How can you die of pancreatitis?

Factual Questions
21

Found out a bit more about the situation.

Acquaintance had severe pains and went to hospital; diagnosed with a blocked gall bladder duct; things cascaded from there, with the pancreatitis, then kidneys, then a prior medical condition flaring up, leading to point where family decided to turn off the ventilator.

And, sounds like they did not have travellers’ health insurance (they were on a trip to the US when this all happened), so now there are medical bills. US medical bills. Big, ugly ones.

What Canadians step foot anywhere near the 49th without getting travellers’ health insurance?

Disaster all round.

22

Piper - sorry for you loss - it’s always a bitch, but the ones that come out of nowhere…

Just wanted to thank you for summing up the US medical system so succinctly.

This GQ, so I’ll stop here.

23

My Sister just had Pancreatitis a month ago. It was as mentioned in previous anecdotes above Gall stone related. Ironically, and annoyingly, she had the Gall Stones block the duct on the Monday, she was scheduled to have the Op to remove the Gall bladder on that Friday.

She was seriously ill for a fortnight, I’m actually quite glad I didn’t know there was an almost 10% death rate until now. Fortunatly she’s recovering well, and the op has been rescheduled for January.

24

Glad that there was no repeat. My son had pancreatitis and his wife got annoyed with those questions and with questions along the line of “he’s not really in that much pain, is he?” as if he was looking for drugs.

They x-rayed for gallstones and there weren’t any. So they figured either it was alcohol related or the stone passed. When he had a second attach, they got more invasive and found out that he had two ducts. The story, which I got second hand, is:

1 - before we are born we, as fetuses, have two pancreases, each with its own duct.

2 - typically, the two pancreases and the two ducts migrate and fuse before birth.

3 - in some people, the pancreases fuse, but the ducts do not - one duct empties the front of the pancreas and the other empties the back.

4 - when we are young, most of the flow comes from (IIRC) the front - if the front duct is large enough, a person with two ducts won’t know that they have two.

5 - when we get older, more of the flow comes from the back (or the other way around, if I’m getting them reversed) - if the back duct isn’t big enough to handle the increase: pancreatitis.

The son got a stent to stretch the duct that was too small. After the excitement was over, I told him that I should have suspected that he was a mutant. He replied that it probably wasn’t his genes so much as a hostile uterine environment. That’s my boy.

In his case, once they found the structural anomaly they stopped asking about drinking. It was a nice, physical explanation. They stopped asking if he was exaggerating the pain back when his first blood test results came in. I can’t remember what they measured, but he holds a record for that hospital.

I hope that your husband has no recurrance, but if he does, it’s possible for them to find a reason besides ‘maybe it’s alcohol’ or ‘I don’t know.’

25

I’m also sorry to hear about that. These things can come out of nowhere, with no warning, and escalate quickly to a life-threatening level. IIRC, my mother-in-law said in her case it was too risky to operate on a severely inflamed gall bladder; all they could do is feed her antibiotics and wait for the inflammation to ease first. It seems that it’s like a heart attack - can hit you any time with no warning.

(side note - my father, while living in the USA years ago, had to have his gall bladder removed. Initially Blue Cross tried to deny the coverage, saying it was a pre-existing condition… since gallstones take decades to develop.

What happens to those medical bills? I assume they become part of the estate settlement and any outstanding are cancelled with his death?)

But yes, I today marvel at my stupidity of driving across the USA on several vacations, while much younger, with no coverage, on a motorcycle. I can’t imagine today going across the border without coverage.

26

an update: we were watching Mary Poppins over the Christmas holidays, and I started doing a “where are they now” search for the different actors on wiki/imdb.

Little Michael Banks (Matthew Garber) died of pancreatitis in real life, aged 21, as a complication of hepatitis contracted while travelling in India. :frowning:

27

I had no history of gall bladder problems and I do not drink except a glass of wine maybe 3x year. For several years I had borderline type 2 diabetes which I controlled with diet and exercise. I lived a healthy lifestyle and am not overweight. Then I had a stroke and everything changed. I crossed over into type 2 diabetes. Then a year ago I landed in the ER with abdominal pain and recurrent vomiting. That was the first time I heard of pancreatitis. It was labeled idiopathic since I didn’t fit the usual causes. I was in the hospital for 6 weeks including time with an NG tube while my pancreas rested and my enzyme levels went back to acceptable numbers.
In the last several months I’ve had several more bouts of pancreatis, each lasting 3-5 days. Along the way I added an ulcer, now healing, a persistent bladder infection, and now fatty liver. Again, all idiopathic. I’m wondering, of course, if any of these are connected, as well as what next.

28

Let me point out that an American getting ill in Canada will also be fully billed for his service, so universal medicare does not generally cover foreigners.

I continue to keep my supplementary health insurance even though I pay much more than I get in benefits just because it also covers me abroad and will even arrange a medevac if needed. They paid $25,000 to bring a neighbor back from Texas after he had a heart attack there.

Incidentally, when I had pancreatitis as a teen-ager, I doubt I had ever drunk alcohol and teen-agers had no access to drugs 65 years ago. Also I’ve never had gall-bladder problems. So must be one of the 10% sporadic cases.

29

You should discuss this with a doctor, not an online forum, and everyone else should note that this is a zombie thread.

30

I’m glad the thread was bumped up, I learned some things. :slight_smile:

31

Speaking as a physician, you should be asking your gastro-enterologist these questions.

32

The pancreas is a special, touchy , and largely ignored organ.

But the whole discussion serves to demonstrate how we all “hang by slender threads”. While the human body is quite resilient and can handle lots of abuse, one unexpected sideways hit or one puff of an “ill wind” can seriously mess you up or kill you, if you are unlucky.

There’s all kinds of stuff that can go wrong with all different parts of you. Really, when you think about it, Life is (mostly) a huge counter-argument to Murphy’s Law. Mostly we just keep going and going. Except when Murphy gets an upper hand, and then we don’t.