Grumpy the Gallbladder: Now With Chest Pains!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Orientation: I have known for several years that I have two stones and “sludge” in the gallbladder. It has caused a bit of pulsing pain on some occasions, but nothing like what happened the other night…

  I had just finished eating some ice cream with hot fudge.  (Note to self:  this may have been the final straw in a recent flurry of bad food choices.)   
   Then the pain hit, very suddenly:  squeezing pain in the chest and then in  the back between the shoulderblades, as if someone were pushing on me from both sides and not letting up.  Then the sweating.  Then the shortness of breath and a fair amount of panic because the squeezing had gone on for several minutes.    
    Then we made the phone call to 911 since these symptoms can be those of a heart attack, though I didn't think that's what it was.   Paramedics came in, treated me as if I were having a ticker attack, and even though I was starting to feel better and the pain was subsiding, they still insisted on a trip in the ambulance as a precaution.   Being in no condition to drive, I gave in.   My mom happened to be around, but at age 81 she can't really see very well at night, so I would not have let her drive me.   Off to the E.R., where the team started taking names and blood and so forth.   
   Around 10pm (I had been there for 2.5 hours thus far), the attending doc reported that all tests on the heart were coming back well within normal; EKG was perfect, etc.   She wanted me to hang around till midnight for a repeat cardiac enzyme test that would have taken another 2 hours to get back from the lab, but I was feeling much better and needed to start teaching college the very next morning, rather early; couldn't get a sub.   They had given me LoPresor (sp?) to pull down the blood pressure, which is normally nice and low but had risen due to the pain.     I signed out so I could leave; they called a cab for us.  
    I have been perfectly well ever since.    I am watching everything I eat, though.   Low-fat regimen.   No fried or greasy stuff.   Very few desserts, or just small ones.    I have been working out and taking walks regularly for months. That might have helped, but I still don't want to set off Grumpy again.   My mom had to have hers removed after a very nasty attack some years ago.   I would not want to have that surgery if I could possibly avoid it.
     Dopers out there with gallbladder issues:   are there some foods or vitamins you could recommend to help this little organ?
2

I can’t help you out with any comestible recommendations, but I just wanted to drop in to say that a cholecystectomy is comparatively benign on the scale of invasive surgeries.

Maybe I’m a bit jaded since I usually see joint replacements, heart bypass/grafts, and other such lengthy procedures, but if my gb was causing me such “heartburn”, I’d give serious consideration to jettisoning the little sucker.

:: shrug ::

Good luck, whatever you choose.

3

No recommendation here, just best wishes. I’m glad you’re feeling better now!

4

Oh god. Biliary colic. :eek: I have so totally been there. Distinguished myself during my inaugural attack, first, by puking into a quickly provided basin in the ER, and second, by turning a spectacular yellow. After establishing that I wasn’t having a heart attack, and cleaning up the puke, the ER guy squinted at me, then asked my husband, “Does she look…yellow…to you?” And then there was an “Ah ha!” moment, which I suppose must have been deeply satisfying for a medical professional. My blood test result an hour later was off the charts, showing Me, full to the yellow eyeballs with backed-up bile.

Sit down here and listen to me for a minute: Finger-wagging lecture, because your mom is 81 and isn’t here to do it :D:

  1. There are no pills that will help you with this. No vitamins, no supplements, no “cleansing foods”, no nutriceuticals. You’ve got pieces of grit blocking your bile duct, which sends bile down to digest fats. And every time you eat fat, your gall bladder tries to squeeze some bile down through your bile duct to help you digest those fats, but damn! that bile duct is just plain plugged. So it hurts. Lots. There are no pills, vitamins, or magical Internet herbal supplements that can remove that piece of grit from the opening to your bile duct.

  2. Even if you have the gall bladder out, you still might have to watch the fats. Paranoidly. For the rest of your life. This is because they have just removed the organ that specifically helps you digest fats (duh). Some people don’t have any ill effects afterwards, and they go right back to Beefaroni and pizza, but some people have constant diarrhea afterwards, which Beefaroni and pizza makes incredibly worse. So I’m just sayin’, having the gall bladder out is no guarantee that everything will be all better now; you’ll be free from the constant threat of another bout of biliary colic, but you may find you have other problems instead. Just sayin’.

  3. If you keep on eating Beefaroni and pizza, and just put up with the pain of your attacks of biliary colic, eventually you can die. Scroll down to “Morbidity”.

  4. It’s not an either/or situation, “either” remove the gall bladder “or” have gallstones. There is a third alternative, lithotripsy, in which they break up the gallstones with ultrasonic. The trick is to find someone in your area who does the procedure. But it’s not always a 100% guarantee, either.

  5. There are other alternatives, too, like oral dissolution therapy, which, like lithotripsy and surgery, have their pluses and minuses.

