In January my husband saw a nurse about intense stomach pain. They looked at his record and were shocked to see that 2 years ago he had calprotectin levels of over 1000 and nobody had referred him for investigations. He was referred to gastro and told he would need a colonoscopy to look for ulcerative colitis or crohns disease, we are still waiting for this. But a week later he was in agony, unable to move, so I took him to A&E. They did bloods and xrays and said it looked like something was happening with his pancreas, and he would need a CT scan. They were supposed to do it that day but due to strikes it was delayed by a week.
Before the results were back they booked him in for an MRI. The CT scan then came back with a lump in a tube of the pancreas. They think hes had pancreatis at some point, which has then led to this. So they booked another MRI to take a closer look. The day aftrr the 2nd MRI they rang him and said he needed to come to hospital straight away. They told him they still don't know what's going on, but it looks like it could be either a serous tumour or pancreatic cancer and he would need another CT scan and a PET-CT scan. They said we would then come in for a consultation and have a plan of action.
They did the second CT scan the next morning, and called him the next day to say (as a seperate issue) he had a collapsed lung, which was half the size of the other! He was rushed in and he had bloods and an xray which showed it wasn't collapsed, but had air trapped around it (pneumothorax). So they are currently monitoring that with weekly xrays. He is due his next one on Friday.
Yesterday he had his PET-CT scan at a cancer centre and we thought finally we would have some answers. A specialist nurse called him that afternoon and said they now need to do an endoscopic ultrasound and take a sample and will need more bloods.
He asked whether this was to look a bit closer at the possibility of cancer or look elsewhere. She said they are looking for cancer, but she can't say one way or the other at the moment if it is cancer.
He is young for pancreatic cancer (33 next month) but I'm more worried now than I was before the PET-CT scan. I thought that would give us answers, but we still don't know what's happening. I hate being in limbo without answers. I just hope they push this through as quickly as they have done everything else.
I was wondering if anyone else could share similar experiences or could offer any insights into this.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read all this.