It is caused almost exclusively from binge dinking alcohol. Many of the patients are college kids who drink to excess because for the first time their lives, they can without somebody to say slow down.
The other category of patients who get it are middle age alcoholics who drink more than just socially. My doctor told me that together, these two groups make up 95-98% of all cases they see.
Problem with both times I had it was that I didn't drink alcohol....at all. My house doctor that saw me in the hospital insisted I tell her how much a I drank and how often. She still didn't believe me, despite my protestations. She sent me home, with the advice not to drink.
The second time I got it, my wife had to come in and convince the doctor that I was telling the truth. I didn't touch alcohol.
After further investigation, the second doctor found that a very small percentage of acute pancreatitis cases were caused from taking a certain class of blood pressure medications. I was on one of them. He switched my medications and I've never had a problem since.
But my experience in the hospital was much milder than your story. I felt severe abdominal pain from the inflammation of my gut but to treat it, they gave me intravenous saline with no food or water or even ice chips for 5 days straight until the inflammation abated.
Thinking that I would lose weight from not eating for days, I was startled when I got home and realized that I had gained weight, not lost it. After consulting with my doctor about it, he told me that because they had fill me with water intravenously over the 5 day stay, that I had gained weight from the water.
Water weighs about 8 lbs. to the gallon. About what I had gained. He said the weight would eventually slough off because it was water and it did.
So tell us, carriage_hill, how bad of a drunk are you? :-)
I don’t drink, either.
My docs said it was the Gall Bladder dropping sludge on to the Pancreas, building a stalagmite pseudo-cyst on the Pancreas, compressing the stomach into golf ball size. The stomach, r/s and back pain was excruciating, and I was on Oxys for months. I stopped that stuff when the pain stopped.
They wanted to remove the GB, but pseudo-cyst was size of a grapefruit, and blocking access to the GB. They’ve drained it thru 15 Endoscopies w/ pigtail stents thru stomach and into cyst.
Only PSU-Hershey performs that op/procedure, so I’m their GI patient, and have another Endoscopy coming in March. 5mos since last one in Nov ‘18. They don’t feel it’s necessary to remove GB, w 1 stone, and have widened the ducts strictures.
PSU-Hershey is an amazing place, and I’m lucky to be alive after what I went thru here at York (PA) Hospital.