Today marks two weeks post-op for me and I'm feeling good! I thought I would share my experience and maybe it will help someone in the process. So February/March 2014 is the first time I can remember that I actually felt sick. It started as waking up nauseated in the mornings. I never vomited - came close a couple of times - but was just always so nauseous in the mornings and if I could drink a little bit or eat a little something it would help. This went on until it became a daily thing and then I almost vomited one day for real and then I started having pain.
Epigastric pain like nothing I've ever experienced. It wasn't constipation/gas/indigestion. It was burning hot, firey, stabbing like a knife pain. Made it hard to get out of bed in the mornings and then it would gradually go away. Until one day it didn't go away. I went to work and was still having pain halfway through the day. I spoke with my nurse friends and I Googled my symptoms and as a last resort I made an appointment with my family physician. Actually, he was sick so I saw the NP that day in September.
She talked to me for a while and I had started a new job in July so she thought it was stress related and that I was developing an ulcer. This is pretty much what my friends and I thought and I had already cut back on soda (which I only have one 12oz can per day anyway) and totally stopped coffee. I had cut out anything spicey, like Mexican food, which is my fav. I don't eat a lot of citrusy foods and I don't eat a lot of fatty/greasy foods. I'm not overweight, I don't smoke, and I don't drink in excess which also are contributing factors to ulcers. So NP started me on
omeprazole 40mg twice daily and Prozac for the stress. It helped at first and then the pain started to come back.
I called the office and they called me in
Nexium and I started taking that instead. It helped for a while until it didn't. So I went back in to see her and she told me I needed to be
scoped. I refused. I'm a nurse, I know it's a simple procedure, I didn't want to have surgery. I asked what else I could do on my own? She said I'm already doing it. I said I'm not being scoped. She said we can try one more medication and if it doesn't work, you're getting scoped. So I started
carafate 4x/day. Do you have any idea how hard it is to take a medication on an empty stomach 4x/day? I don't eat at set meal times; I eat when I'm hungry. This is usually something like 5am/9am/11am/2pm/4pm/7pm. I'm always eating!
At this point I've now been on PPIs eight months which is a really long time and not really the greatest plan. + I'm taking three medications now and I'm 30 years old. Oh, and did I mention in February of this year I find out I'm hypothyroid? Yeah. Four medications.
The combo of Nexium and Carafate helped for a while... until it didn't. So I make a third appointment and this time it's with my MD. He says so you've done everything you can do and you've taken all the medications you can take. It's time to get scoped. I said that's what NP said and I don't want to. He said there's nothing else to do - we have to figure out what the problem is. If it's an ulcer it should be healing. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's your gallbladder. [I wasn't having typical GB symptoms though.] He referred me to a GI specialist.
I saw him and he seemed relatively unimpressed by my story. He wanted to scope me to see if it was an ulcer and he wanted me to have a GB ultrasound and a HIDA scan to see if it was my GB. I'd had a GB ultrasound years ago and it was normal. So at the beginning of May, I had my GB ultrasound. It was normal. Later that week I returned for my
HIDA scan.
Let me tell you about this test. It could be used as a torture device. So you lay on your back in this machine that kind of resembles a CT machine. They put this imaging device over your abdomen and you lie there completely still for an hour. They inject radioactive dye into an IV and as it travels through your system, your GB shows up on the scan.
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| that bright glowing thing is my GB |
After about an hour, they inject your IV with this stuff that is similar to what your body naturally produces when you eat a fatty/greasy meal. Now, I don't eat a lot of fatty/greasy meals. I don't really do fast food. I don't like hamburgers or hotdogs. But one time after I ate cheese curds at BW3's I thought I was dying - except that was nothing like this. This was almost dying.
So my little tech says I may experience some abdominal "cramping" but it will go away in about three minutes.
If that was three minutes, that was the longest three minutes of my life! She injects my IV and everything is fine. She says she pushes it slowly to minimize the side effects (ie pain). I'm fine, I feel nothing, I'm good. After a minute or so she asks how I'm doing and I figure this must be a good sign because if she's asking how I'm doing this must typically be the point when people start complaining of pain. But I'm doing good so I say I'm fine. As soon as I finish my sentence I start feeling twinges.
The twinges get stronger and stronger and then I'm like, 'Oh. Oh no. I feel something.' She's all it's ok and that's alright and it will go away. It wasn't going away and in fact, it was getting worse. Worse than any physical pain I have ever felt in my life. Nothing like when I ate cheese curds; that pain paled in comparison to this. I thought a hole was burning right through my epigastric area and I literally wanted to be dead. It was the worst pain in the world and then I was nauseated.
I told her, "I'm going to throw up." She's all no you're not, you're ok, just breathe through it. My mouth was all watery and I turned my head - because I'm still lying flat - and luckily that feeling passed pretty quickly.
Then I almost passed out. I don't know what happened. She was telling me to breathe and I thought I was. She was telling me to hold still and I couldn't. I was crying. It hurt so bad. I wanted to be dead and why was this taking longer than three minutes?! My hearing got all fuzzy and everything turned black and I was fading quickly and then I heard her say, "You have to breathe or you'll pass out on me" and I took a breath. She said, "It should be getting better now," but it wasn't. It was still really, really bad.
