It could indeed be gallbladder - that location is pretty much where my pain was. An ultrasound is a quick way of diagnosing it, though there are people with gallbladder problems who don’t actually have stones.
The pain at level 9 sounds right from what I’ve heard - I’d rate mine more at a 7, then again I’ve had 2 kids with botched epidurals both times, and this was not worse than that. I was lucky.
Eating a strict low-fat diet is a good idea to prevent flareups but they can still happen - the pain is when something causes a stone to be actually expelled from the gallbladder (my ultrasound showed that the duct was actually stretched slightly as a result). The contractions when your body needs to digest a high fat meal make this more likely but it could happen other times as well.
Anyway - see the doc as soon as you can. As another poster noted, it can get a lot worse in terms of being sick, requiring more major surgery, etc.
Yep - I was in the early stages of jaundice: my urine was getting very dark, and bloodwork confirmed elevated levels of some stuff.
What, for me, was FAR worse than the pain was that this caused nonstop, truly maddening ITCHING of my hands and feet. And nothing helped. Soaking them in hot water made it worse (that can help itches from other causes). Icing them gave relief only when the ice was in direct contact with my skin. Scratching helped for just a second or two at a time.
So for most of 48 hours, I did not sleep. I’ll take pain over sleep deprivation, any day.
I think what happened is that the stone that was blocking things and causing the backup of bile, finally passed.
My Dad’s pancreatitis pain from when he ignored my mother’s advice to get his gallbladder removed before any further attacks was worse than my mother’s labor pains, but my mother had shortish and possibly not especially painful labor. At least, my mother looked at him and decided he was in more pain than she ever had been.
Pancreatitis is not inevitable–Dad’s gallstones were prone to breaking up into itty bits (as I recall), and one itty bit blocked the duct to the pancreas which caused the pancreatitis.
But I wouldn’t expect you to explode in a month–Dad had three, fairly widely spaced attacks, that I’m aware of, two of them in high stress situations (and certainly high fat ones). The last one landed him in the hospital for a week with high doses of pain killer and antibiotic, then he waited about three weeks to heal, and then he had the gallbladder out, and has had no problems since then. For a while he was even waking less often in the middle in the night to go pee.
I only remember one gall bladder attack, that lasted for days. Though I had other, smaller, ones.
It was awful. I felt like I had terminal gas. Nothing I did relieved it. I was put in the hospital but not really given anything for it as I was nursing at the time (had just had my second son.)
Years later, after other small attacks, my gall bladder was removed while they were doing other surgery (can’t remember what for.) I remember I was so glad that I’d never have another attack.
The surgery itself can’t be any worse than the attacks.
That sounds like gallbladder disease to me. I suffered from it for around 6 years before I finally had to have my gallbladder out. (apparently when iffy gallbladders go bad, that’s it…times up, off to the emergency room).
Anyway, I dealt with the attacks for years before this happened. One thing that helped was making sure I was well hydrated. I’d notice that if I allowed myself to get dehydrated that that would almost always bring on an attack. I figured out that if I started getting even slight heartburn, that a gallbladder attack (such as you describe) was sure to follow. Mine were miserable things, often involving vomiting for hours (for some reason they almost all occurred in the middle of the night).
For most people, a gallbladder surgery is an afternoon in the doctor’s office affair. For me it was about every complication possible and a 2 week stay in the hospital. NOT fun. If I had it to do over, I’d have visited the doctor when I first started noticing the symptoms. Best of luck!
FWIW, one of the hospital volunteers I am working with just had gallbladder surgery and came down to the front desk yesterday, where I was, and started helping! She has NO pain. She refuses even a Tylenol. Weird. Good, but weird.
That’s fairly amazing (the volunteer, that is). I had a pretty good recovery all in all but next-day I was definitely still moving very very carefully.
I will tell you that what set off my gallbladder (and I was only 23) was going on Jenny Craig, keeping very strictly to the diet, and then - while visiting friends in another city - bingeing on fatty foods. Apparently, because Jenny Craig was so low fat, the bile just sat in my gallbladder and formed stones (surgeon described my gallbladder as a sack of gravel). When I suddenly dumped a lot of fat into my GI tract, my gallbladder tried to squeeze out the necessary bile for digestion and instead started choking on stones. It was . . . not fun.
Jenny Craig later lost a class action lawsuit due to the number of clients who lost their gallbladders after staying on the diet.
Also - if you’d like to mess with your surgeons - do like I did: sneak a bag of Hershey’s miniature candy bars under your gown with a photocopy of this Far Side cartoon and the note “Please be very gentle. It’s my first time.” taped to it.
I vaguely remember after waking up, hearing the anesthesiologist talking to my mom. Then he paused, checked his lab coat pocket, and said, “Cool! Still got some Special Darks.”
I started having random issues in October Last year. Severe hives would happen about once every two weeks. No hives since december but in the middle of december I developed severe dizziness (nearly passed out several times), blurred vision, mind fog (this was probably due to the pregnancy I lost) flushing, cold chills and severe panic attacks (only have had four episodes) but they were so bad I thought I was having a heart attack. The cold chills would get so bad they were uncontrollable. Along with it I feel constantly like someone is squeezing my middle SO tight. Which progressed to pain by my breasts that radiates through to my back and under my shoulder blade. MDS did their cardiac workup of course which was fine. I have no allergies or other problems. No gallstones…nothing showed up on ultra sound. They did a Hida Scan and behold, my gallbladder was only working 3%-which they want over 35%. My only risk factor has been pregnancy. One two years ago, one I lost last year, and one I lost in december along with all these symptoms. They want to remove it tomorrow. I don’t like the thought of taking it out honestly…but I don’t want to take a smooth muscle relaxer that will affect my whole body just to get it to work better. Through all of this though I never had nausea. I would have loose stools with the hives. October and november no particular food seemed to bother it. The end of december I would notice more grease made me hurt. ALL of my attacks start in the late evening and peak around two A.M. Which is why I couldn’t work night shift…they’d get so bad.
My symptoms had the same pattern. Sometimes I would go for years without an attack. I avoided going for an ultrasound for a long time because my understanding is that all an ultrasound will tell you is that it is possible that gallstones are to blame and as has been stated elsewhere, many people have gallstones without having any problems. However there is another test they can do, a cholescintigraphy, which can more reliably indicate whether gallstones are the cause of your problem.
IANAD, but I am happily gallbladder free. I suggest you follow up with a doctor. It will happen again.