Pancreatitis and the military

I developed pancreatitis in 2002 and did not know what it was at the time because at that time I was in the United States Army and deployed to Kuwait.  At the time of my first attack, I was doing a field exercise with my unit in the desert of Kuwait.  The pain came sudden and I was rushed back to the Triage/ER area of our base camp.  My doc that was running the ER thought it was nothing but constipation at the time since blood work out in the desert was almost impossible.  He told me to stay in my quarters(tent) for three days and then return back to duty.  Well, I started feeling better a day later and went back out to the field with all the rest of my fellow soldiers.  It turns out that my gall bladder was acting up really bad and the mis diagnosis went untreated for years until I transferred to Fort Drum, NY in 2004.  2005 came around where I was in charge of a dental clinic that got deploying soldiers ready to go overseas.  I was on lunch when it happened.  I came back to the dental clinic after picking up my lunch and then the worst pain in my life starting effecting me.  I drove myself to the ER, almost passing out twice from the pain.  Got to the ER, they put me in a bed, took blood, and after getting the results, the nurse began running around frantically.  She put me on Morphine, scheduled an ambulance to transfer me to the nearest civilian hospital and I was off….

 

Once I arrived at the hospital, they put me in the back where all the ER patients go and took more blood.  When the results came in, the doctor told my my counts were over 200,000 and that I was close to dying.  They put me in a room on the pediatrics floor and hooked up a ton of devices.  The next day, it was to Radiation for x-rays for 8 hours straight.  After that, it was down to the TPN room for an IV to go into my arm, down to my stomach for nutrition purposes since I couldn’t have food.  They keep me for a few more weeks for evaluation, then let me go home with the TPN line still in me where a nurse would come by everyday to change the bags and check vitals.  One day, I woke up with cold sweats and was freezing at the same time.  Told my dad I was gonna go take a shower but when I got out, he said I was burning up, so he called an ambulance and took me back to the ER on base.  They sent me back for x-rays, and when I came back to the ER area, I passed out from what the nurse said was a 107.5 fever.  They injected me with tylenol, and sent me back to the civilian hospital where they decided to do a spinal tap.  The doctor in charge tried 15 times before he had to call a specialist in where they got my spinal fluid first try.

 

They decided I was better off staying in the hospital for the rest of the time until they could take out my gall bladder.  While in the hospital, I was able to use the Nintendo 64 the whole time since there were no children in the hospital at the time.  Every morning when the doc came by, he had students doing their finals to become a doctor, that was writing about me.  They said I was a fascinating patient and a very rare occurrence.  Well, the time came where I was able to have surgery since my enzymes were low enough to do it.  The doc told me that they were going to also do exploratory surgery on my pancreas since it had a pseudo-cyst the size of an orange on it.   Well, when they went in to look at it, it had already ruptured, and taken 2/3 of my pancreas.  I developed type 3C(pancreatitis based diabetes) diabetes from the complications along with chronic pancreatitis for the rest of my life.  On March 11, 2008, I was medically discharged from the army with full retirement.  If you know of any soldiers with this issue and they need advice or just support, they can get ahold of me through this site.