April’s Story of Courage

I had always been very healthy. Got my RN while working full-time and raising the first 2 of my children. Divorced then remarried, 2 more children, no health problems, nothing to prepare me for what was to come. Something that we barely covered in nursing school was about to change all aspects of my life.
It was 1998 and unfortunately my second marriage had ended a year prior. I was living in Grand Junction, Colorado, working as an RN in a long term care facility. I had just met a very wonderful guy on-line and it seemed like everything was finally going to go well. Then ‘The Pain’, as I would come to call it, struck in the middle of a 3-11 shift.
It is a sharp, burning intermittent pain that starts just under the breastbone and shoots straight through to the right of the spine. Now, pain is a very weak word for this, because it actually feels like someone is running me through with a red-hot sword. Then it got bad. Went to the hospital after about an hour at home trying everything to make it go away. It wouldn’t. They thought it was GI upset, so they gave me the lovely GI cocktail, yuck, pain MUCH worse. They finally ran labs and discovered , pancreatitis, very acute. Oh yea, I also had salmonella at the same time, whoopie. Now the docs were really confused. They chalked it up to a one-time thing and after 7 days in-pt went home.
Went on about life. Got married to my soul mate(still married after 10+ yrs), kids growing up and such. Now I’m working in the Operating Room, talk about stress! But no real changes in my health.
I was diagnosed with GERD in ’04, but it was mild. My social life had not really changed, i.e., occasional alcohol approx. 1 x per week, and then not to any extreme. But after the GERD dx I even cut that back.
Then in ’05, out of the blue, an even worse episode. My GI doc sent me to Denver to have SO manometry and sphincterotomy if needed. Well, it was found my pressures were 4x normal and the sphincterotomy was done and a sent placed. However, there was a complication, they had perforated my duodenum and didn’t know it. They thought I had developed pancreatitis from the procedure and kept me for the NPO/pain meds routine for 5 days. I felt something else was wrong but they wouldn’t listen, so I pretented I felt better to get discharged and we drove 250 miles back home to ‘my’ hospital. They admitted me after a CT showed 7 pus pockets in my left abdomen. WOW! how fun! That time I was hospitalized for about 8 days then home on IV antibiotics and TPN in a PICC. Well, about 3 months later, my GI doc had me in to remove the stent. It all ‘looked good’. We thought everything was fixed now! Not so fast.
Went back to life again. Then along comes 2008, July 4th to be exact. I was on call for the OR. Got called in early in the AM. I thought it was all behind me! I had to vomit NOW! Large amounts of bile and more pain. They had to admit me after labs confirmed it, acute recurring pancreatitis.
Now I had a new diagnosis. This happened again in early Sept. My GI sent me to Salt Lake City this time to see another specialist, it was a consultation and he wanted me back to do a EUS and possible fine needle biopsy. I had another episode in Oct. and went to SLC 3 days after my discharge, left the PICC in as by this time my surface veins were all shot. The EUS went well, the doc didn’t want to do a bx because I had just gotten over three episodes in 4 months and he didn’t want to ‘upset it’, besides, it looked normal. It has always ‘looked normal’, after 3-4 days NPO.
This doctor gave some more to add to my diagnosis. Now it was ‘True Idiopathic Recurring Acute Pancreatitis’. He also wanted me to get in a study about pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer, which I did.
I’d had to quit work Nov 1 because I had really never gone back after the Sept episode. I had to make some very hard decisions. My doc told me what he knew to avoid: of course, alcohol, smoking(did not smoke anyway), overheating, dehydration, constipation and stress. The first ones were fairly easy, but stress, that would be harder. My life involved two kids in college, 1 in H.S. and one in middle school. I also have a 10 acre ranch raising goats, chickens,geese,ducks,rabbits, etc. I also am a Master Gardener and had a booth at 2 farmers markets. Plus a husband that worked out-of-state in the energy industry. All of this was fine until pancreatitis.
I applied for disability, got it first try(must be a sickie, huh?). My two youngest kids, boys 17 and 15, had to go live with their Bio-Dad in Colo. Spgs., teenagers are max stress. Sold all the animals, closed the garden business and we’re going to sell the house and property.
We made a major life decision. We found and bought a 57′ motor yacht in Boca Raton Fla. We will drive our RV to Fla, jump aboard, and motor the Keys, Bahamas and all points south.
I don’t know my future with pancreatitis, but know I’m not just going to sit around and wait for something horrible to happen. We will take life by the tail and go for the ride!!!