Gall Bladder Issues?

ruthieg10

I had mine taken out a couple years ago... One night I laid down to go to sleep and had this excruciating pain in my abdomen... I could not take the pain anymore... I seriously thought my appendix had exploded.... I went to the emergency room and they diagnosed that I had gall stones... A couple days latter I had the surgery to have it removed... The doctor counted 100 stones!!!

I don't notice much difference except when I eat A LOT of fatty foods... and when I drink sugar (for some weird reason)... which doesn't really bother me anyway because I try to avoid both!!!

Oh my word 100 stones?!? I had about 7 stones in mine and i was in agony, by far the worst pain i have ever been in!You poor thing!Hope your all better now :-) xx

nlewis22

Again thanks everyone, and good morning! I have been awake for a little over 2 hours and my discomfort has begun again. I slept all throught the night, but woke up and drank some water (wth?!) and boom, that weird feeling again. I will say that it's not the excrutiating pain that you all have been describing, so maybe there's hope for me yet? I guess we'll see and I'll be eating a whole lot less fat, I can tell you that! It's just going to be hard because I've been working on the sugar part because people in my family have diabetes. I guess watching what you eat is a lot harder than I thought...:grumble:

WBB55

I have been awake for a little over 2 hours and my discomfort has begun again. I slept all throught the night, but woke up and drank some water (wth?!) and boom, that weird feeling again.

My gall bladder story is similar to many others here. You might not realize how much pain you're in all the time. I didn't. I woke up in recovery after the surgery, laid still, and for the first time in 10 years I was pain free. I didn't even know what to do. I hadn't realized how much pain I was in every day until the pain was gone. The doctor later told me he'd never seen such a large -- but intact -- gall bladder, not even close, they usually rupture LONG before they get that big, and he had been doing 10/day for 15 years. He sat me down, very sympathetically, and said "I'm so sorry it took this long for a diagnosis. I bet you were in a lot of pain for a LONG time."

I really think the constant low level pain, feeling ill and uncomfortable after meals, and (at the end) MASSIVE SEVERE LEVEL 10/10 PAIN (Doctors had been telling me for years that it was stress and all in my head) caused a lot of my eating issues and binge and hunger and emotional things that I treated with depression/anxiety/sleep medication.

gallblader-ectomy? rated 10/10. Would do again in a heartbeat.

dancngdolfn

I never had gall bladder problems then one day i was having a problem breathing and it last about 10 minutes with a pain in between my shoulderblades and the chest and it felt like i was in a vice being squished. They started happening once a month and sometimes they would last for 10 minutes longest was 4 hours is was horrible horrible pain. Found out it was my gall bladder and 3 months later they took it out and i have felt great ever since. Hope you figure it out. I know my grandpa has gall stones but he never has any attacks so they haven't done anything with his.

fatjavotte

Gallstones are NOT caused by fat in your diet.
Doctors took seven years to diagnose my gallstones (with hindsight, my symptoms were textbook!) because I was overweight, so of course my stomach pains must have been caused by overeating (even when they happened in the morning before breakfast).
Giving birth without pain relief was a walk in the park after that!

cas2you2

I was in so much pain after eating and come to find out my gallbladder was acting up. My doctor told me that usually everyone has gall stones and they don't know it but when they get caught in the opening and don't let the gallbladder close again it can cause a lot of pain. We can live without it but you will find that your food is digested differently and there will be some foods you can't eat as well or as much of. Sometimes eating fatty foods will cause you problems and sometimes it won't.

SanteMulberry

Crash dieting can precipitate gall bladder issues (that is why it is better to limit weight loss to 1 pound or less per week if you have a tendency). The old maxim of those prone to gall bladder issues being "fair, fat, forty and flatulent" is true to some extent although I had mine removed at 28 and my daughter had her's removed at 30 (the flatulence is typically due to the incomplete digestion of fat and it will go away as the liver compensates for the loss of concentrated bile from the cholecystectomy--removal of the gall bladder). It is wise to have it removed if there are stones present, as getting a stone lodged in the common bile duct is a crisis and requires emergency surgery ASAP--it can also make someone VERY ill. I didn't have stones, but I did have chronic congestion, inflammation and infection (as it turned out, the duct leading out of the gall bladder was "kinked"). The surgeon, was initially reluctant to remove my gall bladder because x-rays didn't show stones, but when I continued to be ill with symptoms, they did a special x-ray that showed it was "non functioning" and went ahead with the surgery. He said, after the surgery, that it was very scarred and calcified and was going necrotic when he removed it. The pathology report confirmed what the surgeon said.

