My symptoms were that from time to time (once every few months or so), I would get what I called an "attack". This would usually come on the heels of eating some form of fatty foods and would usually start an hour or two after the meal. The interesting thing is that I could eat these same foods for months at a time without an issue, but during these episodes my body would suddenly become sensitive to fatty foods. Examples include nuts, eggs, fatty meats (bacon, sausage, beef), fatty fish like sardines or tuna, and other similar foods.
My attacks would start with a dull ache in the area of the gallbladder. The pain would probably be something like a 2 on a 10 scale. From this point, over the next several hours it would continuously increase from a 2 to a 6, 7 or 8 (depending on the episode). Some people have terrible gallbladder attacks and probably feel they are a 10/10 ... but I have experienced a kidney stone (once) and that was a 10/10. The pain was so bad I was sweating ice cold sweat and even passed out from the intensity of the pain. So I will say that my gallbladder attacks reached the 8 level ... where you want to cut yourself open with a knife and rip it out yourself because it hurts so bad, but not so painful that you are literally passing out and smashing your head on the bathroom wall as I did with the kidney stone.
Some people experience pain that radiates through their shoulder and/or back. I never experienced that sensation, my pain was always localized to the area of the gallbladder on the front side and in the abdomen. Because there are many different ailments that affect the gallbladder. It can be stones, or a blockage, or inflammation of the gallbladder, or what some doctors call "sludge", or a hernia, and so on and so forth. I think that all of these issues can generate different types of pain.
My pain was a deep aching and burning sensation. When it first started happening to me I described it like a hot coal buried deep down in my abdomen. It wasn't where my stomach was, however, it was over where the stomach and liver do their talking (which is where the gallbladder, liver, pancreas and duodenum all come together). My attempts to self-diagnose were fruitless. I also tried elimination diets, and so forth, but eating a diet without fat is very difficult, especially if you want to eat healthy. Even vegetarians should be getting their doses of healthy fats (nuts, avocados, etc) and even those will trigger attacks if you are already problematic.
I went through various tests with 2 different gastroenterologists. The first doctor had me do a CT Scan with intravenous contrast (dye). This was to check out all of my organs, look for tumors, etc. He also had me do an endoscopy, where they send a camera down the throat to check for ulcers and other stomach issues. The third test was an ultrasound to look for gallstones in the gallbladder. Interesting enough, all of these tests came back negative (which is a positive things). They saw no tumors, no ulcers, no gallstones. The one thing the doctor DID find was that I had a fatty liver. He asked me frankly if I was a heavy drinker, which I am not, but he didn't seem convinced. This was one of the reasons I eventually tried a second doctor.
A few more years went by and the attacks kept coming at random. I would be entirely fine for 3-4-5 months and then get hit out of nowhere with an "attack". As usual, they were always started in the early afternoon and peaked in the evening (sometimes as late as 2 AM and waking me from my sleep in pain). There seemed to be no relief for these attacks. I initially had tried the anti-acids, but this has nothing to do with stomach acid. I also tried Ibuprofen, hoping it would alleviate inflammation and/or swelling, but that didn't seem to help much either.
The second doctor I had also had me do another endoscopy and ultrasound. The ultrasound may have found 3 small gallstones, but the doctor couldn't be entirely sure. Either way, they were not large and obvious stones. The endoscopy revealed something new: I had a polyp in the common bile duct where it empties into the duodenum. In layman's terms, there was a small little growth that was potentially partially blocking the passageway in which bile empties into the digestive system. My doctor took a biopsy of this polyp, which fortunately came back negative and was not cancerous. He wanted to make note of it, however, just in case it was the problem I had and it was not the gallbladder.
In the end, he recommended that I have the gallbladder removed. He's a doctor, and he felt that I was probably experiencing an unhappy gallbladder, which would get inflamed due to smaller stones, "sludge" or just anatomy. Considering how bad my diet was in my 20's, I can buy into this because the liver filters out the "crud" we eat and dumps the extra cholesterol and waste in the gallbladder. If this is concentrated, little stones and sludge can form. I think I am now paying for my diet (or lack there of).
I went to see the surgeon, who coincidentally was related to me (so I felt I could trust him somewhat), and he just felt we had to get rid of it. In the end, it's an elimination process. More than anything else in the American health system, we treat symptoms. I had gallbladder attack symptoms, so they wanted to remove it, even though they never really found a smoking gun. I went along with it, and my adventure continued ...
No comments:
Post a Comment