Gallbladder Issues

Alas, not all is fun and games. Both while we were up in Idaho for Evie's blessing, and while we were in Colorado for Todd's birthday and orchestra auditions, I had severe gallbladder attacks. They started a couple of weeks after Evie was born. The Relief Society sisters brought me dinners, and the first night my visiting teacher brought me Little Caesars pizza. That night, I woke up with what I thought was bad heartburn. I'd started having heartburn during my pregnancy, so I had a bottle of Tums on my bedside table, but they didn't help. I tried sitting up and drinking water, but it still didn't help. Finally I had to run to the bathroom and throw up, which finally made me feel better. The attacks got steadily worse until the night before we came home from Idaho. I woke up at 4 in the morning with excruciating "heartburn" pain in my chest and back. Todd and I were sleeping on a futon, so I thought maybe I just needed to crack my back, but I couldn't. In the bathroom, I hurt so bad that I was crying. I'd thrown up, but it didn't make me feel any better this time, and I was scared. I crawled onto my old twin mattress in my sister's room and finally fell asleep. The next morning, when I told my mom what had happened, she told me it sounded like when she had gallstones and had to have her gallbladder removed. Todd and my dad gave me a blessing so the pain wouldn't return until we got home and were able to deal with it. When we got home, I researched gallbladder disease, and sure enough I had every symptom exactly as they were described on several sites. And, funnily enough, pregnancy hormones can cause gallbladder disease, but no doctor ever mentioned it to me. Nice of them, right? When we went to Colorado for Todd's trombone auditions, we got there the day before his birthday, which is May 14th. Three days later at 3 in the morning on the 17th, I had the worst attack yet. It hurt so bad that Todd took me to the emergency room. His sister Margot and her husband, John, were nice enough to keep an eye on Evie while we were gone. By the time we got to the hospital, I didn't hurt anymore, but since I mentioned chest pain when I was admitted to the hospital, they automatically did an EKG on me. I figured that I shouldn't tell them that it was a gallbladder problem, because I've noticed that doctors don't like self-diagnoses. But I did mention gallbladder disease when they asked for family medical history. Then I had my first X-Ray (dentists don't count) which didn't reveal anything, followed by my first CT scan. I have to be honest: I've always been a healthy person, so all of these tests really scared me. The doctor walked in and told me that my heart was fine. I'd kind of figured so, but after all of the blood pressure issues with the last part of my pregnancy, it was still nice to know. Then he told me that I was perfectly healthy, except that I had some "sludge" in my gallbladder. When I asked what I could do to help it, he prescribed me some Percocet and left. The nurse came in and I asked her what I could do to help it, and she told me that I should have a bland diet, because spicy and/or fatty foods can aggravate the gallbladder and make it act up. But when I asked her how long I needed to have a bland diet for, she told me to ask my primary care provider when I got home. These people were sooo helpful. So I left the hospital 3 hours after I got there, in exactly the same condition I was in when I walked in. The only difference was that I ran up a huge bill for some expensive equipment that told me what I already knew: my gallbladder sucks now. At least I didn't need surgery to remove it, and I don't have gallstones. Yet. And at least Medicaid covered the huge bill, once I got home and found my card. Since then, I've only had one attack, and it wasn't nearly as bad. I think I'm starting to pick up on a pattern of how they operate. But for now, I'm just avoiding tacos...