. We need to get into your clinic so can you help her get in? Do any of your doctors work in the ER?