ado pain and back pain all around

by dreamer

Since two days I experience in the late afternoon and evening first abdo pain that is located in the centre right below the breast line, and it then spreads after a while to the back, where it is just painful.

The pain occurs all over the back starting below the shoulder blades. the pain in front started the first day like a knot of indigestible material the size of a grapefruit. Today it started with as if I had eaten something rotten. the pain today was so bad that i had to take a double dosis of ibuprofen. no position seems to aleviate the pain.

It is the weekend and I hate to spend it in the hospital, waiting for doctors to come back to work on Monday. I have chronic pancreatitis and IBS, but never had back pain before.

Coincidentally or not, I switched to a grain-free diet two days ago (I am vegan since a long time) and I ate self-made grape seed flour for the first time two days ago.

last quarterly blood work (August) showed nothing unusual. last scans (February) showed nothing new.

Please let me know if you think this is most likely cancer or something more harmless.


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Dear Dreamer,

It certainly sound like you are having an attack of acute biliary colic.

Biliary colic is a pain that usually comes from a blocked gallbladder either from a stone or sludge.

It causes severe right upper abdominal pain that seems to start just below the right breast and spread through the right side of the body to the back and below the right shoulder blade bone tip behind.

As you described, the pain causes its sufferer to roll and move about, looking for a position of comfort which is never achieved. There may be nausea and vomiting and sweating.

The pain could last for a few minutes up to hours.

If there is associated infection, it could cause the sufferer to develop fever and yellowness of the white of the eye, a condition then referred to as cholecystitis.

If you have tried some very strong pain killers without relief, the best thing to do is to go to your local hospital for further assessment and pain control.

The diagnosis is usually confirmed from abdominal ultrasound scan and sometimes, a HIDA scan as well. Some new set of blood works would be necessary to exclude other possible associated complications.

There is nothing in your story to suggest remotely that this pain you have is due to cancer.

This does not sound like the pain of your chronic pancreatitis either, though it could eventually precipitate an attack of pancreatitis.

Please read more about biliary colic here at our biliary colic page.

Please do not hesitate to contact us, should you have any other concerns.

Dr Omatseye Edema MD MRCGP CCFP MSc DRCOG
Family Physician, Emergency Medicine Practitioner and WebMD
Abdopain.com.

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