Follow up with your doctor as soon as you can.
He may recommend the CT. Not that much in Left upper quadrant.
Could be stomach, colon,Lung possible, spleen also in LUQ. Kidney and pancreas less likely.
If you go back to the ER expect to repeat everything, and them probably do the CT. They are not benign. The radiation from an abdominal Ct is 1000mRem. The radiation from a chest xray is 10mRem for comparison. Each abdominal CT increases risk of cancer over your lifetime by a fraction of 1%. And if you are a female of reproductive age there’s a significant dose to your ovaries.
I know its hard to hear this but the fact you’ve had the pain for weeks suggests it’s actually not emergent. Most of the problems we get really concerned about in the Er would not last that long before making you really ill or killing you. Doesn’t mean nothing is wrong, just not an acute process. The job of the ER is to identify those in immediate danger, we can’t diagnose every problem. The most common diagnosis of abdominal pain in the ER is “Unspecified abdominal pain”. We can only do so much in the ER. Trust me I kind of know what I’m talking about here.
The other thing that people don’t realize is that a CT scan isn’t a magic ball that allows a dr to see everything in super high detail.
I’ve had CT scans miss a kidney stone (that I passed the next day) and a massive ovarian cyst that ruptured a couple of days later and nearly killed me from bleeding. (For that one, I had gallons of fluid building up in my abdomen. Not fun.) My son had a CT scan that didn’t show cracked cartilage from his ribs to his sternum.
So many times, it can be a waste of money and, as you said, the radiation is no joke. Most drs that I work with like to go for an ultrasound, blood work, and other tests first.