This story actually begins in late October. I was trying to finish Collin's Halloween costume, and started getting a pain in my upper right side around 8 pm. It slowly got worse and worse. I called my Dad (a pharmacist) to see what he thought it might be and any suggestions to help it feel better. He thought it might be heartburn and recommended I take Mylanta. I did, but didn't notice any difference. It got painful to the point that I was keeling over in pain and crying. This pain rivaled the pain of contractions when giving birth and lasted about 2 hours. Then it slowly felt better.
Fast forward to December. The night of Collin's birthday party, we grabbed some pizza for dinner. That night around 2 am I woke up with the pain again. I took some ibuprofen which seemed to help. The pain lasted, again, about 2 hours. I got the pain once a week in the middle of the night, usually after a spicy or fatty meal. On the 23rd of December, I couldn't take it anymore. I woke up at 2 am with the pain, fed Tate at 4, and then decided to go to the ER because this time the pain was worse, and didn't seem to be getting better.
After being admitted, the pain got worse again. The doctor listened to my story and told me he was pretty sure I had gallstones. He ordered an ultrasound, but the dr wanted to do a preliminary one. Around 6 am the doctor did an ultrasound. He found at least 4 good sized stones in my gall bladder. He told me that they would still do a formal ultrasound just after 7 am, but more than likely I would need my gall bladder removed. He gave me the name of a gastroenterologist and told me that I should follow up with him. The formal ultrasound tech found the same thing and also told me more information. She told me that when I slept the stones would roll and block my bile duct and that was what was so painful. The gall bladder secretes a bile that helps the intestines digest foods, particularly fatty foods. Then when I'd get up in the night and move around, the stones moved out of the duct, thus relieving the pain. She told me that I was lucky to have discovered it now because the stones hadn't made it out of the gall bladder yet, which would have been horrible. After that, they released me, and I headed home feeling better.
Christmas day my dad called me. He works at the UVRMC and knows many doctors and surgeons there. One surgeon told my dad that I should just get my gall bladder removed before I had any other complications and that he had slots to perform the surgery the following day. My dad relayed his message, but I was nervous. I'd just found out about it, and now was going to go into surgery two days later?! Because the surgery would be in the same year as me having Tate, it would essentially be free because we'd met our out-of-pocket maximum. But I thought I might have to go through a gastroenterologist first. So my dad went and found a gastroenterologist and talked to him about my situation. He told my dad he agreed with the surgeon and that if I had any questions, or needed a GI doctors approval for insurance purposes, we could contact him.
I called him anyway to have him tell me what he thought, and he assured me that all I was doing was cutting out an unnecessary step of seeing a GI. I was going to have to have my gall bladder removed. So I called the surgeons office and had them set up surgery for the next day. My mom took Collin and Tate for the day and Greg came with me. Everything went well, and I was home that evening. I decided to have my mom keep the boys so Greg and I could get some extra sleep. Then the next week I wasn't supposed to lift anything more than 15 pounds. I weighed Tate and he was 15 pounds. The nurses who took care of me post-op as well as the one who called to check on me the next day all commented on how well I was doing with recovery. At my 2 week check up the nurse at the doctors office said the same thing, so I asked if there was something I was missing. She said that they normally don't see gall bladder patients recover this quickly. She said, though, that typically moms recover the fastest probably out of necessity.
Since the surgery I haven't had the pain at all. My mom came up to help me a lot with the boys so that I didn't tear stitches, or anything like that. Now I'm good to go!
