Do not ignore horrific pains and stop self diagnosing!!!

Well, I think/hope I finally got this pain resolved.  Wish I would have listened to others who had responded in the thread from March 8th, 2011 (see below).   Many responded with hernia and I just didn't think it applied to me and I certainly didn't want to go through another surgery to "explore".  No job is worth "not taking care of yourself".   I just felt that I would be OK and it was gas or something.   

Internal hernias are life threatening, however EXTREMELY common post RNY.  Makes a lot of sense that you lose a whole lot of weight and you no longer have that fat to hold stuff in place.  Your organs have to fall someplace, hence causing a hernia.   So if you experience any of these pains or any kind of stomach pains, you truly need to get back to your RNY Dr. because most non-bariatric doctors, have NO clue and this type of thing is not detectable with cat scans or MRI's or blood work.  I think they thought I was nuts, but I knew better because I was in wicked pain.

Hope my story helps.
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Here is my story:

Post Date: 3/8/11 7:59 pm
I've had an interesting 6 past days.  I'm going to see my RNY Dr. on Friday, but since I've started this journey in Jan of 2009, and then surgery in July of 2009, I have lost  194 lbs (wow, to type it amazes me).  But anyway,  7 of those lbs I have lost in the last 6 days, but I don't think that's probably so good.  You see, I had this horrific pain on my left side, right under my waist line (although, I think it started out a tad lower before), which started March 3rd in the afternoon, to the point that I couldn't sleep, tossed and turned, finally went to ER on Friday night (next day) and the non-bariatric doctors, ran all sorts of tests on me which came back negative......diverticulitis (sp?), flu, kidney stones, UTI (they had found blood in my urine) and to be honest, I'm not sure what all they checked for, but they ended up saying it was a viral infection and sent me home w/nausea medicine.  I was experiencing fever, chills, dry heaves (cuz I stopped eating due to loss of appetite), probably some dehydration too (ER gave me 500cc's of saline (1/2 hour drip?)  at the hospital and I started drinking water throughout the course of the past 4-5 days - so I'm trying to do better).  So I go home and found some pain meds that my RNY doc had given me after surgery (yes, I know, it might have been expired, but I needed some rest and relief), so I took it and was finally able to sleep and not feel the pain so much.  So this past Monday, I went to my PCP  Dr (hospital instructions) and he was clueless too, he ran some urine tests and voila, no blood in my urine. 

So I'm wondering, have any of you ever experienced this horrific pain which made me double over in order to feel any comfort?   I had experienced the same type of pains w/in the last 2-3 months, but the pain lasted for about 12 hours and I started my period the next days, figured I was ovulating as I believe I am going through menopause and I was fine.  Kinda how I'm feeling right now, appetite is back, feeling normal, etc etc. 

Not to worry, I'm still going to see my RNY doc on Friday, but was wondering if maybe there is such a thing as "shrinking pains"???  

Thanks all. Luanne =================================
Post Date: 3/2/12 7:40 am
Well, a year later and my RNY Dr finally decided to do a laproscopy (sp?) and yep, he found an internal hernia and repaired it.  I'm literally typing from my hospital bed now.   It doesn't sound as though it had gotten to the twisted intestine stage yet, thank goodness.   I could almost kick myself for not being more insistent or trying to poo-poo my pains away to menopause.  I think if I would have just shut up about "oh, it isn't so bad" and let the Dr. do what he needed to do, I would have had this taken care of so much longer ago.  Can't believe I put up with this for over a year.  Hopefully, it won't happen again and yep, the only way he was able to be sure that something was wrong was by doing surgery to see if something needed repair.  Guess I need to stick to my day job and stop trying to self diagnose myself.   It just didn't make sense to me that the pain wasn't continual, so I most definitely poo-poo'd it away and figured I just needed to "tough it out".  From what I understand and have read, having an internal hernia could cause death.  

Don'**** get yourself checked out by your RNY Dr.  Also, the thing with these hernias post RNY is that the symptoms are not always the same for everyone.  I have found that similiar situations are the doubling over and/or pain meds not helping at all and that it seems to be triggered by eating food and it even would happen when I would eat something which has always historically agreed with me which is why I felt that it wasn't my RNY.  Ugh.   hoping to go home today.  I feel pretty good, all in all. Luanne    

oh wow!! sorry it took so long to get resolved!! Good advice!! Glad you are feeling okay!!

Well... all is good. You took care of that.

I had hernia and twisted bowels (not strangulated - but still causing issues) and had surgery to correct it.  Then 2 weeks later - the pain returned... First we (me and the doc) taught that it may be post op - guts hate to be handled pain , but the pain was there to stay. On and off/  I would have good days - weeks and not so goo days - weeks.  But the pain would eventually pass ... and the idea of another surgery was not appealing.  Finally - almost a year later from the first hernia surgery - I had enough and had surgery. The doc found hernia (another one) and fixed it. 

 OMG - another one?  Wonder why he didn't find it when he went in the 1st time.   Hope that doesn't happen to me.

Most likely the stitch gave away ... It was not my doc, but a partner in his practice.
He went in to take GB out and fix hernia.   He did that... but I bet the area was weak and it rip out... or another one formed... I will never know.
The second one my doc did and he told me that the hernia was really big and that he had to do double stitching and made sure it would hold.

 I'm just sticking with the "it's in your head" diagnosis at this point.

I'm glad they found your pain!

 me too MM  - I'm amazed though at how many people suffer from this and go through the same exact things that I did.  All of those tests and they weren't able to find ANYTHING!!   Ugh, if only I would have rolled the dice and taken the chance on my Dr. doing the exploratory laproscopic thing.  ugh.   Oh well, hope he fixed it and another one doesn't pop up.

When I had both hernias- the cat scans did not show any abnormality.  My doc followed my symptoms and his gut feeling. 
But - a friend of mine had a very similar symptoms and they did not found hernia - but instead she had adhesions - that also restricted the bowels and caused "strangulation" of the small intestines... Unless they go in - many times they may not know what is casusing tha pain or abstruction. 
My other friend - every simmilar pain (post op RNY) it was her ovaries... (plus some minor adhesions)  

Daughter and I are really bad about self diagnosing.  We both may have ulcers so I'm going to start the ball rolling to find out.

Enough already

I totally hear ya.   Please do get it checked out.  We've all been through such a journey to get healthy and "feel good".  I hope I can continue to follow my own advice.   It's not worth  the suffering or worse, death.   Good luck to you.