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Gall Bladder removal
Had cholesytectomy 4 months ago,for past 3 months have intermittent pain,right side under ribs,also travels to left side going up under ribs. I dread wakening up in morning for what lies ahead, usually loud gurgling especially right side of body,then the pain starts,my son picked up on hoarseness in my voice a few months ago when he phones me,were thinking acid reflux during night cause burning in my throat first thing,Had CT Scan on 17th Jan,I have to wait 10 days for result but the technician did say I had quite a bit of scar tissue.Doctor has put me on omoeprasole and peptac liquid ,Now I've hadph call saying my thyroid is very underactive, I've had hypothyroidism for 40 yrs a no d it's checked once a year and hasn't needed much tweeking, but I've just read that this latest medication I'm on interferes with the thyroxine I'm on!!!!!! I'm 76yrs of age and I don't want to spend the yrs I've got left in this pain,,wish I hadn't got my gallbladder out I never had problems with my stomach before that?
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Danny5:
It is the reason. I don't "believe" it. I know it. Why?
1. Again, I was perfectly healthy prior. I never had a single one of these issues. No health problems at all in fact. I went to the doctor once a year for a checkup and blood work. I always had a clean bill of health. I didn't feel bad in any way. I rarely even got a cold. I was very healthy. Again, I was a runner and very fit as well. I ate a healthy diet. I had no health problems.
2. Within weeks after getting my gallbladder out I started having issues. I was vomiting bile very quickly after. Within two weeks I was getting my first endoscope where they found gastritis...newly developed. Then the health problems began to fall like dominos: one after another.
3. You said all that about the doctors and getting a second opinion. Sure, that is great in hindsight, but let me tell you the story of what happened:
I'd never had a health problem before. Nothing other than the average cold. I remember exactly four of those in my life prior to this. I was 36 years old the morning I woke up to pee and right after had a sudden horrendous pain in my right side. I'd never felt that kind of pain before in my life. I went to the ER. This was July 2020 (the height of COVID) and they wouldn't let my family come in with me. So I was all alone and in the worst pain of my life. There, they ran tests all day until it was about 9pm at night. They didn't give me pain meds or anything to help, so it was hours of agony. Then, around that time, a PA comes in to tell me it is my gallbladder and they want to remove it. I get very worried and tell her I've never had a digestive problem in my life. So I'm confused. She says they see some sludge in my gallbladder. I ask her what happens if I just go home instead of getting it removed. She says that my gallbladder could burst. Now, the only comparable thing I'd heard of was an appendix bursting and I knew that could kill you. So, I agreed. Keep in mind I was at a pain of about 9/10 and had no family with me to help make the decision. I did ask what the side effects were. I even ask if it messed up the gut microbiome. My surgeon was called in specifically for my surgery. I ask him. He said 1% get loose stool after and the rest is fine. He said no problems with the gut microbiome. I ask if he was sure because I didn't really want my gallbladder removed. He said that it needed to come out.
So, not knowing much about medicine and thinking that doctors always tried to "do no harm" I agreed.
After the surgery I was at a 10/10 pain and the nurses said they had never seen that before. Well, two weeks later I was back in the ER for the same pain. That is when the doctor on staff finally told me the truth. She had looked at my CT from that first night and it turns out...I had a right kidney stone. They never told me that and I ask them if it could be anything else. THAT was causing my pain. After, I requested a copy of my gallbladder pathology report. It showed no infection, no swelling and no stones. My gallbladder was fine.
I cannot sue them because my state governor signed a law at the time saying that no doctor could be sued during COVID...even for non-COVID reasons. Am I to be blamed for trusting the doctors? Two of them? The ER doctor and the surgeon? Am I to be blamed because they didn't tell me about the kidney stone even thought I told them I didn't think it was my gallbladder? I even ask if there were other ways I could treat it or other ways to make 100% sure it was really my gallbladder. They said no, which was an outright lie as I found out later about the HIDA scan. So yes, I was naive and trusted doctors. I guess I learned my lesson, but it is a lesson I shouldn't have had to learn. What they did was wrong on every level. They lied to me more than once. Guess what...the negative outcomes isn't just 1% and they have all sorts of research showing it changes your gut microbiome. And I thought it was an emergency to SAVE MY LIFE (as you put it). The doctor told me my life was at risk. I had no idea it wasn't.
Anyway, yes...I am sure my gallbladder removal is responsible for this. It was like flipping a light switch on my health. One day I was perfectly fine and very healthy. I felt incredible. After, I feel like I'm 80 (I'm now 40 years old) and I struggle with chronic health problems every day.
I passed that kidney stone about four weeks later btw. I apparently wasn't drinking enough water. Like I said...I was a runner and it was July when this happened, so that is how I got that kidney stone.
Not all people have the opportunity to do all the things you said, unfortunately. I didn't.
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3 ReactionsFYI your profile states you are currently dealing with a disc at L5-L6. There is no L6. The lumbar spine transitions to the sacral spine - so that disc is L5-S1.
I would just add that in response to your post regarding gallbladder removal and consequences of that, your experience is yours. But it need not be presumed to be universal. Docs are no better nor worse than the rest of us. Some are empathetic. Some are jerks. Some are brilliant, some not so much. Some are collaborators, some are arrogant about their ability and see no need to collaborate.
I try to give people who had the actual experience the benefit of the doubt about that experience.
It’s their reality - I honor that.
