Secondary Effects
Pancreatitis
Throughout her illness pancreatitis was not mentioned nor signs of it observed. The word first came up in the final hospital ER visit when the doctor advised me early in the morning shortly after admittance that Pearl couldn’t receive corticosteroids because she was treating Pearl for severe pancreatitis. Pancreatitis is diagnosed when lipase and amylase are elevated – they hadn’t been measured. Fever is another symptom of pancreatitis which wasn’t present. CT scan and X-rays were normal. So the diagnosis of pancreatitis that morning was speculative rather than based on facts.