  6. There’s more to a “low-fat” diet than just cutting out the obviously greasy and fried foods. Ice cream and fudge, for starters, are extraordinarily high in fat. Beefaroni is high in fat. Practically any processed food you care to name is high in fat. Even a “small” dessert, like a Hostess cupcake, is high in fat. You need to educate yourself. Start by googling “low-fat diet”. Look up your favorite foodstuffs here. I’m betting it’ll be a real eye-opener.

  7. You can’t cheat any more. No more “small” desserts, no more ignoring the occasional twinges and going ahead and eating the hot fudge sundae. It’s not going to go away by itself. You need to face that fact. When you cheat, it’s going to hurt. And if you keep on cheating, and it keeps on hurting, sooner or later you’ll be extremely likely to end up with biliary tract disease (see above, under “Morbidity”).

  8. You need to discuss all this with your doctor. And you do need to be under a doctor’s care for this, if only in a consultation capacity.

K.

End of lecture. :smiley:

5

Thanks for your informative post. I’ve had a couple of attacks but they’ve been widely spaced so I didn’t think it could be serious, but I’m definitely going to start changing my diet.

6

When I had my first gall bladder attack, I woke my husband up and told him I was having a heart attack. It hurt that bad. The man in the ambulance told me it was an anxiety attack.

The pain stopped as quickly as it had started.

The next couple of times were spookily at the exact same time two weeks in a row – right at the beginning of Twin Peaks. I told my husband to ignore any sounds he heard and I excused myself from the room. I got on all fours on my bed, buried my head in a pillow and screamed for about ten minutes each time. Then the pain let up.

I saw a doctor and he ordered a sonogram. There were gallstones. A friend who is a nurse explained the same think that Duck Duck Goose did. I had the gall bladder out in very easy surgery. My gallbladder looked like a bean bag. I had about 200 gallstones. The surgery was done orthoscopically.

I would at least try one of the other methods if you don’t want to have your gallbladder removed. I wouldn’t take any chances on getting a stone firmly stuck in the tract! This is serious business.

See a doctor.

7

First off, See a Doctor.

I had been having those same “twinges” for the better part of ten years. I knew they were from my gallbladder, so I ignored them as best as I could. Then I had the granddaddy of them all, in the middle of the night, a couple years ago. The nice people at the ER asked if I wanted it out, and my answer was a resounding yes, before I even found out that they no longer made a long incision, like my Dad had. I just wanted the pain to finally go away. Turns out I now have a couple little pink scars less than an inch long, and one in my belly button that doesn’t really show. The surgeon told me that it was necrotic, and that a part of the pain was most likely from infection. Now that it’s out, I only have a few things that bother me, popcorn being the worst.

8

Wow. Y’all have opened my eyes! I have gallstones, too, but most of the time it doesn’t bother me. I had one really bad attack a couple of years ago, but by the time I was seen at the ER, the pain had stopped. Most foods don’t affect me.

But if that one giant stone decides to block the duct, it’s gonna be baaadddd. It’s about 3/4" diameter. I guess even if a little one blocks it, it will be bad. To hell with the work schedule, I’m gonna get mine out in the next few months.

Scary stuff.

Is losing weight one of the good after-effects of having it out? Since you can’t eat fat like you used to?

9

When I had my first gall bladder attack, I thought it was a heart attack. After two years of misery, I had it removed. It was laparoscopic day surgery. The results were dramatic. I could tell within a week that my tummy was better. Although YMMV, I highly recommend removal.

10

I will be calling the doc’s office today for an app’t about this situation. I am intrigued by the lithotripsy idea; my dad had a number of those done for his kidney stones. But I will see what the doc thinks.

Thanks, folks. I’m on it.

11

My dad didn’t have big stones, but he had little mushy ones–lots of little mushy ones. One of those little stones blocked a duct connected to the pancreas–leading to pancreatitis–even less fun than a normal gall bladder attack. After that, he had the gallbladder out.

If he’s had problems with eating fat since then, I don’t know it. But I don’t think he’s lost any weight. He’s not hugely obese, just sixtyish and more sedentary (and with a longer commute) than he had in his younger days.

One unexpected positive benefit for him was not needing to wake up to pee as often in the middle of the night.

12

Well, yeah. Kinda sorta. Maybe.

The liver is still producing bile; it’s just going to be released into your duodenum as it’s produced rather than stored in your gall bladder. Many people see little or no change in their digestion following gb removal. 'Course, many actually do see a change. Those were probably the folks that were consuming a high fat diet to begin with.

I hope a Dope Doc will weigh in here. I’m getting way out of my league.

Anyhoo…you’d have to experiment on your own to see what the aftereffects will be following the procedure.

PS- I’d be surprised to see that gallstone lithotripsy is a viable option. My hospital performs lithotripsy for kidney stones regularly, but I’ve never seen nor heard of gallstone lithotripsy. A brief scan of online literature on the subject didn’t look promising.

But, who knows? It might work. Please let us know if you find anyone reputable that’s willing to perform the procedure.

Again, good luck.

13

I just had to add this one thing…

The one noticeable effect that gb removal had on someone close to me that will remain nameless was that…

Her volume and frequency of flatulence increased exponentially.

