Laura L.
Attack of the gall stones!
Dec 27, 2010
Happy holidays to you all! Wow, this Christmas was SOOO much different than last year! Lots of NSV moments for sure. I am so blessed. But I'll get to that eventually...I certainly don't want to dampen the joy I am feeling over hitting the 100 pounds lost marker (or the under 200 pounds marker), but I promised myself and my OH buddies that I would be true and accurate in my reports on weight loss surgery, so it's time for an update.
I started having significant pain the day after Thanksgiving this year and no amount of tums or pepto would satiate this terrible pain. It did feel exactly like the pain of awful heartburn or an ulcer though. The pain got bad enough that I called the surgeon and they felt that it sounded a lot like ulcer pain and the timing was consistent with an ulcer. Since I was leaving for Florida on Monday morning on vacation, and the doctor was on vacation himself, we decided I would do an EGD when I got back from Florida. In the meantime, they put me on a double dose of Nexium and Carafate four times a day (yuck, that stuff is nasty). Well, nothing was working! It nearly ruined my vacation, I'm sad to say. I was in terrible pain all day for 3 weeks straight (nothing at night, which should have been a tip-off that it was something else). At the end of 3 weeks, I'm just praying for my EGD to find out what the heck is wrong with me. We were all expecting a giant hole in my pouch.
Well, the EGD turns up NOTHING. In fact, it showed my pouch to be in great shape, shiny and pink and NOT stretched out (yey). So I go for a CT scan to see if maybe it's a bowel obstruction or a hernia. Nothing. Just abnormal liver function shows up and extremely elevated liver phosphates. That was scary. So the surgeon schedules me for an MRI. While I'm waiting the few days for the scheduled MRI, the pain just stops. Suddenly. I had a terrible night and then just as quickly as it came, it went. The MRI results showed a dilated bile duct and after some follow-up blood testing, my liver levels were normalizing.
So, turns out I passed one or more gall stones straight from my liver through my bile duct! I cannot tell you how much this hurt. I thought I was losing my mind. I don't have a gallbladder, so they wouldn't have been able to see a stone, except with an MRI. I feel so blessed that I passed this stone without surgery or infection, but OMG did that hurt! I felt like was eating broken glass! Drama queen, I know. ;)
Anyway, just an update for you all. I guess the moral of my story is: If you have pain, something is not right. Call your surgeon. I was feeling SO GOOD for months...better than I have since I was 21 years old. So when pain struck, I did the right thing by calling the surgeon. HOWEVER, we all shouldn't have assumed it was an ulcer. If you have pain and you don't get relief within a reasonable time frame...push to find out what's wrong. There has to be some logic in there somewhere. I wish I had pushed harder or that maybe I had not gone on vacation until I knew what was wrong. It's crazy to think of not going on my vacation, but I didn't need to spend 3 weeks in terrible pain.
Hope you are all having a wonderful holiday! I know I am...pain free and now under 200 pounds! And as for those NSVs...well let's just say that among the many size XL and L clothes I got this Christmas that actually fit (as opposed to the 3x I was wearing last Christmas), I got a gift certificate to Victoria Secret from my sweetie. We'll see where that leads... lol
Happy new year!
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About Me
Severna Park, MD
Location
34.3
BMI
Surgery
05/06/2010
Surgery Date
Aug 28, 2009
Member Since