TrailRunner61

Have you had a gallbladder ultrasound, HIDA scan, or liver function tests? I just had mine out a couple of months ago, along with my appendix!

Sometimes the ultrasound or exam can be negative, but the actual function of the gallbladder is failing, which causes an overall feeling of, let's call it death, instead of the intermittent excruciating pain stones can cause.

Good luck - I certainly don't miss mine!!!

This.. I started having pain in the general area and knew exactly what it was due to family history. I had a sonogram and mine looked normal, but since my aunts, mom, sisters and everyone else in my family had already had theirs out, I pushed for more tests. I had a radioactive scan (i think that's what it was) and they found out that I didn't have stones but it was full of what they called 'sludge', and wasn't functioning correctly, which is just as bad. I had mine taken out within a few days, on a Thurs and went back to work Mon. with no problems. I do not miss it! Don't wait around and let it get infected or have to have emergency surgery! Good luck!

DeborahBatewell

I had to have my gall bladder removed after loosing over 100 pounds about 6 years ago. I've also had other friends that lost a lot of weight and it happened to them too. Rapid weight loss can make your gall bladder go haywire.

Lib_B

I never had gall bladder problems then one day i was having a problem breathing and it last about 10 minutes with a pain in between my shoulderblades and the chest and it felt like i was in a vice being squished. They started happening once a month and sometimes they would last for 10 minutes longest was 4 hours is was horrible horrible pain. Found out it was my gall bladder and 3 months later they took it out and i have felt great ever since. Hope you figure it out. I know my grandpa has gall stones but he never has any attacks so they haven't done anything with his.

This explains mine perfectly. It was difficult to breathe, had pain in my chest and it radiated to my shoulder blades. The night I was diagnosed, I woke up around 1 AM thinking I was having a heart attack. My husband was working 1,500 miles away and I had to call my sister and her hubby to come watch my 1 year old and have them take me to the ER. I seriously thought I was going to die. Took 3 morphine injections to alleviate the pain.

Lisapayne76

I had my gb removed several years ago after suffering through several attacks over three pregnancies. Of course fatty foods set it off but something else I noticed is sweets set it off and even now if I eat too many sweets I have what th er says is phantom pains.

IHAVEPMS247

Did your doctor order a CT scan to see if you have gallstones? If you have pain, especially after a fatty meal, it is very likely you have gallstones. I had mine removed. I ended up going to the ER after eating some blooming onion from a restaurant, thought I was going to die. Hurt real bad with each breath I took. My CT scan showed my stone was as large as a mans thumb. I had the gallbladder removed without complications. Best of luck to you and hope you figure out what is truely wrong with you!

MumOfADuo

Does anyone or has anyone else experienced gall bladder issues? I went to the doctor today and he said everything looked fine except when he was palpating my stomach, my gall bladder was tender. I have no other symptoms. I was just wondering what changes other people made and what helped when they found out theirs was acting up? I know eating fatty greasy foods is a no-no, but is there anything else? Obviously I'm already on here because I want to lose weight and this will be one more motivator.

In October I woke up from a dead sleep in EXCRUCIATING pain...thought I was dying....thought maybe heart attack or indigestion....finally about 3 hours of horrific pain posted some random remark on fb about being woken up from a dead sleep blah blah blah...several people told me to get my gallbladder checked...ended up in emergency room an hour later, ruled out heart and indigestion, had ultra-sound, had blocked bile duct from large stone. a day later had surgery to remove it. Never had problem since Ü Once you get stones you cant 'get rid' of them. Mine were marble sized as opposed to lentil sized. The pain from mine was because one had traveled into my duct cauging a blockage...you dont want to mess with them.....eliminating the fatty stuff will help for future...and plenty of water helps too.....

softwind

I had a couple small flare ups, but nothing constant. My dr was treating me for reflux. Oddly it was things with seeds that set mine off, watermelon, cucumber, etc. Not fatty or greasy foods. One night I woke up with chest pains (on my right side), diarrhea, vomiting etc... I thought I had food poisoning. After about 6 hours, I woke husband up to go to ER. Turns out I had gallstones and they had lodged themselves in the duct and nothing could get through. I had surgery the next day and have been fine since.
It can go from something small to something big real quick, so keep up with it and your dr.
Best of luck to you!!

