edit: Humm..Not gall bladder...or lupis..

azith28

Hey. A few years ago i was told after a sonogram that i had gall stones. They said it was common and not currently dangerous so they werent going to do anything about them at the time but sometime down the road they might have to remove it.

Anyway, I've got an odd medical issue and i want to know if this could be the onset of a gall bladder attack. It starts out with pressure in my stomach like its upset or I ate something that didnt agree with me which lasts about 10 or so minutes. it progresses into a debilitating cramp that starts up and does not stop for 15-20 minutes...then the pressure stops and im back to normal. I've tried several things when the pressure starts (Tums, pepcid, heat, cold) and ive never been able to stop it once the warning symptoms appear, but sometimes it only lasts 5-10 minutes, and its hard to tell what makes it stop...like sometimes ill immediately jump in the shower when it starts and run hot water, and that seems to help a bit, but not always, then Sometimes it seems to subside when i move around a lot...like crouching down so that im putting pressure on my stomach from my legs and knees.

Yes yes i know, see my doctor but the last time i had a flareup like this i went to the hospital and they stuck me in a room for an hour to suffer before they saw me and by that time the pain had stopped and they found nothing on a sonogram. Could this be a stone stuck in the pipe and eventually it frees itself so the pain stops?

Thanks for the info.


Edit:

So this weekend I had an attack again that lasted 30+ minutes before i decided to go to the ER. Then it lasted another 30-40 minutes. long enough for the doc to see i was white as a sheet and in obvious pain before it just stopped without any drugs involved. They did a CT scan which showed....nothing. no inflamation at all which they say should have shown up if i was having or recently had a gall stone attack. no stones in the tube. no problems found at all. they wanted to keep me overnight but whats the point of that. I said no. So this second trip to the ER also found jack shit.

Also it had been a good 5 hours since i had eaten my lunch before the pain started, and i had gone to the bathroom since as well. Beginning to think that the doctors at my health care location are actually Janitors playing dressup.

One good thing if this continues to be a repeat of last time...now that ive gone to the ER and have had a long attack, it should just stop happening for another 4-5 years. Apparently my tummy needs a dose of CT radiation every 4 years to make it happy.

Hahnsoo1

It could be a large number of things, from any number of small/large intestinal and stomach disorders, to gallstones or pancreatitis (which can be secondary to gallstones, too), to even kidney problems (the pain of which can radiate to the front in some anatomies). One thing that you should note is what you ate in the past few hours. Fatty foods (deep fried, especially) and spicy foods can trigger a gallbladder attack. I'd also figure out what "quadrant" of your abdomen that you mostly feel the pain (upper half? Lower half? left/right side? Middle-ish?).

I would not immediately jump to gallbladder, too, because if they remove it and you still have the pain... well, you're down a gallbladder and no solution to your problem. You may have something like celiac disease and have problems with gluten. Or you may have an allergic reaction to a specific kind of food (which sometimes manifests as abdominal pain). Or you could have diverticulitis or even a urinary tract infection. Or it could be something more urgent. So yeah, you should see a doctor, because the differential diagnosis is pretty wide given the symptoms that you are describing.

EDIT: If you can, I would not go to an ER or urgent care to take care of this issue (unless you are having the pain right now, in which case, GO TO THE ER). They are trained to make sure you aren't going to die in the next 24 hours, and will rule out the things that will kill you in 24 hours, rather than treating your gallstones (which is likely not to kill you any time soon). Go to your regular doctor, or get a regular doctor and start seeing him/her. At the very least, they can get you a GI consult.

MegaMan001

That's a pretty textbook example of cholecystitis. Can you localize the pain to any particular part of your abdomen? This is going to sound stupid, but when the pain occurs if you had a friend / loved one around who could poke in the four quadrants of your stomach and it produced spectacular pain in the Right Upper Quadrant I'd absolutely say it was a gall stone causing the pain which later passes into the intestine - relieving it.

Other questions in no particular order:

1) Does the pain occur more or less regularly with eating?

2) Any associated fevers or vomiting?

Sterica

Let's make this a bit easier on them. Look at these two diagrams and tell us which area corresponds to your pain. Your gallbladder is going to to the upper right quadrant.

Hahnsoo1

I dislike prompting people with abdominal pain with any specific quadrant, because when people believe they have gallstones... oh look, magically the pain is in the Right Upper Quadrant! When it could be a different issue entirely. It's one of the problems of armchair diagnosis before going to see a doctor. :-P

The Ender

OP: This is a problem that needs to be diagnosed in person by a professional. If your hospital sucks about this sort of thing, try to find out where a reliable clinic is and go there (unless you're having severe pain right now or something, in which case go to the ER!). Like @Hahnsoo1 says, it could be anything, and even the most well intentioned guess is unlikely to be helpful.

