Back from stent placement

Pancreatitis
#1

Hello everyone,

I went in on Wed. for another stent replacement. This is the third in the head of my pancreas. The doc thought I might not need one this time, but when they took the old one out my duct closed up again. So a new stent was put in. This one will be in for three months. Then there is a 50/50 chance that I will need another one at the end of September.

The pain coming out of this one was more intense than I have experienced previously. I have no clue why. But thankfully I have some pain meds here at home that seem to help a lot.

The good news is that there is no cancer in the duct. Yeah!!!

As you all know the trick now is getting my pancreas to calm down enough to eat.

I’ve been reading the posts from Sunday on. I always learn so much from them. I am very grateful for the knowledge that can be gleaned from this site.

Praying that you all have a pain free day/ week.

Keep the Faith and God Bless,

Vonnie

#2

Hi, Vonnie–

I hope you’re starting to feel a little better. I’ve had a bunch of stents/balloons, etc.-- and nothing other than sphincterotomies kept the biliary or pancreatic ducts open. They did put Botox in that entire area once to try to ‘freeze’ the ducts open, and it might have helped, but it’s hard to say since one of them stayed open and the other needed another sphincterotomy. This, done via ERCP, always led me to worse bouts of pancreatitis on top of the CP-- but the Botox, although experimental (I understand only done by one doc at Johns Hopkins and one in Germany) didn’t cause much of a flare (also done by ERCP)-- and had little risk to try.

My stents always occluded pretty quickly so they stopped trying them-- and mostly it’s the tail of my pancreas that seems to stay inflamed. Stents don’t seem to be a great long-term option, but I know they’ve helped a bunch of CPers.

Sending you hugs and all the best,

Lisa

#3

Lisa,

Thanks for the reply. The week before I had my ERCP I felt pretty bad. It turned out my stent was occluded. Since my replcement last week, I have had sharp shooting pains in my right chest when I eat, get out of breath going upstairs and very tired. I am going into the doc today to see what is going on. I have GERD but don’t use my medication very often because I don’t feel like I need it. This feels different from GERD. I will keep what you said in mind and see what the doc says.

Vonnie