So you need to drain a large necrotic mass.

Sickbed thoughts, part three.

I didn’t really intend to get into “what’s wrong with me” because I hate advice and when it comes to health people love advice, but I ended up going through a medical procedure recently that I couldn’t find much about online from the patient’s perspective… so I thought maybe I’d write this up, as a service, though as you’ll see there’s also not much to say.

So: I went to the hospital and stayed in the hospital because of acute gallstone pancreatitis, which is what happens when your gallstone gets stuck in your pancreatic duct and your pancreas starts digesting itself. This feels about as good at it sounds. In my case, my pancreas also started to necrotize, i.e., part of it died. This in turn became a large necrotic mass in my abomen which, well, to quote the medical report:

Ongoing sequela of necrotizing pancreatitis with complete replacement of the pancreas with a large (19 cm) walled off loculated rim-enhancing necrotic fluid collection. There is resultant significant mass effect on t…