Alright, this is not a medical advice thread, I’ve seen a doctor, etc. I woke up today after 4 hours of sleep with excruciating back and abdominal pain. The back pain has been coming at odd times for a little while now, but it would generally go away with pills and a massage. It felt like back spasms or something, so I wasn’t too worried, I was just popping Robax. This morning, however, the pain was too much so I rousted my friend to take me over to the hospital.
The diagnosis? A big ol’ gallstone (3-4 cm)! I’ve named her Pearl, and she’s been there for awhile. So now I’ve got an order to stay away from fried foods and a prescription that the doctor told me was basically useless but might help my stomach pain. I’ll probably have to get my gallbladder out during the summer when it won’t interfere with school (unless it’s really bothering me), but I’m hoping to keep the attacks to a minimum until then.
So, any tips or tricks for keeping my gallbladder happy? In your experience, how much fatty food was too much, i.e. will a salami sandwich reduce me to a shivering ball of pain? Is it true that losing weight can exacerbate this thing? Wanna offer some commiseration? Ugh, I’m too young for this shit.
I had mine out December 23rd, 2004. It was the best medical decision I have made to date. I am going on 4 years pain free, compared to quarterly attacks that would send me to the hospital for 8 years (misdiagnosed, damn you St. Francis Hospital!)
The only thing I will warn you about is your bowel movements will change. Look up “dumping syndrome” For me, knowing that a half hour after I eat I BETTER know where a bathroom is is a small price to pay.
Yikes, good thing you got that taken care of, MikeG. I’m glad I went to the hospital instead of waiting to see if it would get better on its own, and I’m extra glad they figured out what was wrong right away. I can’t imagine dealing with this kind of pain for 8 months, let alone 8 years.
I had my gallbladder out back in March of this year and I also had a monster stone in among all the little tiny rocks. My surgeon told me after the operation that it was the biggest stone he had ever seen. It is now a lovely souvenir sitting in a jar on my nightstand.
In my experience, cutting down on fatty foods and spicy foods will result in your body less frequently demanding extra bile which will result in fewer attacks. You will also likely find that your weight starts to drop a bit and your cholesterol levels come down, both good things and neither, as far as I am aware, things that will cause you further issues.
After your surgery, I don’t think you’ll have any issues with having to change your diet or anything. With a big, big stone occupying almost all of the space in that organ, you’re digestive system is already compensating for your lack of spare bile. I’ve heard that most people who have the surgery wind up with indigestion and other tummy issues when they eat fatty foods and such, but I have experienced no such thing.
Now the downside: with a whopper like that, you’re almost certainly not going in for the quick and easy laproscopy. You’re getting a big-ass incision across the right side of your abdomen which means spending months and months getting your core right again. That sucks. When I went under I was fully expecting to be back home the next day, but I wound up in recovery for five days following my operation. Boo-urns.
I will also concur with **MikeG **about the regularity. I’m not sure how losing some bile storage results in your needing to go to the washroom RIGHT NOW two or three times a day, but that is also what happened to me post-op.
I spent the last four months dealing with this. You know how when the doctor tells you about all of those possible complications that might theoretically occur? I hit them all. Things that were supposed to only take a few hours of outpatient treatment ended up with me hospitalized for weeks.
But the good news is that everything did work out in the end. My gallbladder and I have now parted ways and I’m back to eating all the garbage I used to eat.
While I was awaiting surgery, I kept the problem under control by cutting way back on any fats. I was told I could eat up to 25 grams of fat a day but I kept it well below that. I was also told to avoid alcohol but I don’t drink anyway.
When I first had mine out (February 1998), I didn’t have half an hour to find a bathroom! If I was in a restaurant, I had to locate the bathrooms before I sat down and make sure I didn’t sit too far away, because I’d need to be there before I’d even finished eating. I’m glad that that didn’t last forever!
But I agree–it sure beat the agony of a gallbladder attack hands down.
The general surgeon I met with today said I would probably be able to have a laparoscopy, so I’ve got my fingers crossed for that. And, uh, wow about the bowel issues. I’m now really looking forward to that.
Basically all I’ve been told is to avoid fat, but like I said, I don’t know how much is too much. I like lean meat anyway, so as long a I resist my love of fast food, I should be alright.
And I concur, even though I haven’t had my gallbladder out, anything is better than that pain!
There is a lot of questionable gallbladder info on the internet. One thing that crops up a lot is a study that did appear in a medical journal back in 1948 blaming gallbladder issues on “allergies” to specific foods. I don’t buy into this as a true solution to gallbladder issues, but it might be worth considering as a list of potential trigger foods to avoid while you wait for the surgery:
"The foods that most commonly produced symptoms in decreasing order of occurrence include eggs (93 percent of the patients reacted to eggs), pork, onions, fowl, milk, coffee, citrus, corn, beans, and nuts. "
If you do have the larger surgery, you may want to consider taking a lighter course load when you return to school. I didn’t and I ended up with back spasms because the abdominal muscles were still weak and the back muscles were overworking to compensate. They decided they didn’t like it and got vengeful. Fewer classes is better than failing classes.