Cause and effect? I don’t know.

All I do know is that I had to work much harder to win the contests.

:slight_smile:

14

Yeah, that was why I said the trick was to find someone in your area who performs gallstone lithotripsy. The NIH speaks. “ESWL for gallstones is currently an evolving treatment option for patients with symptomatic gallstones.” And that was written back in 1991. It’s in one of those gray areas, not exactly “experimental”, nor even “alternative”, but still not “mainstream” either. Yahoo Health sez it’s “rarely performed”. The technique is out there, but medical science hasn’t come to a consensus that it’s more useful than surgery. So the trick is to find someone that’s doing it.

15

Update: just saw the doc today; he ran an EKG which came out just fine; is sending me off to get an abdominal ultrasound—and an echocardiogram just to rule out any heart trouble possibilities; and I must get a fasting lipid panel blood test done as well.

Feeling fine, trying to eat more carefully, still taking walks.

16

Your symptoms sound exactly like mine that morning after I had the steak-&-egg McBagel at work. I was loaded into an ambulance and hauled to the hospital, being treated all the way as if I was a cardiac patient. Eventually, a doctor came in and disconnected me from all monitors and stuff, telling my my gall bladder was the culprit. A month later I had that sucker yonked out. I don’t miss it.

I also try to avoid them greasy, fatty edibles. All in all, life is good.

17

Sounds good to me. If you don’t mind my asking…did the surgery cause you to put on weight—or any other aftereffects?

I just saw the doc again today for the follow-up. The culprit is indeed the gallbladder, which has a lot more stones in it now than it did five years ago. I also have high cholesterol, though that’s a genetic thing on mom’s side.
We’re going to keep an eye on it for a while and I will try to settle things down with a better diet and more exercise. However, I am sure I will have the thing removed at some point.

On the plus side, I have excellent blood pressure, perfect heart, good thyroid, no kidney stones. Gotta be glad for that.

18

Get it out, is my opinion. I never had stones, mine just sort of gave up and died all of a sudden. They called it “sludgy” like you describe. I went from having no pain or attacks, to pain like you describe after eating anything in about the span of a month. I literally could not eat any kind of food without pain until I had the damn thing out. I lived on rice chex for about a week and then finally I did not eat a thing for 3 days before my surgery because the pain was so bad. The only thing I have experienced worse than that was childbirth (and only one of my deliveries was worse. The other one I would call better. So it was right up there.)

The laprascopic surgery I had was a breeze compared to that kind of pain. I would have even had the big surgery to end it though. I was miserable. I begged them to take it out - I had a test (forget the name) where you lie under some kind of camera while it watches your gall bladder empty itself, then they give you and Ensure and watch it some more. The Ensure set off an attack and I ended up curled up on the test room floor. The test woman was rather alarmed and sent me down to ER, where I waited to be admitted and they just did the surgery the next morning.

As for weight, I was not overweight to begin with, and I lost some weight before the surgery because of the not eating, but I do find that it seems a little easier for me to keep weight off now. I don’t eat tons of high-fat meals anyway, but when I do eat something that has a lot of fat, it seems to just…go right through, for lack of a more delicate way to put it. It’s like my body says “can’t deal with this” and just sends it along. Nice, I know. I don’t have issues on day to day normal eating at all, but maybe if I ate a lot of high fat stuff I would. One thing I did notice for sure, and that was recently after I had some shredded pork barbeque, I was in pain that night. But that is the only food I have singled out to say whoa, can’t eat this.

Another thing I have noticed, and maybe this is all in my head, but I swear alcohol affects me differently now. I get buzzed faster and on less than I used to. I can hardly touch hard liquor. A cheap date, I am.

I don’t know your situation, I was not a typical gall bladder surgery, (in my 20’s, not overweight) and my Dr. did tell me I might have more aftereffects. Usually if your problem is stones, taking it out is the end of it. For those whose gall bladder just dies, especially young women, he said sometimes we tend to have other issues after the surgery. For about a year after I had a lot of problems with acid reflux and took mega amounts of things like Nexium and Aciphex to keep it under control. Bad heartburn was almost as painful as the gall bladder attacks. Which was weird, since before the surgery I never had heartburn in my life, even while pregnant. And my Dr. could/would not say if the acid reflux was caused by my surgery, or if it started on its own, or if I had it before, or what. We did every test imaginable, and he said I would be on medication for the rest of my life. Then, for some reason, it all just went away and other than random and minor heartburn a few times a year now I am fine. Weird.

Anyway, my opinion is get it out if it bothers you. The lap surgery is nothing to be afraid of in itself.

19

Oh, I’m willing to get it yanked. Just a question of when.
I’m in my early 40s, female, maternal family history of this problem, several pounds overweight but definitely not obese.

20

I nominate **Duck Duck Goose ** for the office of Thread Mom. That was the sternest, most heart-warming, motherly ass-chewing I’ve ever experienced – it made me want to make an appointment with *my * doctor, and I’m not even sick (physically, that is.) You care, Goose, you really care!