Jasconius

gallbladder pain would be localized to your right side near your last rib

that its intermittent and feels like indigestion seems like GERD related issues (which can upset the gallbladder too).

if you go to a doctor, he's going to send you to a GI specialist, and that GI specialist will want to stick a tube down your throat before he concludes anything

so get ready for that

azith28

It's intermittent. I can go days or weeks or even years between episodes. It first happened a few years ago and it would happen every few days and that was when i went to the hospital, the only thing they found was that i was slightly potassium deficient. so when it started happened again a few weeks ago i started buying bananas and have been eating them every day. I've had 4 or 5 episodes since it started up again.

As for the pain if i were going to give it a location i would say it starts in the lower half of your quadrants, but i feel like my stomach swells and the pain encompasses my entire belly until it stops.

Sterica

Hahnsoo1 wrote: »

I dislike prompting people with abdominal pain with any specific quadrant, because when people believe they have gallstones... oh look, magically the pain is in the Right Upper Quadrant! When it could be a different issue entirely. It's one of the problems of armchair diagnosis before going to see a doctor. :-P

I mean "go to the doctor" is the only armchair diagnosis that works.

EclecticGroove

azith28 wrote: »

It's intermittent. I can go days or weeks or even years between episodes. It first happened a few years ago and it would happen every few days and that was when i went to the hospital, the only thing they found was that i was slightly potassium deficient. so when it started happened again a few weeks ago i started buying bananas and have been eating them every day. I've had 4 or 5 episodes since it started up again.

As for the pain if i were going to give it a location i would say it starts in the lower half of your quadrants, but i feel like my stomach swells and the pain encompasses my entire belly until it stops.

Not a Dr here. But this is what eventually led to my gallbladder removal.

I had pain that was like, the worst gas you could imagine. It only happened VERY rarely... so I thought it was just bad gas. Or maybe I ate something or some mix of something that just didn't agree with me.

And then I had a pretty bad one. Like, a night of complete misery. I thought maybe I had developed a food allergy or something. I cut out milk/dairy, sodas, all sorts of stuff bit by bit to see if there was any change.


Then I had an attack that made the previous one look like it was wearing big soft mittens.
I'm talking a weekend of pure, unadulterated pain and misery like I was getting shot through the gut every time I so much as tried to eat or drink anything.

And that discomfort lasted for about a month and a half. Which is how long it took the Dr's to have me shuffle around to various places for tests and the like, ultimately resulting in my gallbladder being removed.

It didn't show up on xray well, and even the mri was not all that conclusive. They had to go through a number of things before they saw evidence of the gall stones.


So, get to a Dr, it's probably the gallbladder, but they can tell you for sure.

mts

sounds like when i had gallbladder issues.

mare_imbrium

Gallbladder pain is not necessarily always just upper right quandrant, or at least not just solely. I will admit nobody ever pushed on me when I was having an attack though. I felt like I had pain in my diaphragm area, or like a band of pain all around my middle. It was just a crushing, terrible pain, and it did come on like gas. It wouldn't let up and then it would just suddenly go away, and gas pain for me often is a getting-gradually-better thing. The first time I had a gallstone attack I thought that I had a stomach bug (because it felt much more like my stomach hurting than any other part of me) and I made myself throw up (which wasn't too hard to do). Immediately after I threw up my pain jumped to an amazing level where I couldn't get up off the bathroom floor. I happened to have my phone with me (and this was before the rise of the smartphone, I'm not sure why I brought it) and so I could call my husband at work but I was in so much pain I couldn't tell him what was wrong, all I could do was moan. You'd think I would have gone to the ER at that point, but nooo, it took this happening two or three more times (without the throwing up step, I wasn't about to try that again). It was definitely intermittent, it didn't occur with every meal or even every fatty meal. In the beginning I wondered if it had to do with spaghetti sauce actually. And it would usually last about an hour. From my experience it will just keep getting worse.

Felix

That's pretty much a perfect example. I had a similar experience in the emergency room and wasn't till a couple years later that elevated AST levels sent me to get an ultrasound that revealed my gallstones. Also, agree with mare that the pain isn't necessarily in the lower right, mine felt more like a tightness higher up and more in the middle.

Your doctor should be able to refer you to a general surgeon.

Julius

azith28 wrote: »

Hey. A few years ago i was told after a sonogram that i had gall stones. They said it was common and not currently dangerous so they werent going to do anything about them at the time but sometime down the road they might have to remove it.

Anyway, I've got an odd medical issue and i want to know if this could be the onset of a gall bladder attack. It starts out with pressure in my stomach like its upset or I ate something that didnt agree with me which lasts about 10 or so minutes. it progresses into a debilitating cramp that starts up and does not stop for 15-20 minutes...then the pressure stops and im back to normal. I've tried several things when the pressure starts (Tums, pepcid, heat, cold) and ive never been able to stop it once the warning symptoms appear, but sometimes it only lasts 5-10 minutes, and its hard to tell what makes it stop...like sometimes ill immediately jump in the shower when it starts and run hot water, and that seems to help a bit, but not always, then Sometimes it seems to subside when i move around a lot...like crouching down so that im putting pressure on my stomach from my legs and knees.

Yes yes i know, see my doctor but the last time i had a flareup like this i went to the hospital and they stuck me in a room for an hour to suffer before they saw me and by that time the pain had stopped and they found nothing on a sonogram. Could this be a stone stuck in the pipe and eventually it frees itself so the pain stops?

