What I Have Learned About the Pancreas (even though it still may not be what the Dr. meant)

I never gave much thought to a little organ in our body called the pancreas.
I had no idea it normally is the size of fine point Sharpie marking pen. And that it lays across the stomach, near the top of our abdomen, just below our liver, but very near the gall bladder and not far from the spleen, and I guess I really don’t yet know exactly where it sits, but it is closer to the top than to the bottom. I didn’t even know that every day the very second food or liquid touches the inside of our mouth, the pancreas begins producing digestive enzymes. (if I had taken time to think about it, I may have figured out that mine starts producing digestive enzymes the very second I lay my eyes on certain foods – say, like a piece of chocolate cheesecake, or tiramisu…that would explain the very logical conclusion of “I got to have it” – it’s my minds way of saying, “those little buggers are already on the move, looking for something to devour, so I MUST feed them”).
But now I know things about the pancreas I really had never heard of before. When Robert first went into ER, his digestive enzyme count was 20 times the normal amount, enough to digest several cheesecakes. Except that because he had already emptied his stomach in the backyard, he had nothing to digest, so the pancreas begins a process of digesting…itself. And that is bad. In that process parts of the pancreas die, and may even have tiny pieces drift away and land other places where they don’t belong. This work of digesting makes the pancreas very “angry” and it becomes irritated and, as in Robert’s case, it becomes VERY inflamed, and fills with fluid, until it becomes the size of a loaf of French bread. And laying nearer the top of the abdomen as I said, this explains why for 3 days now, Robert has not been able to take a normal, deep breath.And this is what is called pancreatitis – a word that 5 days ago I had never heard of and that I still have trouble pronouncing. I’ve always had trouble pronouncing medical terms and so I always let other people, like my sister or my friend Patty do that for me. Now I’ve had to say it over and over and watch Robert try to catch his breath over and over and over and over and I hate that word.

~Jeanette