Life Update – Overcoming Pancreatitis
Posted on April 29, 2025 by Aywren
I know it’s been very quiet in this nook of the Net lately, but for once, I have a good (bad) excuse – I was in the hospital for nearly a week with acute pancreatitis. Now, I’m generally a pretty healthy person (despite my bad habits), and this was the first time I’ve ever been hospitalized for anything in my life. It came without warning and knocked me off my feet.
Needless to say, I’m still recovering, albeit slowly.
What Happened?
It was about 4 PM on Sunday, April 13. I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary, just chilling on my PC, when suddenly I got one of the worst stomach aches I had ever experienced. My first thought was, “Wow, what did I eat that was THIS bad?”
I’m not prone to upset stomach or food poisoning, but that’s where my mind went first. I did everything I could think of to self-treat the situation, as that’s just what I do when I’m sick. Everything from Pepto tablets to a warm bath, and even forcing myself to vomit up the “bad food.”
It was about 6-something PM when I had to admit defeat. I was in so much pain I could hardly sit or lay or stand. I couldn’t drive. I had to call my mom and tell her I needed to go to the ER.
Even then, part of me balked at this. What if it really was just a bad case of food poisoning? Was I really going to put myself through the 2-3 hour wait in the ER and the cost of admission for them to send me home telling me nothing was wrong?
That’s… not what happened, however. They did blood tests. Then, they took me back for a CT scan. After groaning around the ER a few hours (which was actually quite quick), a doctor broke the news – I had pancreatitis and there was no way I was going home that night. Or the next day… or probably the next.
In fact, the whole visit was like that – uncertainty of how long I’d be there. Everything was dictated by my state of recovery, and there were several setbacks along the way.
I was pretty much drugged up between morphine and oxycodone for the first 3 days. I was in and out of sleep, and had to refrain from eating or drinking anything (aside from a blessed ice cube to wet my mouth) for the first 24 hours. This turned out easier than I thought as my appetite was null, and the last thing I felt like doing was eating anything.
The original antibiotic they gave me to treat the infection didn’t mesh well, and I started to have daily/nightly “drug fevers” due to it. No one seemed to understand why I was getting these fevers until a doctor realized this could be the cause. They then switched my antibiotics, which helped sort that.
I went through many, many tests. From a CT scan, ultrasound, x-ray, and an MRI – apparently my condition was much worse than was communicated to me - my white blood cell count was through the roof for many days back-to-back (the words “almost sepsis” were tossed around). Basically, had I kept hesitating to get treatment, I might not be here to write this, or any other blog post.
In the end, the doctors don’t know what caused it. Common causes of pancreatitis are gall stones (though they checked my gall bladder and ruled that out) and alcohol use (I do not drink at all, though it was hard to convince some of the doctors of that fact).
So basically, no one knows. Deep down, however, I blame my own poor diet and exercise habits. I know I’m not living anywhere as healthy as I should be, and I feel like it just caught up with me. This is something I now have to change for fear of facing a return of the illness. The last thing I want is to live with chronic pancreatitis.
Recovery
It took almost a week until I was at a point where I was well enough that they felt I could go home. I arrived on Sunday and was released on Saturday, but that was not the end of it all.
During the course of the pancreatitis, I’d developed deep vein thrombosis (DVT) – a blood clot in the vein close to the pancreas, caused by the illness. This apparently isn’t too uncommon, but it was yet another thing I’ve had to treat. Thanks to this, I’ve been forced to learn how to inject myself with blood thinner twice a day. The hope is this will clear up in 3 months of treatment, but could last as long as 6 months.
Of course, blood thinners and injections have their own fun. Enter needles, bruising, irritation lumps, not being able to eat certain foods, or take any pain meds other than Tylenol.
Because my pancreas is still recovering, I’m on a very strict low-fat, low-sugar diet. I’m very grateful that Syn drove up and spent almost a week with me (she’s heading home today), helping me figure out what I could eat, how to shop for what foods I needed, and even teaching me to cook some of the dishes.
I’m… a lazy cook. I don’t like to spend time in the kitchen (and that’s obvious). So, my working knowledge of cooking healthy foods is woefully lacking. That being said, I can’t let myself slip by like that anymore.
Right now, I am on a very strict diet, but I feel like it’s something I should work to maintain even once I’ve recovered. Lack of appetite and inability to eat much more than small proportions has led to a solid chunk of weight loss for me over the past few weeks – I’m at the lowest I’ve weighed in probably a decade.
I want to get it lower. I NEED to get it lower. I NEED to shift everything around at this point to take care of my health. This was a HUGE wakeup call for me – I’m not getting any younger, but I’m confident with some effort on my part, I can improve my quality of life significantly.
Right now, my energy is still at an all-time low. Typing this many words has been a tiring exercise. I’m trying to work full time again after having spent a week of working half days (much to my primary care nurse’s shock – she did NOT expect me to be back at work after what she read in my hospital summary).
Gaming and gaming goals are going to take a sideline for a while. That’s not to say I won’t focus on these things somewhat – I have been playing the FFXIV Cosmic Exploration (which has been good for someone with little energy and who needs a quiet distraction). I just doubt that my time and effort will be directed at things like Steam backlog while I’m still in major recovery mode.
Thanks for reading if you’ve made it all the way down to this point. I hope that maybe my story is an inspiration to folks to keep health in mind. This came out of absolutely nowhere with no warning at all. The standard case of “it won’t happen to me.” Trust me, you don’t want it, either.
Please take care of yourself - body, mind, and soul.