>...he assured me that they almost never come back after the total hysto...
This is about as ignorant as saying, "the poison ivy itch almost never comes back if you scratch it once." Or "this antibiotic will kill that virus." Honestly, any doctor who didn't get his diploma from a crackerjack box knows that hysterectomies CAUSE adhesions. (In studies, the rate is anywhere from 95% to 100%.)
Look at this site. Go to http://www.google.com and enter the terms "post-surgical adhesions." After a few hours you will know that the patient with adhesions is the "friendly fire" victim of modern medicine's war on disease and injury. The only way to get rid of an adhesion is to cut it out, but then the raw surfaces where you cut will stick back together and form another adhesion, plus everything you cut to get to the adhesion will stick together and form more adhesions. For those familiar with greek mythology, the right picture is the hydra. This is a mythical beast where each time you chopped off its head 2 more heads would grow in it's place.
There are about a half dozen surgeons in the world who are so good that they can sometimes go in and cut adhesions and get rid of all of the problematic ones without having them return. There is also a brand-new barrier which actually seems to work. The barrier is called spray gel and it was approved by the European Union about 18 months ago. It is in clinical trials in the US. In the EU, the laws are different, in that medical devices need to be shown safe, whereas in the US the laws require safe AND effective. Proving effectiveness requires large studies and takes time. The other problem is that the FDA only approves that things are effective if they work when a surgeon of average skill uses them. It may just be that spray gel only prevents adhesions when the surgery is done in a particularly meticulous way that the best surgeons do it, and your average meatball surgeon is not going to have any better success with spray gel as without.
What we have seen over the last year is that a couple of dozen of our members who post on this board have gone to Germany where they have access to the best laporascopic surgeons in the world (one of whom is an American who travels to Germany every few months so that he can use spray gel with adhesiolysis surgeries -- Dr. Harry Reich is the American, and he and Dr. Kruscinski, one of the 2 fabulous German surgeons, work together at Dr. Kruscinski's hospital when he visits there.) The results of this have been astonishing. This is absolutely NOT a scientific study, in that we don't have random selection, and we don't have controls. But on the other hand, in the cases of people here you would expect that the results would be worse than with a scientific study, since the people who post here have gone through many more surgeries and are much more seriously affected by adhesions than your average person who would be in a scientific study. But it is numerically impossible to do better than the results we have seen here, because so far every single person who has gone has come home adhesion free. That's right -- 100%.
But you need to back up and take a deep breath. You need to do some things:
1) search this site for information and links to information about adhesions.
2) read the adhesions quilt about other people's experience -- you will find lots and lot of people who have had exactly the same "can't happen" things happen to them as have happened to you
3) get all of your medical records, especially surgical reports.
4) take all of this knowledge and use it to take control of your health care. You will often rub doctors the wrong way when you become knowledgeable because they think that they are the doctors and you are not, and they are the experts and so you should listen to them. Well, on the one hand doing research on the internet is not going to make you qualified to be a doctor, but it CAN make you qualified enough to be a patient. Because you have to be knowledgeable enough to know when your doctor is, as they say, "blowing smoke out his ***." Because your job as a PATIENT is to hire and fire your doctors as is appropriate.
At Fri, 2 May 2003, Teri wrote:
>
>I don't know where to turn! I have three children, two by c-section. I
>begin having pain about three years after my last son. The doctor did a
>partial hysto due to adhesions that were adhered to my bladder. After
>this I didn't have any problems for about a year and then I started
>having kidney problems, stones, to be exact. I had a surgery for that
>and they removed the problem. Last summer the pain returned in my lower
>left side, tearing pains and cramping, I went back to my OBGYN and he
>said that it sounded like the adhesions had grown back and they would go
>in and take out my left ovary since that is the side that was hurting.
>
>When he got in to do the surgery it was worse than the time before, this
>time both ovaries were covered and my intestines and abdominal wall were
>all connected. He took out both ovaries, but punctured the intestines
>while performing the surgery. It took about 5 hours instead of 45
>minutes as planned, and my hospital stay was much longer than
>anticipated. Well, I thought this was all behind me, he assured me that
>they almost never come back after the total hysto, but I have been
>having sharp digging pains in my left side, my lower back and radiating
>to the front. I went my urologist yesterday and he did a CT scan and
>said that yes, I had many stones, but none of them should be causing me
>this kind of pain as they weren't moving. I'm so scared that this has
>come back and it's only been 6 months since my last surgery, please help
>me! Can you referred me to a physician that deals with this???? Thanks
>so much!
>Teri
-- cathy :-)