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1 ReactionDanny, I'm not sure what are you trying to accomplish with your post but I don't see anything helpful there. Are you saying that those of us who have had this experience don't know our bodies, or what we're talking about? I can assure you that my health was excellent prior to the surgery, and that the surgery was unquestionably the turning point. However, what's done is done and what I'm looking for are others who are dealing with similar consequences and have some practical advice derived from their experience to offer. You don't seem to fall in that category so you may want to keep to yourself.
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1 ReactionI think what you're describing might be the post operative cognitive dysfunction POCD. The symptoms I experienced in the weeks following the surgery are described in POCD literature, but this is not the complete list, as it doesn't include tremor, balance and coordination issues, muscle weakness, and insomnia.
(i) Learning and memory: ability to learn and recall new information
(ii) Language: comprehension or expression
(iii) Perceptual motor: visual perception and coordination
(iv) Social cognition: insight and recognition of emotions
(v) Complex attention: sustained, divided or selective attention and speed of processing
(vi) Executive function: planning, decision-making and flexibility
(vii) Delirium: an acutely fluctuating disturbance in attention, awareness and cognition developed over a short period of time
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7810820/#:~:text=Postoperative%20cognitive%20dysfunction%20(POCD)%20is,of%20surgery%20and%20hospital%20stay.
Thank you. I’ve had a multi hour neuropsych testing a few weeks ago and get the conclusion readout the 28th. I had brain MRI and I have no volume loss and nothing that could reasonably be seen as a contributor to mci.
We will see!
i'm sorry you had to go through all of that on your own @terri9. it's hard enough to deal with if you have family to help discuss it with. but, to be alone is a 100 times more difficult. that's why i said educate yourself and get a second opinion. but you were not given any of those options or opportunities to do so. plus being lied to didn't help in your decision making process. please accept my deepest apologies. d 🏳️🌈
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1 Reactionno not at all @gariston. i do fall into that category. if you would have read my post properly. instead of automatically going off half cocked. thinking who does he think he is? he don't know my body. i never said that. and if you think that? that's on you. if as you say your health was excellent prior to surgery. WHY did the doctor even suggest you have your gallbladder removed? what happened to your excellent health so drastically? d 🏳️🌈
@pb50. my question to you is what's my profile got to do with my post on gallbladder removal? HUH?? not a damn thing. so i made a simple mistake on L-5 and said also L-6. which i've learned since then. that it don't exist. by educating myself. heaven forbid. me a man who made a mistake. i also stated that i don't blame the patient nor the doctor. NOBODY is perfect. NOBODY. least of ALL ME. more than i can say about some people here. I did not attack anyone. so please remember that the next time you make a reply to someone else. before checking yourself and getting ALL the facts. now if you will excuse me. i'm done. i can't deal with people who think they ARE perfect and make NO MISTAKES.
For the record I checked your profile because I always check the profile of anyone I haven’t had previous dialogue with.
It wasn’t my intention to offend so my apologies since it’s obvious I have.
I was trying to encourage you to allow others their experiences and their conclusions. You have your experiences and your approach and your conclusions.
Anyway - you be you. Apologies.
"Have you had any success with figuring out how to handle this? Any updates on your health? Have you found any doctors that actually care to take an interest?"
Along with the other issues, my athletic ability also rapidly declined. I was in the best shape of my life heading into this. Three days after my surgery, I walked five miles. Six months later, I was unable to stand without staggering. I couldn't run because my knees felt weak and would buckle while walking. I also lost sensation in my muscles and did not get that calm, satisfied feeling after exercise. I too wondered if this was how old age felt. This has improved with training, but two years postop, I am still not as strong or coordinated as before.
I suspect that the surgical procedure, or changes to digestion and nutritional deficiencies , or all of the above, had some sort of effect on the central nervous system. There is still so much that's unknown about how the brain works, or even the mechanism of how the anesthesia and a few other drugs I received prior to and during surgery work. So figuring out if this was the cause may be fruitless.
My cognitive issues have improved the most, but I continue to lose my train of thought. Finding words on the fly, as well as motivation and focus, are still challenges. I attribute those to persistent insomnia, and I'm hoping that if that improves, the remaining cognitive issues will as well.
After being gaslighted on several occasions, I believe I have found a physician who is as perplexed as I am and is working with me. I've had numerous blood and hormone tests, and almost everything appears to be fine. My brain MRI revealed nothing that could explain these issues. The Indican test was abnormal, which prompted me to suspect that tryptophan metabolism is broken. That might explain insomnia as a functioning tryptophan > serotonin pathway is a precursor for proper sleep.
I should mention that in the time period prior to and after the surgery, I was experiencing chronic stress due to some personal issues with my family. Stress makes everything worse, but I was able to manage it prior to and immediately after the surgery. Only after the cognitive symptoms began in earnest was I unable to handle any stress at all. Also, I can't tolerate caffeine afterward because even half a cup makes me extremely jittery, sweat profusely, and unable to sleep at all. I owned a coffee shop before and had a pretty high caffeine tolerance.
Also, the contrast MRI I did prior to surgery discovered some lesions on my pelvic bone that they wanted to further investigate, so I underwent a full body PET scan and another contrast MRI about a month post op. The lesions were benign. My cognitive symptoms started after these two tests, but I don't necessarily believe they are the cause, although I can't rule them out either.
Were you experiencing chronic stress at the time, and what specific scans did they perform on you?
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