Stomach pain radiating to back, diarrhea—what is this?
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Good evening everyone. I am a 43-year-old female who, up until about two and a half weeks ago (specifically the day after Labor Day), thought the only thing I had wrong with me was multiple sclerosis. That’s when I went to the emergency room because of severe left-sided abdominal pain that radiated into the left side of my back. The last time I was in the ER for left-sided abdominal pain I found out I had diverticulitis, but this time, I had a CT scan done again and they only found diverticulosis and nothing else. The ER doctor and the nurses were all perplexed that I didn’t have kidney stones. Quite frankly I was, too. And just to give you all a picture of just how in pain I was, I was given morphine in the ER and it didn’t help the pain. Before I left they gave me Flexeril which I thought helped but since then I’ve been on Baclofen during the day and Gabapentin at night, and my second trip to the ER came about three hours after taking 600 mg of Gabapentin.
This past Friday, during the wee hours of the morning, I wound up in the ER again, but this time the pain was 10x worse. I had left-sided upper abdominal pain that again radiated to the last side of my mid-back. And I noticed that if I pushed on my stomach I could actually feel it in my back. It felt like an intense fullness in my stomach and this was a few hours after I went to bed, so awhile after I ate dinner. (The pain in my back is worse when I’m lying on my back.) When I rolled over to my left side I could feel something move from my left upper abdomen into my left side. And, when I rolled over onto my stomach my stomach hurt. To try to get some relief I pulled my left leg up and it felt as if whatever was in my left upper abdomen moved up inside my left ribcage. The pain became so intense that I went to the ER again and this time they did a CT scan WITH contrast but didn’t find anything. CBC looked normal except for mildly elevated liver enzymes but my urinalysis was abnormal again: ketones, protein, and blood in urine—same as the last ER visit. I also had an extremely high resting heart rate—136–upon my arrival to the ER. It slowed to 126 after I had been in the ER for awhile. My blood pressure was also high (135/96–I normally run 120/70).
I spoke with my neurologist today and he seems to think that my recent MS symptoms (pain in my legs which started as sciatica) are as a result of my GI symptoms. (Elevated body temperature can cause a “pseudoexacerbation” in MS, although I have not been running a fever any time I have had to go to the ER.)
I have lost about 7 pounds since my last trip to the ER three days ago. I have diarrhea if I eat much of anything and yesterday I wasn’t hungry and my husband finally made me eat around 4. Today I finally ate something around 6 pm and slept most of the day.
The ER doc suspects this is an ulcer and told me i am in need of an endoscopy asap. I see a gastroenterologist tomorrow morning. Anyone have any ideas what this is?
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