ERCP #4 is done

When you know where to sit to intercept the doctor as he walks from place to place, you've spent too much time in the hospital.

The 2nd stent went in and he said the whole stent procedure took about 3 minutes. I haven't seen Mary roll by from radiology, where they perform the ERCP, to Endoscopy, where they clean her up. I hope they haven't taken her directly to her room. I'd better check.

Dr. Banerjee said there is an active discussion amongst the team on what the next steps will be. The surgeon wants to go in and take out the gall bladder right away because it is blocked and bloated. Dr. Banerjee explained that the nerve sensors in the abdominal cavity can only feel excessive stretching so Mary's abdominal pain could be from a distended gall bladder or from distended ducts (hepatic, cystic and bile). Removing the gall bladder removes the gall bladder and the cystic duct and given 2 out of 4 are gone, it should allow her to feel better.

The GB surgery is being proposed as laporoscopy. I encouraged Dr. Banerjee to vote on the side of "taked it out now" and I think he heard me.

As for the cause of this problem--the constricted hepatic-bile duct--that is still not certain. Not all the test procedures and interpretive results are completed yet. The team hopes to pull them all together within hours. And, one theory, remember, is that the cystic duct has a stone that is impinging on the hepatic duct and creating this problem.

More later,

Pat