Quote of the week: "Learn from the mistakes of others........ You can't live long enough to make them all yourself"
>----- Original Message -----
From: "Donna" <quinn@snet.net>
To: "Multiple recipients of list ADHESIONS" <adhesions@mail.medispecialty.com>
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 9:27 PM
Subject: intestinal bleeding
A short update: I had 2 bowel resections and lysis of adhesions in April of 2000. In June of 2000 I started bleeding from the anastomsis site of the colon resection. I had another colonoscopy in Jan and he took out 2 more polyps. I have continued to bleed and am now anemic. My hemoglobin bounces between 10-11.3 and my hematocrit runs between 32 and 34. So I am basically running on fumes. Yesterday I had a long discussion with my surgeon and he thinks I may have a tumor or av malformation in my terminal llium. He thinks there to much bleeding for it to becoming from the anastomsis site. So this is the plan.
On Thursday I am having an enteroclysis, which is having an NG tube threaded down to my small intestine and have the barium put in that way. I guess for small intestinal bleeding this is best test. I am not looking forward to having an NG tube but I guess I have to. If that is negative I will then have and angiogram of the mesentary artery and see if they can see the bleeding that way. I dread that also. Then an another colonoscopy and trip to the hemotologist (sp) to see if there is possible a problem with my bone marrow and that is why I am anemic which may be separate from the intestinal bleeding.
If all that fails then I may need to have surgery to try to find out where the bleeding is coming from.
So, I am happy that something is being done, I just really don't look forward to the process of finding out what it is. I am not really worried about it being cancer, I just don't have a great feeling about avoiding further surgery. Oh well onward and forward and think positive thougths.
Sorry for this being so long.
DMG