OK...So This Is Long...

After the last post over 2 years ago, I bumbled along happily, injecting myself every night, feeling pretty good most of the time, a little achy once in a while, but it was never more than the average person in their mid-40s probably feels.

Then on October 17, 2005 I was slammed with some excruciating abdominal pain. It lasted about 5 hours, but no, I didn’t go to the ER. I was home alone and for whatever reason–fear, denial–I curled up in bed and wished it away. When I wasn’t dead the next day and the pain was gone, I went on with my happy life.

December 17, 2005…same thing. Home alone, the middle of the night, this abrupt pain on my upper-middle right; I sat in bed and rocked back and forth for 4 hours. When the Boy came home, I briefly considered having him take me in, but it was easing up, so I didn’t.

December 21, 2005. This time the Spouse Thingy was home, but asleep. I was in another room, awake, when the pain practically nailed me to the floor. I considered trying to gut it out (pun intended) but it was worse than ever. But I was torn; the Spouse Thingy had only gotten about 3 hours sleep the night before, when I had to wake him with a loud “Get up, we have to go to Sacramento; your Dad had a heart attack.” He was exhausted and stressed and didn’t need this, but I was pretty certain this time that I was going to die.

We left the ER at 5 a.m. “Biliary spasms,” the tired doctor on call decided, after a benign chest x-ray. “Go see your primary care provider within 72 hours, and I will put in a consult for an abdominal ultrasound. No greasy foods.”

Gall bladder. Yippee.

But the ultrasound showed a normal gall bladder. Normal everything; kidney, pancreas, liver.

Through a series of mis-steps, I didn’t see my primary physician for over a month; and two days before the appointment, I was back in the ER. This time it had woken me up; the Spouse Thingy was not home, but the Boy was. He drove me out and sat there while I writhed in pain, wondering why morphine was having no effect. As luck would have it, the same nurse was there as had been the time before, and he remembered me. He took very good care, even gave me a second dose of morphine. After 5 hours, when the pain was really no better, he realized I was giving off a series of tiny little belches.

He went to talk to the doc, and then came back with a Maalox cocktail: Maalox, lidocaine, and an anti-spasmotic.

Less than five minutes later I felt fine. “Probably an ulcer,” the doc declared. “Go see your primary care provider…” yadda yadda yadda.

Two days laterI finally saw her; it was the first time I’d ever seen my “regular” doc, and she disagreed with the diagnosis. I had no other symptoms of an ulcer, other than the Maalox cocktail had worked. So she ordered a Hida scan, which would measure the function of my gall bladder. She suspected that was it; so I went durifully and had myself injected with a radioactive tracer, and let them see how well my gall bladder was working. And I wondered when they’d be taking it out.

It was normal. So maybe–and the doc stressed maybe–it was an ulcer after all. Bt instead of testing for H. Pylorri, the most common cause of ulcers, and instead of getting an upper GI series or endoscopy, she out me on Prilosec and told me to come back if that didn’t work.

I don’t blame her, exactly…the base hopsital here is extremely short staffed and so are the levels of patience and enery.

Still…I was not happy. And I was afraid it was going to happen again, and that there might be something omnious growing in my gut where the ultrasound could not see.

I was told early on that in the suspicion of tumors or cancer, to stop taking the HGH, on the chance it would make it grow faster. So I stopped taking it. I intended to get in touch with my endocrinologist, but for whatever reason, I didn’t.

The Prilosec seemed to do the trick; I went months without anotehr attack, but there was that fear in the back of my head. So I saw a civilian doctor, who immediately sent me for an endoscopy. He also drew blood to test for H. Pylorri, and that came back negative. The gastrointerologist found several polyps in my stomach, but no signs of an ulcer. There could have been one, but healed under the use of the Prilosec. He removed 7 polyps and sent them to pathology, so I had to wait for the results.

By the time they find stomach and espohogial cancer, I was told, it’s often too late. That was a nice little tidbit to go home with. But everything looked normal…but it was probably a good thing I’d stopped taking the HGH.

During those months off the HGH my I gained weight, my appetite exploded, and my pain levels slowly crept up. My energy went down. My father in law died soon after the endoscopy; the stress of that added to the pain, and most days I felt as if every muscle in my body was on fire. The day before his funeral I got the results back: perfectly normal. Just keep taking the Prilosec.

That was in August. It took some time for the emotional pain to abate enough for my head to remind me I needed to see my endocrinologist, and get back on the HGH.

That was in October. Within a month, the aches and pains were easing up, and I was finding some reserves of energy. A year out from the onset of those attacks, I was back on the juice, and feeling much better.

I’ve been back on it for 3 months now, and the only pain I’m feeling now is from having resumed working out.

But there ya go. A very long synopsis of Thumper Stopped Taking HGH.

I don’t think I’ll do that again..

link | posted by Thumper at 6:19 PM
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