I thought I would never get seriously ill.
I played soccer in high school and college, but I never missed a day of practice because of illness, and in the 39 years since I started working, I never missed a day of work because of a fever. Even though I have never gotten a flu shot since I started working, I was the only one who was healthy when my family had the flu.
On weekends, I was full of plans to be active, playing soccer with my friends, hiking with my wife, and helping with farm work at my wife’s parents’ house. Even so, I had a habit of drinking every day, so I was a little overweight for my middle age, but this year I worked hard on dieting and training, and when I showed the results of my medical checkup in July to the nurse at the company’s health management office at the beginning of August, she praised me for the great improvement in my numbers.
There was nothing wrong with me, and I believed that I was managing my health well this year.
In mid-August, I went to Singapore with old friends from high school, and after returning home, I felt a slight pain in my stomach. Thinking that it was probably the result of overeating and drinking in Singapore, I went to a nearby clinic and was given stomach medicine because they thought it was probably viral gastritis, but after taking the medicine, my symptoms did not improve much, and a few days later, I felt pain in my back. It was a pain like muscle pain, so I put a compress on it and went to sleep, but in the middle of the night, I woke up with a tingling pain where the compress was. It was a nasty pain I had never experienced before, and it felt like the pain was getting worse by putting the compress on, so I removed it and went to sleep that night, but the muscle pain-like pain did not go away even the next morning.
I wanted to take some painkillers, but since I was taking medicine for gastritis, I thought it would be better to avoid taking over-the-counter medicines on my own, so I went to the clinic to get some appropriate painkillers. When I told them about my back pain, they decided to do a blood test, a urine test, and a CT scan. As a result, they said that it was possible that I had acute pancreatitis and that I needed to be hospitalized for treatment immediately, and they would write a referral letter to a general hospital, so I should go to the general hospital. The feeling of distension in the stomach and the pain in the back seem to be typical symptoms of pancreatic diseases such as pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer, and based on the results of the blood test and my story about the binge drinking and eating I had done in Singapore just before, the doctor at the clinic seemed to have determined that I probably had acute pancreatitis.
The stomach pain was not that bad, just a slight feeling of tension, and the back pain was like a mild muscle pain, which was much weaker than the sciatica and gout pain I had experienced, so to be honest, I was quite confused by the sudden talk of being hospitalized for treatment, but I followed the doctor’s instructions and went to the general hospital. The doctor on the night shift at the general hospital also determined that I probably had acute pancreatitis, and began treatment for acute pancreatitis the next day.
The treatment for acute pancreatitis is to fast to allow the pancreas to rest and to replenish nutrients through an IV. I thought that fasting would make me feel very hungry, but perhaps because I was getting sugar through an IV, I didn’t feel as hungry as I thought I would, and a week passed.
Even though I was being treated in hospital, I had no problems other than a slight pain in my stomach and back, and was told that there was no problem with doing muscle training in the hospital, so I spent a very healthy hospital stay, doing exercises and stretching in the morning, and muscle training and walking around the ward in the morning and afternoon.
In the case of normal acute pancreatitis, blood test values should improve significantly after 4-5 days of fasting, but even after a week, my blood values did not improve.
A CT scan with contrast medium was performed, and it was found that the pancreatic duct was dilated due to a narrowing of part of the pancreatic duct, and the doctor determined that it was probably chronic pancreatitis rather than acute pancreatitis, so a stent was inserted into the pancreatic duct. Inserting a stent into the pancreatic duct involves inserting an endoscope through the mouth down to the duodenum and inserting a plastic stent into the pancreatic duct, so it’s not that painful and feels similar to having an endoscopy done. I was hospitalized for a few days afterwards to monitor my condition, and my blood test results improved, so I was able to be discharged two weeks later.
The doctor advised me that I would have to abstain from drinking alcohol and avoid eating greasy foods, and that the plastic pancreatic stent would have to be replaced every three months. At the same time, before inserting the pancreatic stent, the inside of the pancreatic duct was brushed with a brush and a biopsy was performed to check for the possibility of cancer and no cancer cells were found in the biopsy, but the possibility of cancer was not zero, and even if it was pancreatic cancer, it was likely stage 0 and could be treated with surgery easily. This was the first time I had heard about pancreatic cancer, and since I had no knowledge about cancer at all, I looked it up on the Internet and learned that pancreatic cancer is quite a troublesome one, has the lowest survival rate of all cancers, but is not so scary if it is stage 0. However, personally, I was more shocked by the fact that I would have to abstain from drinking alcohol for the rest of my life and that I would have to be hospitalized every three months to have the pancreatic stent replaced than by the possibility of pancreatic cancer that was not found in the CT scan, ultrasound scan, and biopsy during my two-week hospital stay.
Looking back, I think that the cause of the dilated pancreatic duct was already pancreatic cancer at this point, and the doctor had mentioned that possibility, so if I had been more aware of the risk and had undergone further tests, it may have been possible to detect the pancreatic cancer earlier.
However, it would have been quite difficult for me to decide to go to another hospital for further tests when the cancer was not found even after two weeks of hospitalization at a general hospital and many tests.
It seems that for many people, pancreatic cancer is already at stage 4 by the time it is discovered and surgery is no longer possible. In my case, when I only had mild symptoms, it was not found at the previous medical checkup, and it was not found even during the various tests that were conducted during my two-week hospitalization after the possibility of pancreatic cancer was considered. It seems to be a really troublesome disease.