If you get the lap surgery that shouldn’t be a consideration. Good luck!
Just for illustrative purposes (and to scare the children), here’s a picof one of my little stones and The Big Stone, with a AA battery for scaling. And here’s what I went through to get that sumbitch out of me. The original plan was to do the laproscopic procedure on me, but apparently, once they had the camera probe in my belly and saw what they were up against, they realized it wasn’t coming out the easy way and went to Plan B, which was gutting me like a fish. So you can see in that second pic the small incisions made just above the navel and a couple inches above that for sticking the little laproscopic probes in there, and then the great big gash required to actually extract the gall bladder with that big ol’ stone in it.
I do hope they have a plan for getting yours out with the laproscopic procedure, but if your stone is as big as they’re telling you it is, I’d be prepared to be one of the 5% of people who need to be cut on for serious.
I had my gallbladder removed fairly urgently in the mid 90s. It was done laparoscopically, and I healed up rather fast. I was back working at a job where I was on my feet for 8 - 10 hours a day, after just a few days.
My only problem…I gained nearly 50# yes, FIVE-O pounds in just a couple months after the surgery. I still own it. So make sure you talk to a dietitian if you can. Apparently weight gain isn’t that uncommon, and well for me it is very common for any reason.
Also, I didn’t have health insurance at the time, and was tossed out of the hospital in less than 24 hours, and never had a follow up. I don’t recommend that. Get a follow up.
To end on a more positive note. My husband had his out in 2003, but had to have the larger incision. He still did great and was back at work in short order. And…he never gained an ounce.
That is what happened to my husband and why he had the full incision. His(scar) is very similar but a little more jagged. My son had surgery on his left kidney at 2 months old that same year. In fact it was just 3 weeks before daddy’s surgery. So now they have matching scars, but on opposite sides. 2003 was a crap year for us as far as health!
Thanks for the advice and good wishes, guys! I’m not exactly looking forward to surgery, but I’ll definitely be relieved to get Pearl out. No gravy this Christmas.
Not to rain on your parade too much, Queen, but I wouldn’t be counting on a laparoscopic procedure with a stone that big. I’d plan for the big one, and be pleasantly surprised if they managed to do the laparoscopy. Dread Pirate Jimbo was out of work for a good month with that surgery (and he’s a guy who takes about one sick day a year normally). It will probably be a fulll year for him to get completely back to “normal”. I’m not saying this to scare you (or anyone else) - I think you will do better if you have some idea what to expect. It will probably be fairly serious surgery, it will take time to recover, you will need to make some changes for a period of time, but when it’s done, that nasty ol’ gall bladder is gone for good.
I had my gall bladder removed in December 2001. I was shopping the next day. The second day post-surgery sucked donkey balls, but after that I was right as rain.
This thread is mildly freaking me out. I just went to the doctor for severe abdominal pain (which is a kind of final straw on top of all the digestive problems I’ve had over the last several years) and among the things she mentioned as a possibility was my gall bladder. (She also mentioned Cron’s and Celiac disease, so obviously we’re in the preliminary stages of trying to figure this thing out.)
I have to get an abdominal ultrasound and a cat scan and possibly some more invasive procedures to solve this mystery.
I hope it’s not my gallbladder because I already have a lot of the symptoms that are listed as negative side-effects of this surgery. I do think, though obviously I will have to wait to find out for sure, that what I have is most likely Cron’s… so maybe I am worried over nothing.
Good luck with everything! My uncle recently had his gallbladder out and he was back to calling me on the phone and bitching about politics within two hours of coming home. He has overall experienced very little pain with the procedure and feels much better now.
My recommendation is that you pray for the relative ease with which a bad gallbladder can be removed compared to Crohn’s Disease, which will mean having big chunks of your intestines removed. A good friend of mine has Crohn’s and he had about three feet of his intestine yanked out around ten years ago. His ability to digest proteins has been badly compromised as a result, so he is no longer able to knock back beef without mild to severe digestive stress. Also, from what he tells me, in many cases the surgery doesn’t cure the problem and it frequently returns in a new area, meaning another surgery and more of your guts coming out. He told me that a dignosis of Crohn’s usually means losing ten years off your life expectancy. Which sucks a lot.
Here’s hoping you just have gall stones (if your uncle had it your odds just went up – it’s hereditary) and can have a quick, easy lap to fix it.
