My experience with possible mild acute pancreatitis attack and ongoing symptoms since

Hi everyone,

Thanks everyone for sharing their experiences and providing advice on the forum it has been very helpful.

I wanted to share my experience of possible acute pancreatitis and ongoing symptoms since.

I’m in my late 20’s and my problem started with a heavy binge drinking session.  Not usually a drinker and was only because I was out with heavy drinkers and got carried away and didn’t realize I was drinking a very dangerous amount of spirits cocktails.  I didn’t drink any water during the evening.  The next day I woke up with a pulsing in my mid back.  As the day progressed I mainly had lower back pain.  I was very dehydrated.

The next few days after this it felt like all my internal organs were aching and I started to have very strong back pain in to my mid back area which would also radiate down to lower back or right shoulder blade.  I did not vomit at all, I felt very ill but had a normal appetite.  The pain did not seem to have a link to food and seemed to be fairly random to me.

I decided to go to a GP a few days later as was in fairly agonizing pain and he said he thought it was just a bad case of gastritis.  So I waited another week as the back pain while less had not gone away.  On the second week he ran full blood count and kidney functions tests which came back normal.  On the third week the back pain seemed to be coming back stronger and I went back to GP and asked him to do the pancreas function tests.  My lipase and amalyse both came back normal.

Around a month after the drinking incident I saw a gastroenterologist about the ongoing back pain (I also had some abdominal pain but the strong pain was mainly in my back) and he said he thought it may be my pancreas and ordered an abdominal ultrasound.  I had an abdominal ultrasound and everything was normal.

A few weeks after this I had a flare up of back pain.   I also had epigastric pain (but the main pain as in my back).  Was in so much pain for about a month and a half.  Was taking either tramadol or codeine which didn’t seem to help much.  Was getting strong back muscle spasms.  The pain is mainly right hand side of my back and mainly around mid back but radiates up to shoulder blade and down to lower back.  During this period I had lots of blood tests run (including pancreas function) and these all came back normal.  I also had a CT scan done of my abdomen and everything was normal.  The CT scan did say that my pancreas was slightly bulky in appearance but that this can be consistent with my age.

It is around 8 months since that binge and I am still getting strong mid back pain which radiates to shoulder blade and also lower back.  I’m not using any pain killers at the moment.  I also get strange muscle spasms in my back occasionally and occasional arms and legs.  The abdominal tenderness and pain that I have is much improved. 

Another weird symptom since the binge drinking incident is that from the time of the incident my urine has changed to a bright yellow color.  Rather than being clear to very pale yellow it now stays very bright yellow (even though bilirubin in my blood is normal and I have had a urine test and this was normal as well).  This is the case even though I drink plenty of water.

Has anyone with pancreatitis noticed a change in their urine after having it?

Apologies for the very long post.  I have been running around to many doctors to try to determine what is going on.  It is quite frustrating to have this ongoing pain and can feel something is wrong internally when all the medical tests come back ok.  Though it is better to get results showing nothing.

Anyway I’ll keep this post updated for those that are interested in how this progresses.  Booked back in to see the gastroenterologist and urologist in about a month.

I haven’t touched alcohol since the incident and will not drink alcohol ever again as a precaution (this wasn’t difficult for me though as was not a regular drinker and only had binges very occasionally).

Wishing everyone the best with their health.

Brett

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