Duringa weekend vacation out of state, my
husband had an attack of severe abdominal
pain in the middle of the night. This
was after eating a pretty grissley piece
of prime rib. I took him to a local
hospital emergency room at 3:30 am. He
was in a lot of pain and it took a lot of
pain medicine to kill the pain. He is a
big guy, but very fit - not obese. They
took some x-rays during which he lost the
prime rib meal. They also took a
contrast ct scan and did a blood work up.
The x-ray showed what they thought might
be an intestinal blockage. The blood
work, however, was normal. Here's the
kicker, the ct scan came back indicating a
"massive retroperitoneal mass likely due
to adenopathy" and likley representing
non-hodkins lymphoma!. My husband has
had not symptoms what so ever before and
is a very active and healthy individual.
The mass was stated to be 16 x 12 x 10 cm!
That's about the size of a can of pop!
Just how accurate are ct scans? Wouldn't
he have some kind of symptoms if he had a
mass that big? His family does have a
history of cancer, but this sounds like
misdiagnosis to me. On the ride home
after he was able to pass some gas, he
felt fine. He has not had a reoccurrance
of the pain. I'm devistated. We are
going for a second opinion tomorrow, but
we cut our weekend short and I feel like
i've been kicked in the gut. Do er
doctors make these kind of mistakes?
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lf777
New User, Becoming EHEALTHy
Joined: 24 Sep 2004 Posts: 35
Posted: 09-28-04 23:02pm
Hi
a mass of that size in the location that
you described may certainly be a lymphoma.
But I have seen people with masses of
that size without symptoms of pain and
obstruction. Make sure you take the
actual films of the ct scan to the new
doctor for him to interpret, as the report
does not give that much information.
