Quick Health Update (Positive Progress!)
Posted on August 9, 2025 by Aywren
This has been a rocky year for me in terms of health issues, which has never been the case before. Folks have asked me to update when I can, and since this is a move towards the positive, I’m happy to do so today!
As I’ve blogged previously, I was admitted to the hospital for acute pancreatitis back in April. I remained in the hospital for about a week. Upon being released, I had to be vigilant with what I was eating as to not trigger a return of pancreatitis. I was also treating a blood clot caused by the pancreatitis with blood thinner injections twice a day (no fun, really no fun).
Since then, I’ve been through two endoscopies and I’ve had surgery to remove my gall bladder, as that was determined to be part of the culprit. I was quite worried about the surgery as it was the first I’ve ever had, but I’ve come out the other end with few to no complications.
In the past month alone, I’ve done another CT scan, an endoscopy to follow that up, and have had follow-ups for all of this with various doctors and surgeons. My current status is good.
There is a walled-off portion of my pancreas that had undergone necrosis during my illness. The body is walling that off, as it naturally should, and the hope is that it will be re-absorbed in time. During my endoscopy, because I’ve not shown any additional pancreatitis symptoms, the doctor decided not to cut the cyst and drain it, but to let things run their course.
The CT scan also did not report the presence of the blood clot I’ve been treating with injections for the past three-and-a-half months. This… has been the worst part of it all. Those injections.
Those Dang Injections
Blood thinners mean that there are certain foods I can’t eat and certain pain meds I can’t take. They make you much more prone to bruising, and of course, you bleed all over if you get a cut. During the process of the injection, you can accidentally stab a vein if you’re not careful and the bruises from that take weeks to a month to heal. The site of injections can get irritated and form tons of tiny (and not so tiny) lumps under your skin. And if you’re unlucky like me, sometimes those lumps get irritated and you have to treat them with antibiotics.
The injections are also a huge pain to get at the pharmacy as no one seems to keep them in stock. I’m always having to call and follow up with the prescription on refills, which seem to be “on the truck” somewhere.
I was told I’d have to do these injections twice a day for three months minimum. If the clot was gone by then, I was told I could stop. But if the clot was still there, I may have to do it for six months. So, the moment the CT scan did not detect the blood clot anymore, I was immediately poking around for someone to look at this and determine if I was good to get off those injections.
Only thing was, no one seemed to want to give me an answer. My primary care wouldn’t touch it with a 50-foot pole (not that I blame her). I was told by the surgeon’s nurse to follow up with the GI department since they were the ones who put me on it to begin with. I did this, and was told they’d reassess after the endoscopy. After the endoscopy, I was told that I’d need to be referred to a hematologist(!) which seemed awful excessive to me.
So, this week when I went in for a follow-up with the surgeon, I asked him one more time. I was willing to stay on blood thinners if I HAD to, but was going to request the pill form instead of the injection.
He did me a solid, went and re-reviewed my CT scans from two weeks ago, and told me there’s a tiny whispy bit of where the clot used to be, but that I could finally stop the injections.
Thank you! Thank you!
Going Forward
So, the plan going forward is twofold:
- To prevent a relapse, I must continue remain vigilant with my diet and exercise – staying away from high-fat foods (and oh my gosh, there’s so much fat in foods where you wouldn’t expect).
- In November, I have another CT scheduled to check in on the healing progress. I then have two more follow-ups with both doctors.
They both seemed good with the direction my healing is going, but it’s important I don’t do anything to inflame the pancreas again in the meantime. Once you’ve had pancreatitis, it’s very easy to get it again.
So, that’s my overall health update.
I’m finally off the blood thinner injections, and I’m now in healing wait-and-watch mode. Fairly good news if you ask me!