Achy-breaky gall bladder

[CrackRabbit]

I can now honest say don't pies off your gall bladder.
I did and man has it been a rough couple of days.
Started with intense stomach pain followed by 7 hours of nonstop vomiting and being curled into a fetal position on the bathroom floor being so dehydrated you can't vomit a anymore and then drive yourself to the ER and spend another 8 hours in pain while they figure out what is wrong with you. Only to be told you have gall bladder stones, and that it is majorly inflamed and needs to be removed.
Then another two hours while they rhydrate you via IV before knocking you out and poking around your insides with a knife and camera.
Now I am in the hospital bed completely dependent on the nurses for just about everything and feeling like Carman from southpark in the Wow episode; "Nurse! Bathroom! Bathroom!"
Anyways this post may be partially the percosets talking just wanted to let the few of my friends who post here know I will be fine and that you should never let your gall bladder go Billy Ray Cyrus.

 

[highland145]

Pies and percocet make for a fast recovery.

 

[CrackRabbit]

Pies and percocet make for a fast recovery.

pie makes everything better

 

[gorcorps]

Odd you should mention that

I woke up early this morning with a lot of pain on my right side. It's happened before, and it seems to get better in a day or so. I should probably get it looked at.

have a good recovery OP

 

[HTFOff]

R.I.P.

i'm kidding

Have a safe recovery.

 

[highland145]

Odd you should mention that

I woke up early this morning with a lot of pain on my right side. It's happened before, and it seems to get better in a day or so. I should probably get it looked at.

have a good recovery OP

Google gall bladder cleansing. Several day process to soften any stones, a bunch of olive oil to excrete a bunch of bile and getting out of your system.

No, I've never tried it but I'd like to hear your results.

 

[Zenmervolt]

I had mine out at the end of September last year. I'd been having attacks about every two months since March (thought the first one might have been a heart attack, but it went away after a couple hours, so I figured it was just really bad esophageal spasms, which run in my family). Didn't see a doctor for the first two attacks because, well, if I don't go, they can't tell me anything is wrong, right?

After the third attack, which lasted about 6 hours, I finally made an appointment with my GP. He ordered a basic metabolic panel, which came back with elevated liver function (common for a few days after a gallstone attack), which led to an abdominal ultrasound. Many many small, mobile gallstones plus one giant stone that was too big to go anywhere.

Referral to the GI specialist and a comment that if an attack ever lasts more than "an hour or two" I should go to the hospital. GI specialist agrees and refers me to a surgeon for a consult about having the gallbladder removed.

Before the surgical consult, another attack. This one goes on for about 12 hours, but I don't go in because I'm studying for the bar exam and I'll be damned if I'm going to let something like this stop me. Besides, I know they go away after a while. (There may be a reason that my sister, a Nurse Practitioner, tends to roll her eyes at me...) The other people in my bar prep class ask why I look like death.

Finally I make time to go see the surgeon and he agrees with everything that's been said. I'm a lucky one, he says, since there's no indication of infection or inflammation, I just keep passing one of the small stones every so often. Should be easy.

I don't like the idea of surgery though, and I put off scheduling an appointment. Bar exam comes and goes without me having an attack in the middle of it and I think I'm doing well. Passed. Yay. Such lawyer, much celebrate.

My last quarter of classes start (got a second degree in addition to my JD, so I had to finish up the second one after the bar). First week is great. Monday morning of the second week I wake up at 4 am unable to sleep with a stabbing pain in my upper right abdomen. After about 4 hours, I'm able to sort of sleep, finally getting out of bed at noon. After walking around a bit the pain subsides to a dull 4 or 5 out of 10, so I decide to go about my day and I attend evening classes. As soon as I get home and lay down for sleep, the pain spikes again. By the time 4 am on Tuesday morning rolls around with no sign of the pain stopping, I decide that it's probably time to go in to the hospital.

I shower, shave, and brush my teeth before leaving, on the theory that they probably won't let me leave until they've taken my gallbladder out. Then I drive to the ER. 22 miles. It takes me a couple minutes to pry my fingers loose from the steering wheel when I get to the ER's parking garage. For a moment I re-think my decision to live alone in the country.

Still no infection, but the ultrasound makes it obvious that I've recently passed a gallstone (bile ducts are twice the diameter they were in the earlier ultrasound) and the hospital is pretty insistent on removing the gallbladder. Thursday comes around, they knock me out and I wake up with a few incisions from the laparoscopic surgery but it's WAY less pain than the GB attacks. Like a 3 out of 10 instead of the 7 out of 10 that the attacks would spike at.

They let me go home Thursday afternoon and I was independently mobile within a couple hours of the surgery.

All I can say to you, OP, is be glad it's gone. I don't miss mine and I haven't had a problem since. You'll probably have some gastro-intestinal issues for the first couple of months as your body re-adjusts to processing food, but I have not had to make any long-term dietary changes. I'm back to the same diet I ate before the attacks started and feeling fine. Here's hoping that you have the same result.

 

[KeithTalent]

So what causes this? Is it a bad diet, or not enough water? It's been a long time since I took a biology class, so I forget.

KT

 

[DrPizza]

I was getting attacks with increasing frequency. I googled that olive oil thing, and chugged quite a bit of olive oil one night. I do understand that people say, "you'll see the gall stones that you pass" - no, that's undigested fat that formed into little balls. Your body can't digest that much at once. But anyway, that remedy seemed to work. Haven't had problems since.

 

[highland145]

I was getting attacks with increasing frequency. I googled that olive oil thing, and chugged quite a bit of olive oil one night. I do understand that people say, "you'll see the gall stones that you pass" - no, that's undigested fat that formed into little balls. Your body can't digest that much at once. But anyway, that remedy seemed to work. Haven't had problems since.

