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After weeks of discomfort, the 25-year-old man got a shocking explanation for his abdominal pain.
By Lisa Sanders, M.D.
The 25-year-old man was shivering. Although the weather in Milwaukie, Ore., was cold and rainy that March evening, his apartment was too warm to explain his chills. He had been having abdominal pain for the past several weeks, but that night it was excruciating — like a knife plunged deep into his belly, sharp and burning. All the strength seemed to seep from his body, and he thought he might pass out. That’s when he asked his roommate to call 911.
The E.M.T.s were concerned by the man’s pallor and low blood pressure and took him to Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside in Clackamas, just north of the small town where he spent much of his childhood. In the E.R., initial blood tests showed that he had lost a tremendous amount of blood — nearly half the blood in his system. The man shook with cold beneath the several blankets layered over him. With trembling hands, he signed the consent forms for a transfusion to replace some of what he had lost.
