Splenic Cyst Misadventures

In the last few months, I’ve become something of an armchair expert on the spleen. I’ve read hundreds of journal articles about the long misunderstood organ, and I’ve talked to a handful of doctors about the spleen, its importance to the body and the consequences of having it impaired or even removed.

Most people have no idea what the spleen does for the body, or even where it was located. Until a few months ago, I was no different. My husband and I left our jobs to travel around the world for a year last fall. An incredible, once-in-a-lifetime trip, it had only one hiccup: I developed a severe kidney infection in Chile that took me more than a month to recover from. During that time, in addition to my kidney pain, I developed a new pain on my left side, which turned out to be caused by a grapefruit-sized cyst on spleen. This pain did not go away as my health improved. In fact, it got worse as weeks went on, so much so that in April, we interrupted our trip to return to the US.

Splenic cysts are usually benign and don’t often require treatment, unless they reach more than 5 cm in size. At that point, they can have an increased risk chance of rupture (more on the consequences of that here) and medical guidelines recommend they be surgically removed. Mine, as pictured above in a CT-Scan, was more than 10 cm in diameter.

Splenic cysts are incredibly rare, with just 800 cases recorded in medical literature (as of 2009). This means, there’s no clear guidelines on the best way to treat them.

In April, I had laparoscopic surgery to “deroof” my cyst. In layman’s terms, this means my surgeon carved a very large hole in the top of my cyst, drained out all the liquid and thinned out the cyst wall with the help of an argon laser. In theory, by doing all this, the cyst would collapse and the body would re-absorb it.

Sadly, my cyst proved stronger than the argon laser. I began to feel the same old back pain caused by the cyst about 3 months after my surgery, and an ultrasound confirmed its return. Now, I’m facing surgery round 2, this time to remove my spleen completely.

In the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing details about my experiences with this condition and upcoming surgery.