Pregnant and has History of Actute Pancreatitis

Hello from Montreal,

Crossposting here following the kind suggestion of CY in m.k.pregnancy.

My wife has had five episodes of acute pancreatitis in the last five
years, each of which required her to be hospitalized for about three
weeks. She has a 3-cm (1.25 inch) pseudocyst on the tail of her
pancreas, which doesn't bother her between episodes. When the
pseudocyst grows, however, the pain becomes excruciating, and requires
heavy narcotics (Dilaudid, Fentanyl) to manage it.

To put things in context: my wife is not an alcoholic, doesn't have
hyperlipidemia, nor any of the other less frequent conditions that would
bring on pancreatitis. She doesn't know what is causing it, nor does
her surgeon. It does seem that stress brings on the episodes, however.

Hospitalization typically means being NPO (without any food or water via
the mouth) for 2 weeks, and then a slow restoration with fluids, etc.

She is now pregnant (EDD 28 Jul 04) and we are quite worried about her
situation.

She is being followed by a well-known high-risk pregnancy specialist,
but I wanted to hear if there were any experiences out there with this
kind of thing. I did a google search, and came up with only few
references to pancreatitis in the various newsgroups, unfortunately.

I should also add that she is a PhD-epidemiologist-to-be, and has ample
experience reading research papers and the like, so she's at the source of
lots of useful information she can actually understand. What I'm looking
for is someone's real-life experience with this kind of situation.

Any ideas, anyone?

Regards,
Alex