Galling Gallstones!

Greetings!

Judging by some of the phone calls, text messages and other communications I've been receiving, a lot of people are a bit confused about what's going on here in regards to me and these blimmin' gallstones. That's ok, to be honest I'm a bit confused myself! However I'll try my best to explain below.

99% of the time, I'm perfectly fine and going about my daily business with no pain, discomfort or anything of that sort. However at any time I can get hit by a gallstone attack, and that's what happened on Friday night and Sunday afternoon. These attacks come on within a very short space of time. Friday night I felt the first twinges about 6.30pm and had to go to A&E by 8pm, Sunday was much faster, I needed to get to A&E within 15 mins of the first hint of pain. I cannot begin to describe what this pain is like, suffice to say I would rather go through my full labour experience twice than have one 20 minute gallstone attack!

Now we know what's happening, and it's on my A&E file that I have gallstones, the proceedure on arriving at A&E seems to be the same. I generally get through triage very fast, nurse comes and sticks a cannula in my arm and gives me an anti-sickness drug and 10ml of morphine then tha pain vanishes. On Sunday I also got a shot of Buscopan and on Friday it was something else along with the morphine. Now on Friday they kept me in the EAU overnight which was a good thing as I had recurrances of the pain at 3am and again at 5am. By the next morning I was fine and discharged in the afternoon. Last night they decided not to keep me in and simply discharged me from A&E with a large amount of very strong painkillers which I ended up taking at about 11pm as I could feel discomfort as the morphine wore off. Neither of us were very happy about them discharging me so fast last night as the morphine was still at full strength and could easily have been masking the pain, plus I couldn't walk by myself as my legs felt like I'd had an epidural again!

Today I feel pretty much fine, hence me being online. The only issue I have right now is not being able to take any weight on my right arm, that's due to a failed cannula insertion last night which seems to have caused a lot of pain and means it's a bit difficult for me to pick Fin up - but I'm coping fine. I am still groggy becuase I find morphine makes me feel very drunk at first then give me what feels like a hangover for about 24 hours or so. Scott has stayed off work today as I was still very groggy this morning and also becuase he is concerned that I may have another fast relapse and doesn't want me home alone with Fin. That's also why it's been arranged that I'm with people for the next few days, so if anything happens they can get me to hospital/call an ambulance and immediately take over caring for Fin. Hopefully I will be totally fine and will just get on like normal.

Of course the question everyone is asking me is "well why aren't they doing something about this?" Well, they are doing the best they can. Annoyingly it appears that whoever was meant to refer me a month ago never did which is why I'm still waiting on the outpatient consultation. Due to these attacks this weekend I've now been told I am prioritised and will be receiving my outpatient appointment very soon. That will be to go over what options I have and, most likely, arrnage for me to have keyhole surgery to remove the gallbladder.

I also keep being asked "isn't there anything you can do to stop this until your appointment?" Well, no, not really. Trust me, I've looked into this in great detail ok? You would too if you knew you could get these attacks. All I can do (and already have been doing) is keep the fat in my diet to an absolute minimum as the gallbladder is involved in breaking down fat so the less work it needs to do, the less likely an attack. Note I said LESS likely, nothing will completely stop the attacks until the stones are removed.

So there, hopefully that covers what's going on here. I will keep you all updated but for now I'm just trying to get on as normally as possible until my appointment, keep my fat intake low and look after my baby. Just remember that 99% of the time everything is completely normal and we wouldn't be twittering updates to facebook if there were problems, they are generally very short lived issues. Once that morphine has kicked in I'm perfectly fine, I was sat chatting away to Scott in A&E last night - slurring like a drunk woman though. I'll just be glad when I don't have to keep rushing in there for drugs anymore!!!