Susan Katz Susan C Katz

First post: Sep 22, 2017 Latest post: Nov 19, 2017
As you know, we are at Virginia Mason hospital in Seattle to see specialists and have medical tests to search for the cause of my liver abscesses. I had a cholangiogram on Tuesday that showed my biliary tree and bile duct are normal and open. The endoscopy showed I have chronic gastritis for some reason. The colonoscopy showed a few diverticuli and a tiny polyp was removed. I saw chia Wang, an infectious disease doctor Who opined that the problem must be related to slow flow, either in the liver or the small intestine near the bile ducts, causing overgrowth of bacteria. Today I had a HIDA scan, which showed normal flow of radioactivity through my liver but very slow flow into the first part of the small intestine. They also plan to do something called a barium swallow with small bowel follow through to check for slow passage through the small bowel and could possibly show whether kinks, structures, adhesions or diverticula exist. The surgeon we saw yesterday for problem-solving purposes, Dr. Richard Helton was very very knowledgeable about TP/AIT. In fact he used to do that surgery and contacted 2 thought leaders of the TPAIT field to ask them if they had any idea what was going on with me in advance of meeting me. They both said they never had a patient with a liver abscess. Dr. Helton said that he might write a case report on me.




We are staying at the Hilton Homewood suites and it is very comfortable and new with A full kitchen. It's near a park right along the water where we walk every day. I spent quite a bit of time sitting by the window looking out at the bay watching the sun come up and down. We haven't done much sightseeing because we've been so busy at the hospital i'm trying to think about what to discuss with the doctors. This is not what I expected. I thought I'd be running around having a good time but this is what we need to do and I am very happy to of met Dr. Helton as I think he will get to the bottom of it.


Update: good news, the problem was found on an upper G.I. on barium. It was easy to see that when I swallow barium it went down my esophagus into my stomach into my small intestine(Which now has two loops instead of one track to follow)and right up into my liver which is abnormal. I will have a small surgery sometime this month or early November to lengthen that loop of my intestines that goes to the liver. This way if there is regurgitation or backflow in that direction it cannot reach the liver because it has further to travel. So I’m getting ready and looking forward to getting it over.

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