Finally it went away and I was ok. She asked if that was the same type of pain, if she had replicated my symptoms. I said yes, please don't do it again. This second scan takes about 30 minutes and then you're done. She told me my results: my ejection fraction was about 25% and normal is 35-75% so it needed to come out.
The following week was my scheduled scope, which was normal, which I already thought it would be at this point. This procedure literally takes like 10 minutes. Super quick and easy, but there are still risks and I still didn't want to have it done, but it was completely fine. I woke up in recovery and didn't even know I'd had anything done. No sore throat, no grogginess, nothing. He referred me to a surgeon. I met with her at the end of May and she said your GB has to come out. Surgery was scheduled for June 8.
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| after my scope |
On June 7 I said goodbye to my previously unafflicted stomach because the following morning at 7:30am I would be at the surgery center.
I woke up early, showered, took out my piercings, and mom took me to the surgery center. I signed paperwork and I waited. The nurse finally came and took me to my room, got my medical history and had me sign a bunch more papers, took my vitals and started my IV, and had me change into a hospital gown and leave a urine sample for a pregnancy test.
She and another nurse came back in like five minutes later and said "There's something wrong with your urine... We need to see if you can re-do it...." I said ok... like what? what is wrong? She said the test malfunctioned and we need another sample. I said JFC I thought you were gonna say I was pregnant!
Second test was negative.
Mom and dad came into the room and I just waited... surgeon poked her head in... then the surgery nurse came to get me and took off my glasses so I have no idea what happened next. They wheeled me into the OR and had me scoot onto another bed. A nurse said I was tan and asked what color my fingernail polish was. They hooked me up to a BP cuff, a heart monitor, and
SCDs.
I know all of this because I am a nurse.
The anesthesiologist came in, introduced herself, and said she was going to give me something to "relax me." Next thing I know I'm being told to wake up and take a drink of Sprite. And I hurt. And I was going to throw up. Apparently the nurse gave me some IV meds and asked me to rate my pain. I apparently told her 5.
I think it was more than that.
I couldn't keep my eyes open, but then she was asking me to rate my pain again. I told her 7. She and mom laughed because apparently I had said 5 earlier so they wanted to know if it was worse. I told them I was going to throw up. The nurse gave me an emesis basin and some more medication. I drank some sips of Sprite.
Next thing I know I'm being told to get dressed so I can go home. IV comes out. Wheelchair comes in. Mom helps me dress and drives me home. We must have stopped at the pharmacy to get my pain medication but I don't remember that. I remember walking straight to my bed and falling asleep. I was like the walking dead. So, so tired. I was home and in bed by 11:30am so four hours total start to finish.
Mom was back at 5pm waking me up, making me eat soup and pee, and take pain medication. Then I fell back asleep. I woke up in the middle of the night hurting so I took a pain pill then but what was worse than the incisional pain was the gas pain. They inflate your abdomen with gas so they can better see to perform your surgery, but then they can't get it all out so it's trapped in your abdomen and you can't get it out either. The nurse told me to sleep with my head elevated before I left recovery and I know from taking care of patients to walk. Walk it out. Nothing helped. I couldn't get comfortable to sleep. I think I ended up falling asleep with my arm up in the air. The gas was all in my right shoulder.
When I woke up the next day, it was gone. I felt better, just a little sore, like I'd worked out too hard and had sore muscles. I had maybe two pain pills the second day but they made me so tired I hated to take them. Mom showed up at lunch time and made me wake up and shower. I really just wanted to sleep.
At this point I was still living off of Campbell's chicken noodle soup, Sprite, and double stuffed Oreos. No nausea. Minimal pain. Felt pretty good but couldn't do much. My abdomen was weak/sore and I couldn't cough, it hurt to sneeze, couldn't do anything but lay out.
Day three was the turning point. I had pizza rolls and a beer. By day three I was only taking pain medication to sleep at night. I was having a hard time getting comfortable to be able to sleep. I normally am a stomach/side sleeper and obviously that wasn't comfortable to do. So I was trying to sleep in my back but it hurt to stretch out and lie flat. If I took my pain medication it just knocked me out.
and after day three I stopped posting updates. I was good to go. I was out working in the yard, pulling weeds and picking up sticks. I was eating pretty much whatever. Didn't really get my appetite back until a week after surgery and I still can't eat a lot. I feel bloated and full after not eating much but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
My biggest fear was having to run and poop every time I ate. I mean of course, after my fear of them underdosing or overdosing my anesthesia or nipping my artery or bile duct. I didn't want to have to run and poop after every time I ate because remember - I eat all day long! So far, two weeks later, I haven't ever had to. Now, I still haven't had any fatty/greasy foods. Haven't attempted cheese curds yet.
I had my follow up visit with my surgeon on my 7th day post-op and was released to go back to work. Everything healed "great" although she mentioned my gallbladder had adhesions, which is a sign of inflammation. So even if your GB ultrasound is normal (no inflammation), you can have damage and inflammation over time. So get that GB removed!
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| my GB with adhesions |
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