DebbieLyn63

I was around 37 when one night I woke up with severe vomiting and pains that felt just like labor pains. By morning, they were so strong I couldn't talk thru them. Hubby took me to the ER and they did a sono but found no stones. Dr was still certain it was my gallbladder so they sent me for a HIDA scan. Turns out my gallbladder was contracting backwards and forcing the bile backwards instead of out. They took it out and I have had no problems at all for the past 12 yrs now.

nashsheri33

1. stay away from high-fat foods and spicy foods.

2. drink plenty of water.

3. definitely get an ultrasound.

4. i think this is one of those surgeries that is better when it is planned ahead of time.

my dr. told me if my g.b. didn't come out, it could get horribly infected and then it would be MAJOR surgery, with a large incision and a long hospital stay, and therefore much more dangerous and painful than planning ahead, which would require the small (one inch) incisions and the use of scopes in an outpatient situation, and a tremendously easy recovery. so that's what we did, and i have never been sorry. one less thing to worry about, and no more pain!

softwind

Wow Mum, it sounds like we have the same story.

nailtechbec

A few weeks after having my son I suddenly had an excruciating pain and ended up in a and e where I threw up a lot ! They diagnosed gall stones, I had a scan a few days later where they confirmed it, haven't had any pain since and the hospital check me every six months, they're still there but I don't suffer any effects but I've been told I will eventually and that when that occurs I'll have to have my gall bladder removed.

Evachiquita

My story is very similar to many on here but I have a slightly different perspective about it now. In 2005 I had my gallbladder taken out (I was 21!!!). A year before I had it taken out I woke up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain and I seriously thought I was dying. I vomited, felt a little better and was able to get back to sleep somehow. The next day my gallbladder area was very sore and tender. I saw the doctor and she diagnosed me with heart burn, and gave me an rx for zantac. She thought it was stress related (I was in college and very stressed out all the time), possibly diet related (I was overweight, about 220 pounds or something like that). I was fine for the next year. I lost a lot of weight, down to 190. Then I started having symptoms again but I thought it was the flu. A really bad case of the flu. After a few days of not eating and looking like death I finally went to the health center at my college. I had jaundice (yellow skin and eyes) and all my digestive enzymes were totally out of whack. They said I should go to the hospital immediately. So I did and within a few hours of being there they told me I needed an emergency gallbladder removal. What?! That sounded crazy to me! It was only after this happened that I realized the incident the prior year was probably the passing of a gallstone but there is no way to know for sure. They don't know why I had stones or that mysterious sludge. Maybe it was the weight loss, maybe it was my crappy diet. My sister, cousin, and grandmother have all had theirs taken out, so maybe genetic? They are all also over weight and don't have a great diet.

I swear I have never been the same without my gallbladder. I know that it only stores products that are made by the liver but I don't feel the same. I have a pretty low fat, whole food diet and I have adjusted to it. I just don't like that the solution is to take the thing out. I would try diet, herbs, and other things to see if you can get it taken care of without surgery. I have found resources online that are based on Auyrvedic or Chinese medicine and I would try those first. But that is just me. If the choice is life or death, or extreme discomfort all the time, then yes get rid of it. The surgery itself was not that bad. Laproscopic for me, quick recovery time, not too much pain and discomfort. I did feel some tightness in that area for a while and it did take a while for me to get fully back to normal.

MBNagel74

I went through a good year of being sick and having pain that could not be diagnosed. I had test after test - and they couldn't figure it out. They treated the pain and symptoms without figuring it out. I even had a colonoscopy (sp?) at one point to be sure that nothing was going on there. (Birth father died of colon cancer, so it didn't hurt to get looked at.)

It got so bad, that I couldn't eat anything without throwing up. And, I was sticking to bland foods like you would when you have the stomach flu. Didn't matter. What went in almost immediately came back out. And the pain became unbearable... That's when they looked more closely at it. Although I had been in the ER a few times prior, they seemed to look more closely this time at it, and after another long round of tests, they diagnosed it as the gallbladder, and I went in for immediate surgery. Turned out I was septic. (The grey skin tone should have been a good indicator something was wrong...)

Now that I don't have the gallbladder, I watch what I eat more closely. Greasy foods are THE WORST, and my body tells me if something was cooked in too much oil almost immediately. (I haven't had fried chicken in well over 4 years now!)

Everyone - and every body - is different... If you suspect your gallbladder, PUSH for that ultrasound. I was told after they diagnosed me that the gallbladder is one of the hardest to diagnose, mostly because it presents itself so differently in everyone.