Thanks for the info.

Did you tell the doctors you got a diagnosis of gallstones? Imaging is pretty hard and frequently inconclusive, medical background information is incredibly important for making an accurate diagnosis.

It sounds very much like a gallstone attack, the moving about reducing the pain indicates colic pain. It could be any number of other things too though, I'm not a doctor.


Anyway, go see a doctor and specifically mention the previous diagnosis of gallstones, and perhaps the name of the doctor who diagnosed you, and the frequency and nature of these attacks.

Thundyrkatz

Your example and ElectricGroove's examples sound very similar to my own experience with gallbladder stuff. Before this happened I did not even know I had a gallbladder, never mind that it was capable of nearly killing me.

What I experienced was like a lot of just the worst gas that would not go away no matter what I did to relieve it. Seemed to happen mostly at night at first, but got earlier later. Over the course of a few years the attacks got closer together and lasted longer until I eventually decided to go to the ER after the worst attack where I thought this was genuinely the end of my life. It took 2 trips over 3 days to finally get admitted and they removed my gallbladder. I was severely jaundiced by this point and was close to death!

The problem is that almost everyone has gallstones and for most its a non issue. but once the old gallbladder starts kicking out stones into your biliary tree and you start getting biliary fibrillation which is your source of pain its gotta come out. The ER doc wants to stabilize you and send you home which is not the answer. See your PCP if you have one (or get one).

The good news is that 3 years later, I am back to normal. No dietary restrictions to speak of and no pain. The worst thing is that once you have no gallbladder, if you eat a meal that is high in fat you may NEED to go to the bathroom like a half hour later.

hope that helps you!

azith28

Nothing new about that. When i go eat mexican i rarely make it out of the resturant. It's like ive paid 17 bucks to use the bathroom.

Good tho.

mts

for me the worst thing post removal was actually salads.

azith28

Odd that you should mention that. Two of my attacks have been after eating salads. i dont use a lot of dressing on my salad, mostly red wine vinegar. I wouldnt think that would be treated like a high fat meal.

Sterica

On the plus side, you'll be able to clear out a room practically at will.

azith28

HA. I'm from Louisiana. thats a mandatory genetic trait.

Forar

Having had my gall bladder removed a decade ago, I can empathize with what you're going through, assuming it does end up being gall stones.

mts

i didn't have any stones, my gall bladder just stopped working. only ever had one attack i think, but it was a doozy

Preacher

I had my gall bladder removed 3 or 4 years ago now? The pain was like the worst kind of gas, like I'd keep burping hoping to relieve the pressure but it wouldn't be relieved. The attack that put me in the ER was 8 hours long and I couldn't keep anything down (even water) ended up knowing what Bile looks like because when you're out of food to puke that's what you throw up.

I can't imagine what clown school doctor you went to that diagnosed stones but didn't recommend your gall bladder be removed, if they leave the gall bladder you can be proper fucked because they'll kill your pancreas I believe (I am not a doctor) On top of that if they obstruct the gall bladder too long they can kill that, a co worker of mine went years with her stones and her gall bladder ended up gangrenous.

Shit's not cheap though, even with insurance I ended up with 4k out of pocket. Love that US healthcare system. Also post gall bladder removal I picked up a chocolate allergy, which fucking sucks, can't eat chocolate or I get backed up something fierce. Also be wary of any super fatty foods or you might learn what an Anal Fissure is. Hint ITS FUCKING AWFUL!

azith28

I would imagine everyone has stones to some degree but the size and number determine if they are going to be a risk.

Preacher

I don't think so, I believe its like Kidney stones some people get them, some people don't. When I had mine removed they mention women who had a child are more susceptible. Just be glad they can do it without open surgery, because my recovery time was 10 days. I was actually ok after a couple. With open surgery? It would be more like two months. They used to also grab your appendix at the same time since they already had you cut open might as well get the other thing that can kill you when it turns to shit.

azith28

Also, its not something you want to remove unless you need to. like you, the side effects arent something you want unless its necessary.

Preacher

8 hours of a gall attack told me fuck my gall bladder I'll take whatever post side effects I had. The only reason I could see not removing it is if you are too obese for them to close up (which is a thing I didn't know was a thing) or you're too poor for the surgery, because LOL america healthcare sucks.

azith28

Well the thing is about 2 years ago i was diagnosed with borderline high cholesteral, so i went on a diet, lost 20 lbs and really changed my eating habits. Dispite me greatly keeping on the new habits, ive regained some weight so From a "What am i eating" standpoint i dont think I'm bad off. The diets just not working as well without more exercise, which i am trying to get back into, but tis hard to schedule around RL.

mts

actually the high cholesterol could be due to gallbladder issues. My cholesterol went up when i had my issues but stabilized and went back down when they yanked it.

gall blader helps with cholesterol breakdown and excretion by the liver

azith28

why would it go down if it was yanked then?
I mean sure it may not be doing its job fully but removing it altogether seems like you would still have a problem.