Undiagnosed flank pains going on 5 months

Hello,

I am a 26 year old male. I have had pain in my flank area everyday for the last 5 months. Feb 2012 I went to urgent care with a persistent pain in my upper left abdomen. They didn’t run tests but believed it was diverticulitis and gave me Cipro to take for a week or so. This is when I first got these pains in my flank area. So bad in fact that I couldn't fully finish the antibiotics due to the pain. The pain seemed to go away a couple of weeks later but I would notice it on and off once every few weeks or so. In August 2012 I started to get very bloated with anything I ate, I started a probiotic and change in diet but nothing seemed to help. Then IT hit, December 2012 and I have had this flank pain every single day since.

The pain is usually on my right side but can also occur on my left side at times. The pain seems to be the worst while standing and when it is “flaring up” it can be sensitive to the touch or certain twisting movements and can really hurt if i start moving my fingers around the area. The only thing that can really dull the pain is a really hot shower or laying flat on my back, but even then the relief wont last long and the pains just don't go away.

I have tried cutting foods out of my diet like gluten, stopped consuming caffeine, alcohol and I just can't seem to find a definite trigger to the pain.

I have been in and out of the doctor's office every two weeks or so for months and they can't seem to find the problem. Here is a list of tests done thus far:

-Cat Scan
-Xray of upper GI while drinking Barium (This was actually the worst pain to date, I could barely stand a couple of hours after for the rest of the night.)
-Endoscopy (Found mild gastritis. Procedure lso made the pain worse, not as bad as Barium Xray)
-Ultrasound of abdomen, kidney, liver, gallbladder
-Xray of spine
-Blood tests for kidney, liver, pancreas functions
-Blood tests for infections, inflammation
-Urinalysis for the works
-Urinalysis to check my adrenal glands (a few points high over normal range)

I have been prescribed pain killers, muscle relaxers, anti spasmodic meds, and nothing seems to work. Help?

Post Edited (marino209) : 4/19/2013 10:53:10 PM (GMT-6)

Hello and welcome to the chronic pain forum. Looks like the drs have ran several tests and when you still have no answers it is very frustrating to say the least. That unknown is just terrible.

My thoughts are perhaps gathering up your xrays and results of all your testing and get a consult at a teaching hospital. A lot of people that have the unknown diagnosis going on, such as you end up going to a teaching hospital to get answers. If you will look in CP101 at the top there is a list of teaching hospitals in there & perhaps one will be close to you.

Good luck & keep us posted on how things progress.

Teddtlove said...

How did your visit go on Monday? I would love to compare notes, maybe we can figure this out together. My email is my (edited by moderator)

For now the Drs are calling it IBS, basically meaning they have no idea what the pain is from after checking my vital organs.

As far as pain meds go, he put me on Cymbalta which I only took all of two days. It gave me a very very bad panic attack. We're talkin 4hours of misery in the middle of the night. Ever since then I have had multiple attacks every few days. It's just sad cause I have never had to deal with something like that before and now I have to add this to the original pain.

The Admin of this site prefers that we only list our e-mails in the profile section - thank you! --Tina

Post Edited By Moderator (Blessedx8) : 4/24/2013 9:09:30 AM (GMT-6)

BradCrowne the OP has not ignored his pain. He has had tons of tests but cannot get a diagnosis. Same for me.

Dr. Has all but gave up and wants me to see a pain specialist, even though I don't/wont take pain meds to just mask this pain. I'm supposed to go in for an MRI on my spine to soon to see if this can show anything but I am still skeptical about that. Thank you for your posts guy's.

Hello praetorfenix & welcome to the forum. Yes, you have revived an old thread & please note the original poster has not been active here at Healing Well in almost 2 years.

We do ask all new members to make a separate intro post so that all members will see it & be able to say hello & welcome aboard. Great to read that you are getting some relief.

I will lock this thread as we like to keep the older threads off of the main page. When reading older threads you can click on the members name & it will show you when they have last posted. Thanks.