Update: The current (November 2014) hypothesis among my doctors is that whatever they were called in my past posts — Dieulafoy lesions, Cameron’s erosions, or bleeding ulcers — all these bleeds have their source in the portal hypertension which comes from cirrhosis which is caused by my auto immune system attacking my bile ducts, that is, my primary biliary cirrhosis.
Silly me. I look back on my post from earlier this month, An Uneventful Day, Unlike Last August 2, and wonder. There I wrote about how on August 2, 2010, I had an arterial lesion burst where the esophagus meets the stomach, and how nice it was that this August 2, 2011, was so comparatively uneventful.
Little did I know that just 11 days later I’d be back in the ER. Circumstances weren’t quite as dramatic this time around — no ambulance — and I got only 2 transfusions compared to last year’s 4. But in some respects, this episode of vomiting blood was worse.
Why am I inflicting this on you? Actually, I am writing primarily for my readers who like me have primary biliary cirrhosis. There’s more not understood about that disease than is known, and I feel it might prove worthwhile to use the internet as a way to compile and compare histories.
I accept last year’s diagnosis of a Dieulafoy’s lesion, which I attained after consulting my hepatologist, not content with the GI’s conclusion that I had a spurting gastric ulcer. This year the diagnosis is gastric erosion, but I’m not convinced for some of the same reasons I wasn’t last year. While swallowing is a problem some times, once food hits my stomach, all is well — spicier the better.
It seems too weird I can go a year without a stomach-ache while having such a torn up gut that I end up in the ER — too weird considering I am at risk for esophageal varices as a result of portal hypertension as a consequence of PBC.
My intuition tells me the PBC was at least a contributing factor to the Dieulafoy’s lesion, and to this latest event as well.
So this is what I want to know: has anyone else out there with PBC landed in the ER vomiting blood not from varices?
And Now for the Muddles. And Hospitalists.
I keep copies of my medical records. Last year I discovered from the hospitalist’s history that “I got dizzy, and came to the emergency room.” When I complained that this wasn’t an altogether accurate way of describing arriving via ambulance, lights and siren, IV’s in both arms, on O2, my objections were dismissed. This year, I found out that I had been vomiting blood for 2 days when I came to the ER. Wrong again. First, I’m not an idiot. Second, I told the zillion people who had to have the day’s events recounted, that I had vomited twice that afternoon before coming to the ER.
Why can’t these hospitalists listen?
And what, you ask, is a hospitalist anyway? If you are a slow learner like me and it takes you years to realize your [now ex-] general practitioner is too indifferent to bother with hospitalising her own patients, you are stuck with a hospitalist “managing” your case. In my experience this year and last, they are, at best, obstructionists.
This year’s example of foolishness:
In the triage room, I felt really bad, clammy and sweaty. Then I was on a gurney being rushed to the ER trauma room. It wasn’t like fainting, because it wasn’t gradual (when I’ve fainted, usually things turn black but I can still hear what is going on, and then I’m down). I wasn’t out for long, and the ER staff started getting fluids in me as quickly as it could. Seems to me an obvious case of hypovolemic shock. This happens with blood loss.
But the hospitalist saw things differently. He wanted to know about my history of seizures. I don’t have one. What, this has never happened before? Well, yea, once, last year, when I was throwing up golfball-sized clots of blood. Ah ha, so you do have a history of seizures. No I don’t. How I hate being in no position to resist.
Next thing I knew I was wheeled away and my head was in the damn doughnut — a brain CT, looking for the cause of my “seizures.” CT was normal (duh), so the next day in comes the EEG woman to stick wires on my head. EEG normal — well a bit of excess in the betas, probably related to anxiety (does exasperation count as anxiety?).
This year, 20 hours passed before I had an endoscopy to look for the cause of the bleeding, compared to last year’s 4. Meanwhile, my hematocrit kept falling. Finally, when it hit 7.3, 32 hours after my arrival, I was transfused, compared to pretty much immediately last year.
Was there a connection between the relative slowness of dealing with the problem (blood loss) this year and the the hospitalist’s obsession with seizures? I don’t expect to ever know the answer. It was, however, most definitely an annoyance I didn’t need.