Good morning, I stumbled across this group while trying to gain more info about MALS. A little background info my daughter who is 22 just had a diagnosis of MALS and chronic mesenteric ischemia confirmed last night at U of M hospital. She has a GI follow up today as well as follow up with vascular surgeons in the coming days. We spent her sophomore and junior years of HS in and out of CH Wisconsin due to severe abdominal pain/swelling and an inability to keep anything down. A CT back then confirmed SMA and an NJ tube was placed for 3 months. The GI she was assigned for follow up did not think it was truly SMA he was convinced the vomiting and pain had more to do with pain signals from brain to gut and so she was prescribed increasingly higher doses of Zofran, Tramadol and amitriptyline to manage symptoms as well as therapy to teach her coping mechanisms. This continued through high school and both NJ and Ng tubes were periodically placed for shorter stints. For a child who had never thrown up before age 15 periods of extreme pain and recurrent vomiting became her new normal. To complicate matters she was diagnosed with Rheumatoid arthritis at age 11 and later in HS with systemic Lupus so whenever GI symptoms got worse doctors were quick to attribute it to Lupus flares and rarely looked further. Problems continued sporadically through college eventually causing her to give up being a collegiate athlete. She graduated this past May and moved to Ann Arbor in August to start life as an “adult” but has landed in the ER 3x this month. CT on 2nd visit showed compression of celiac artery. Duplex ultrasound in ER yesterday confirmed MALS as well as stenosis of mescenteric artery. Vascular surgeons who saw her in ER yesterday said CHW should have placed a stent when SMA syndrome was initially suspected. Sorry that was really lengthy. Would appreciate any insight into what we can expect on the road ahead. Such as realistic recovery times and how much support she may need post surgery as I am a single parent and she is now living alone almost 6 hours from me. Thankfully I have a very supportive boss and may be able to do some work remotely but to further complicate matters I am supposed to have shoulder surgery in the coming month but that may just need to be postponed

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