Hi. My husband has been on PD for 9 months and has a Fresnius cycler. He’s doing well but has a lot of stomach soreness. Not stomach ache … no infections. It’s not sore around the exit site. But it’s an overall soreness that is sporadic and has been present for the past 2 months. We’ve checked with our doctor and nurse; they don’t know. So we thought we’d check with other PD patients … perhaps you’ve had something similar. We live on a small farm and still do chores and everything that needs to be done … the freedom we have with the cycler has allowed us to continue a more normal life. But, this pain is getting to my husband who is very strong willed. Any suggestions will help.
Thanks so much!
Nancy
is he possibly doing a lot of lifting? If he has a PD cath, he probably has a weight restriction of 20 lbs - and if he’s lifting feed bags, full buckets, hay bales (yep, an ole farm gal here) he’s probably exceeding his weight restriction - which repeatedly can cause a hernia.
Probably the most common source of pain is peritonitis. I assume that the clinic has checked his dialysate for peritonitis. Sometimes people have sensitivity to certain kinds of PD solutions and that can cause pain. Sometimes the catheter can move around causing pain.
How severe is the pain on a zero to 10 scale? Where is the pain? Is it constant or intermittent? Does he have it right after doing activity or some time later – how much later? Does your husband have a chronic cough? Does he strain anytime? Does he jump? These are all things that can cause pressure in the abdomen. Here’s a portion of an interesting abstract from 1986 on research with PD patients:
“The pressures with weight lifting were proportional to the magnitude of the weight lifted up to 50 lbs, but were lower than those during coughing and straining. The pressures were generally higher with greater intraabdominal fluid volumes, especially with jumping and coughing. Exercycling was associated with lower intraabdominal pressure than was jogging, and the pressures were only minimally influenced by intraperitoneal fluid volumes.” Twardowski ZJ, Khanna R, Nolph KD, Scalamogna A, Metzler MH, Schneider TW, Prowant BF, Ryan LP. Intraabdominal pressures during natural activities in patients treated with continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis. Nephron. 1986;44(2):129-35.
A 2005 study in healthy people said that the greatest intraabdominal pressure occurred when coughing and jumping. It warned that heavier people with chronic cough were high risk for hernia following surgery. Cobb WS, Burns JM, Kercher KW, Matthews BD, James Norton H, Todd Heniford B. Normal Intraabdominal Pressure in Healthy Adults. J Surg Res. 2005 Sep 1.
Is he on Nexium? It caused stomach pain on me. Also Lipitor can cause muscle pain.
I had pain in my abs for a year and realized after a exploratory laproscpic surgury that my catheter was wraped around by bowels!
how will it feel if it is wrapped around your bowels. mine has been hurting for 2 days now and you can feel it poling out a little through my skin. does anyone know what could be causing it
These are symptoms to report to your home training nurse and physician. Tests can be done to rule out peritonitis and determine the location of the catheter. You should not let the pain go unreported.
I do agree with you Beth peritonitis could be a reason of stomach soreness as he is on dialysis for past two months. So it is better to test for it so that he might get well off it. A physician can treat you well in this because he has all examinations done before.
If stomach problems are related to financial stress, it’s best to go to a nonprofit credit counseling organization. Here’s a link to the National Credit Counseling Foundation, which has a network of 600 community based offices in 50 states. Call them at 1-800-388-2227 (English) or 800-682-9832 (Spanish).
http://www.nfcc.org/