Paging Dr. Gregory House?So a friend of mine fell ill 2 weeks ago. It started with a fever and general malaise on a friday. Has dark urine and light stools. Sunday he gets urinalysis and the results were high bilirubin and urobilinogen. He goes to the ER looking awful still with a fever and shivering. I tell him he probably has gallstones and is going to end up getting his gall bladder removed. They draw tons of blood and by the end of the night the doctor tells him, with no diagnostics of course to back this up "you have fatty liver, gilbert disease (hereditary cause of high bilirubin), and a virus" and discharges him that sunday night. Tuesday morning hes back and checked in at the hospital in essentially quarantine. Still fever, vomiting, face all red, and hyphema (blood in the eye) presumably from straining from coughing and vomiting. Now apparently he has a high white blood cell count, and at least one doctor seems to think his 'rash' may be hepatitis, to which he wasn't vaccinated. They can't find any gallstones, so now I'm thinking Hepatitis B, after a few days it turns out the blood they took was supposed to be tested for all Hepatitis viruses, yet some ER person wrote Hep A on there, so he has so wait even longer for B and C to come back, though B is the only one that really causes this severe an acute illness. Days more go by and it turns out he has no hepatitis of any type, has been endoscoped and had gallstones ruled out. They did a CT of his pancreas, the results of which I'm not really privy to, particularly since trying to get complicated explanations from someone high as a kite on dilaudid isn't easy. They had him on metronidazole first then levofloxacin to cover bacteria. Also protonix for stomach acid and albuterol for breathing. He is still sick after two weeks and the final diagnosis seems to be "you have pancreatitis and a virus" - and that he can never drink alcohol again. The doctor further seems to think that my friend's admission of having had 2 or 3 drinks on the night before getting sick seems to explain everything. Also, my friend has a family friend in a different hospital with apparently the exact same illness right now.
My question is what the hell might cause this? No gallstones, no hepatitis. He rarely drinks alcohol and doesn't binge. The viral causes I've seen for pancreatitis are Hepatitis (ruled out), mumps (makes no sense, and he had vaccine) and Epstein-Barr. His lack of any noticeable jaundice or perhaps most importantly - upper right abdominal pain - is quite odd also. Naturally since I was at the bar with him the night before he got sick, at the ER when he first went, and in his hospital room for coughing/vomiting, I'm a wee bit concerned.
*Sombra*
Wow ... you should be a writer for TV!
Jason A
alcoholic induced pancreatitis. they should cat scan is abdomen and pelvis
Orignal From: Paging Dr. Gregory House?
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