My Story Begins…

August 19 was my 49th birthday and I was fulfilling a birthday promise to myself to take better care of myself when I was hit with sudden “gastric trouble.” I didn’t think too much of it but for the remainder of the week, as I enjoyed time with my 13 year old son, some cyclical GI issue kept appearing.

By the end of the week I wasn’t feeling great, but figured I’d really gotten a hold of something that didn’t sit well with my GI system, maybe a mild food poisoning or something similar, still, why was I itching like crazy? I’d never itched like that before!

The following week I started my new work schedule and Guidance Counseling internship, feeling increasingly queasy as the days progressed…and the itching! Finally I broke down and secured an appointment with my doctor who noted a few irregularities and sent me back to the hospital for a CT scan of my abdomen and some blood work. It was Friday, August 31. When the blood tests came back they showed that my liver function was off, so another blood draw was ordered for Sunday, Sept 2, my next day back at work.

By the afternoon of the 2nd I was in pain, nauseous and incredibly itchy, which reminded me about the need to get my blood drawn.Undecided Sitting in the Social Work office in the Emergency Dept of Elliot Hospital I had a pleasant conversation with the lab tech and but was shocked to hold out my arm and see how yellow my skin had become. Looking up at the tech, she looked at my eyes and said, “You’re really jaundiced!”

What happened from there was a slow-motion blur. More tests, ED admission, calls to and from my primary physician and ultimately the call home that I was going to be admitted for symptom management and an ERCP to determine why my gall bladder was acting up with no sign of stones.
If you can help it, never be admitted to a hospital over a holiday – nothing happens! I sat around, feeling miserable and anxious to get on with life. After much to-do the ERCP was completed with confusing results…no evidence of stones, but there was something “around” my bile duct. Initial tests were negative for cancer but they weren’t sure what it was. Perhaps another test at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center could shed light on the problem. In the meantime, I was to go home, let the stent which was placed in the bile duct do its thing, and start feeling better. It was Friday, September 7.

I improved, summer waned, and appointments were made so that on Thursday, September 20 I traveled to Hanover for an endoscopic ultrasound. I can’t begin to tell you how helpful and confident everyone was that I met. The day went just like the brochure said it would, then the doctor came in.

Dr. Stuart Gordon was friendly, professional and paid attention.(!) He was straight-forward in his conversation and I will be forever grateful for his manner that day. “We looked at the growth in the pancreas and it’s a tumor.”

And life changed…