Pete’s Musings

Just thought I would post to let everyone know that things went well with the surgery to plug the hole (fistula) in my liver. I had the operation last Monday (March 31st) in the afternoon and was sent home via adapted transport early evening on Wednesday. When they told me they were sending me home so soon I was kinda freaked out because I was having constant liver pain, still had residual bloody stools, and was experiencing fatigue and exhaustion 10-20 times sooner than before (and that was already way too soon for comfort). But a little reassurance from my doctor that the bleed shouldn’t reoccur and I was ready to come home … just being in the hospital was driving me crazy. All those sick and annoying people screaming all day long. lol.

Anyway here’s what happened … Read More »

I was in the midst of writing a huge and awesome blog post about my surgery … when I accidentally hit the backspace key outside of a text box! In firefox, that means that the page goes back to previous in history and I LOST THE POST. I was devastated. Not only was it thorough and well written, it was funny. I wanted to cry. Anyway, I guess I’ll get back to it soon, but in the meantime I decided to make a few changes here.

1) I added a message me box to the right. If you write me a message there it goes directly to my new Instant Messaging software. If you stick around, Read More »

So i hauled myself into Montreal Thursday morning to see my regular liver specialist at the Royal Victoria Hospital. I like my doctor. When I get to see him 1:1, we work together to figure shit out. And he seems to have a good sense of when to ‘wait and see’ and when to take immediate action. This was one of those immediate action things. lol

So I had this camera capsule endoscopy thing last week. Looks throughout the intestines where the gastro- and colono-scopies can’t reach. It didn’t show anything unusual. I had more bleeding on Wednesday and an ‘episode’ on Tuesday … so something definitely up. Doctor could see that the drive in to see him had already taken a lot out of me, so he pulled a few strings and called in a favour to get me admitted to the short term stay unit so i could take some immediate tests. I love my Doctor. A trip to the ER would have done me in. Had a CT scan (yay, my weight is now safely under their arbitrary cutoff point), and also repeated the colonoscopy. Colonoscopy was clear (and quite uncomfortable I must say!). But FINALLY, they found the problem in the CT and it was just like my doctor had suspected after reviewing everything during my appointment.

Surprise surprise … a rare complication of my transjugular liver biopsy Read More »

I’m at home this weekend on a bit of a break from the tests at the hospital. “Conge” as the french nurses call it, which means vacation. LoL. Not quite that, but it does feel good to be home and I’m doing pretty well. Sleeping solid for 6-8 hours 2 nights in a row. Still able to do a bit of work like dishes and cleaning a bit of the fridge. Still have the pain in my gut when up and about for a while, but nothing too intense. Haven’t had any intense pain in my liver/gallbladder area since my last night in the hospital 3 days ago. Then it lasted for 4-5 hours and required a shot of pain killer. I think it was brought on by ‘trying too hard’ to produce a stool, which makes since as this is what also seemed to immediately precede my second ‘episode’ on Friday (two weeks ago now).
Doctors still haven’t given me a clear idea of what’s going on and Read More »

I think I posted before that on last friday I had 2 fainting/weakness episodes after brief abdominal pain, Bloody stools the day after. Then all seemed ok on Sunday with normal stool and feeling ok. No such luck. Took shower at 2 pm or so and had another episode, but this time the pain and rest of it did not pass after 20-30 mins like before. Didn’t pass for over a day.

Called ambulance immediately on Sunday of course (had enough of that crap!). Good thing too. By the time they arrived I was white as a sheet, barely able to move and in intense unrelenting pain. Blood pressure was something like 67/29 … Read More »

It’s been over 3 weeks since I had my liver biopsy and I’ve been worried and sick ever since. I know something is very wrong in there and just don’t know what’s can be done about it. As I said in last post, I had to go to the hospital a week after the biopsy because I was feeling so horrible and in pain. The pain has subsided a bit … but only if I don’t really do anything at all. That’s no way to live for sure.

I went in for another blood test today, Read More »

Things have finally calmed down in my system so I can blog. Feels that way anyway, future tests will show over the next month.

About 10 days ago I had my third liver biopsy since this whole mess started about 2.5 years ago. Another transjugular biopsy done at the Royal Victoria hospital in Montreal. It’s supposed to be a more or else routine and safe day-long thing … but I guess it was not so for me. Read More »

Well, it’s been another bang up year full of far more downs than ups, but I survived it. And that’s a good thing! Here are some updates and retrospectives on the year … Read More »