Have all those surgeries been for IBD? My heart goes out to you...
It's not that the risk of dying is greater, it's that the risk of complications is greater, particularly if the surgery is in the same region of the body (abdominal, chest, etc.) The reason is scar tissue. Surgery is traumatic injury and even if we heal really well from it, it causes permanent and disfiguring changes to the internal structure of the body. That's ok though because we usually accept those as a trade off for whatever disease we're dealing with! But it creates a burden on the body to have to re-heal that every time, with increasing scar tissue and physical changes that the body's functions have to adapt to.
about
the MRI dye... yes, there has been huge controversy around it in the past year. In 2018 the FDA admitted that their original risk assessment of the dye was incomplete. Originally it was said that the people at risk for retaining dye in the body were people with kidney disease, but now it turns out that 100% of people who receive gadolinium dye retain part of it in the body. The target organs are the brain and the kidneys, but all organs are affected.
So the more dye you get, the more this toxic heavy metal accumulates. For years patients have been reporting long term changes to their bodies after MRIs, but doctors have not been believing them. Now that the FDA has blown the whistle, we are seeing far more reports. The main symptoms are neurological, like burning or numb limbs, cognitive function changes, etc.
Chuck Norris initiated a huge public awareness campaign after an MRI left his wife permanently disabled. It was partly his efforts that brought the truth to light.
You can refuse the dye, but you have to be extremely adamant about
it. They may verbally agree to withhold dye, but then when you're in the MRI machine they will inject you anyway. On the consent form, you must cross out the part that talks about
dye injection, and hand write "NO DYE INJECTED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES".
There are two classifications of gadolinium dye. One is called macrocyclic, the other is called linear. Even though both get retained in the body, apparently one is retained less than the other. You can read about
the differences here:
https://mriquestions.com/so-many-gd-agents.html
So if you decide to go through with the dye, you could find out which brand they're using and request a different one.
An MRI can be conducted without dye, but you must be aware that this will compromise resolution. The image will not be as sharp. For macro assessments of the body, like looking at the big picture of what inflammation is doing, this is usually not a problem. The last two MRIs I had, I refused dye and the assessment turned out fine. The dye is needed for viewing extremely small detail, like say... measuring the width of an internal fistula tract, or looking for a small tumor. They can't see that without dye.
Normally in any MRI, they do one scan without dye, and then one scan with dye. Many hospitals do the dye scan because it makes them more $ to run a second scan, and also it gives the radiologist the option of accessing more detail if they want to. But often this is unnecessary. That's why I forego the dye.
There is currently no recognized way to chelate gadolinium out of the body. The Andrew Cutler crowd claim that their protocol can do it, and some naturopathic circles claim it is possible... but I'm not so sure.
Hope this helps.
Post Edited (MarkWithIBD) : 10/20/2019 12:19:52 PM (GMT-6)