Dr. approved. Awesome.

 

[tHa ShIzNiT]

So what causes this? Is it a bad diet, or not enough water? It's been a long time since I took a biology class, so I forget.

KT

this is what i wanna know as well.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Fiance got hers taken out years ago (before met her), only real downside is she's got some pretty serious acid reflux issues, but, if she takes an acid blocker she's fine...

 

[CrackRabbit]

Just talked to the surgeon and read my OP. Now I can fully see why PWI is a bad thing.
Apparently my gall bladder had gone gangrenous and I would have been in truly bad shape if I hadn't gone to the ER when I did.
Looks like they are going to keep me another day for more observation and IV antibiotics and pain meds, and that is fine by me. Moving around hurts quite a bit as one could imagine with having three new holes in my abdomen and a drainage port in one of them.

 

[Blintok]

I had this in 2000. I was lucky i guess and did not have the bouts of vomit. Just pain like bad cramps. Bad attack in Oct 2000. but it went away so i left it. Next time about a month later i went to ER.
Was there all night and by 4am was feeling ok thinking i can go home. but the nurse comes in shortly and starts hooking up all these IV bags. Basically if the bile duct gets plugged. you get bad pancreatitis...the panceas stsrts to eat it self.

They let me go home next day. bland diet. 2wks later in for surgery. At hospital at 7am for 8am operation. by 1630 same day was on my way home.

The worst was i had to sleep in lazy boy for 3 days because i could not lay flat. felt like i did 5000 situps in 2min. Did not fill scrip for pain meds until the monday. The worst was when the gas started to leech out (they fill your gut up with gas to make room to work)
felt like i had needles in my joints.

but that wasnt the end of the fun. was back in er about 2wks later. guess they missed a stone or 2 in the bile duct. But was day surgery. pretty much you swallow a garden hose into your upper intestine. They laser open the bottom of the bile duct and fish the stones out.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

If percs make you constipated, ask for softeners now. Straining while other pieces parts are healing in the general area would be bad.

 

[Zenmervolt]

So what causes this? Is it a bad diet, or not enough water? It's been a long time since I took a biology class, so I forget.

KT

According to my doctor, the GI specialist, and the surgeon, it's just genetic for some people.

The stones I had were made of cholesterol, but my actual cholesterol numbers in a fasting lipid test were below normal (a good thing). The presence of cholesterol stones in the gallbladder is actually completely unrelated to blood (serum) cholesterol levels.

Sometimes it's just that there's a kink in the bile duct and the gallbladder has trouble emptying fully, which causes the bile to over-concentrate and start to develop stones as minerals come out of solution. Sometimes the musculature around it doesn't fully compress it to empty it completely, which causes the same thing. Sometimes there's no obvious reason and the person just happens to make the stones.

My big stone, the one that wasn't going anywhere, was 3.5 centimeters in diameter, basically golf ball sized. The stones that caused problems were the several dozen or so in the 4 to 8 milimeter diameter range as those were small enough to exit the gall bladder, but large enough to obstruct the common bile duct afterwards.

And to everyone who talks about doing a "cleanse" to "pass" the gallstones, let me tell you that's about the last thing you want. Passing a gallstone hurts like all hell. Shoving an 8mm diameter stone through a 4mm diameter bile duct is not pleasant and it is definitely not painless. There are medications that will dissolve gallstones, but those aren't really permanent solutions. From talking with my doctor and the GI specialist, those are typically reserved for people who are in such poor health that surgery would be too much of a risk.

The problem with dissolving the stones is that they come back. Basically, if you make gallstones, you make gallstones. Dissolving the ones that are there stops the problems for a while, but as soon as you're off the medication that dissolves them, new stones begin forming. There's basically a guarantee of recurrence if you go the dissolving route.

ZV

 

[highland145]

Just talked to the surgeon and read my OP. Now I can fully see why PWI is a bad thing.
Apparently my gall bladder had gone gangrenous and I would have been in truly bad shape if I hadn't gone to the ER when I did.
Looks like they are going to keep me another day for more observation and IV antibiotics and pain meds, and that is fine by me. Moving around hurts quite a bit as one could imagine with having three new holes in my abdomen and a drainage port in one of them.

Hell, our rabbit is broken.

Shoving an 8mm diameter stone through a 4mm diameter bile duct is not pleasant and it is definitely not painless.

Soooo good to be a guy.

 

[dougp]

Hell, our rabbit is broken.

Soooo good to be a guy.

I'm a guy and I had my gallbladder removed when I was 22 - apparently, rapid weight loss or radical diets can cause gall stones.

I had 5 attacks - 3 of them I had called or someone called 911. The first time, I thought it was a heart attack - it wasn't until the one at work where they forced me to go to the doctor did I know what it was.

I know a few women who've had gallstones as well as natural child birth and they felt the gallstones are far worse.

 

[Sho'Nuff]

So what causes this? Is it a bad diet, or not enough water? It's been a long time since I took a biology class, so I forget.

KT

Sometimes its genetics. Sometimes its diet. Every man in the last three generations of my family has had their gall bladder out before age 35. I lost mine a couple years ago. Suffered through attacks for over a year until one day I was under handing baseballs to my son one minute and collapsed on the ground in agony the next. Seriously thought I was going to die.

GB surgery is not fun, but its worth it. Took my body almost a year to sort out how to process food. But it got consistently better and no attacks. Unfortunately I will likely have to go back for another surgery because I have a pretty large hernia at one of the laproscopic incision sites.

 

[Sho'Nuff]

Fiance got hers taken out years ago (before met her), only real downside is she's got some pretty serious acid reflux issues, but, if she takes an acid blocker she's fine...

Gall bladder connects below the stomach, so her GB surgery should not be the cause of her acid reflux issues. More likely is GERD or something similar.