And now for a word about my gall bladder

[dianeduane]

But only because all you nice people keep asking. (If you don't want to read a few paragraphs of what my mother used to refer to, in other people, as "the organ recital", for Ghu's sake look away now.)

Short version: I'm ok, and improving as we get control of the situation. I am no longer incapacitated / bedridden / completely useless.

Longer version: Tom Lehrer was right to call the gall bladder "one of the more important technological advances since the invention of the joy buzzer and the dribble glass." Especially in its predictability once it starts acting up.

It's pretty much a given, now, that I've got gallstones, and that my gall bladder is having trouble with them. The ultrasound and Xray to determine how many / how big the stones are is still a week off.  Right now the situation is being managed with rigid diet control (particularly of fats) and drugs for pain relief. (Nothing fancy, fortunately.) While I sit around being alternately amused and annoyed at myself for having spent the last year or year and a half thinking that this was a recurrent back problem which would go away by itself, or (sometimes) after taking an aspirin.

If there's an ongoing frustration, it's that it is sometimes hard to tell what'll set off an attack (which involves 6-10 hours of extreme internal discomfort, accompanied by bloating, cramps and other minor joys). I am, as it were, my own test tube: put something in, hold your breath and see what happens. What can't I put in? Oh, nothing much, just most of the foods I really like. Any significant amount of butter, full-fat cheese or sour cream. [Which I couldn't have anyway until I get some Lactaid in here, as I am now also at least lactose-maldigestive if not entirely intolerant.] Chocolate. Eggs. Some red meats. Yes, but which ones? Argh, there goes another 6-10 hours. And so on.)

(sigh) Enough of that. I'm getting caught up on book shipping (for those of you who're curious, I'll be mailing you today / tomorrow with tracking numbers, etc) and other work (yes, The Big Meow) and all the things I ought to be doing rather than lying in bed groaning.

Anyway, folks, thanks for your concern, it's been much appreciated.

 

(Also: check here for the source of the icon quote, and a charming moment at the bottom where one of the writers apparently gets a little confused about the difference between the gall(stones) of animals and the oak-galls used to make ink.)

Comments

[caitlin.livejournal.com]

I've emailed you but haven't heard anything about how much everything is.

I do still want the books. If you did not get the email, please let me know and I will re-send.

Goodluck with the whole gall stone thing.

C.

[cjmr.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear you're getting a handle on it. If I couldn't eat that list of food I don't know what would be left!

As soon as you let me know what I owe you, I'll paypal it right off.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Hope things continue to improve, and that the gall bladder decides to quieten down again.

[megabitch.livejournal.com]

Bah *sympathy* It's a bugger. Both my mother and my mother-in-law have had to have their gall bladders removed. I can really sympathise with the problem of working out what foods hurt and having to avoid foods you love :( I know that bread and meat will cause me severe pain as it works its way down my oesophagus, but I still eat them (and scare people when I arch my back and clutch my chest in pain).

korenwolf currently has a problem with dairy, not sure if it's lactose or just cow milk products in general - we have discovered that Green & Blacks dark chocolate contains no dairy! Yay! And I am having fun discovering what recipes aren't hugely harmed by substituting non-dairy alternatives.

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Thanks for mentioning Green & Black. My daughter is severely allergic to dairy, and I've been searching for dairy-free chocolate.

[mhaithaca.livejournal.com]

Thanks for letting us know you're doing better!

If you've got packages to send me, please hold off for a couple of weeks. I'll be in and out of town a lot until mid-June, and would rather not have a book sitting outside awaiting my return in the humidity and/or rain.

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

Let me know if you'd like some dairy-free recipes... my daughter is allergic and I am lactose-intolerant, so I've had to learn how to cook. (My current recipe was for egg-free, dairy-free pumpkin chocolate chip bread.)
What are your favorite foods? I love Mexican, and use Tofutti's Better Than Sour Cream. Which reminds me... has your doctor told you to avoid spicy or tangy foods?

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

(When my mom had problems with her gall bladder, she was told to limit certain spices in her diet as well as sodium.)

[notosa.livejournal.com]

Ow!... hope u get better real soon..

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

ooo. if you get them removed, can we have pictures?

And eeep. diet restriction?

...this brought to you by someone who's looked at way too many surgical pictures for her own good recently.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Ouch. I hope you feel better soon.

[meehaneo.livejournal.com]

Hoping the Divine Ms Duane gets better soon!

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Hope it comes out ok!

Tangent:
The dove she is a gentle bird,
I'm sure she has no gall.
We'll not lie in the ain bed
And I'll not lie next the wall.
("Captain Wedderburn's Courtship")

[uitlander]

Gall Bladder stuff is horrific. I had a very nasty bout of it a year ago which hammered my temperature up to 105°F for a week, involved paramedics attending at the house due to the increased heart rate and hallucinations brought on y the temperature and knocked me flat for months. I'm am still waiting for my NHS ultrasound appointment to address all this, and in the interim have the diet joys you have, plus recurrent gall bladder grumbles.

Good luck. I hope they sort you out quicker than they are dealing with me.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

I've had a couple of gallstone attacks in my time. I hope that the situation, once under control, remains that way and never bothers you again.

[astrophilia.livejournal.com]

That does sound very painful. I wouldn't know, but... yeah. :( Here's hoping you'll really get to feeling better soon! (I left you a couple of comments regarding books, but I see you're getting them sorted through, so no worries in that regard.)

[astrophilia.livejournal.com]

... Ah.

Happy birthday, too! :)


I will eventually stop spamming your comments. :D

[mitchy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the update, DD, I was wondering how you were. Take care of yourself!

[ivymutant.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear you are feeling better.
I am also waiting on a total for my book, with p&p, so I can pay you (I wanted a copy of the Bloodwing Chronicles).

Happy Birthday

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Birthday greetings !
I left a birthday message on my journal here:
http://jaxomsride.livejournal.com/43647.html

Then reaalised as you don't have me listed as friend you might not see it (DOH! sorry it's late).
I'm not sure it'll be allowed in a comments box anyway.

Hope you enjoy your birthday!

[deire.livejournal.com]

(((hugs))) Gallbladder problems can be miserable. My father, my grandmother, and a close friend all had them, so you have my sympathy.

[pendlemac.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear you're getting better. I'm not worried about not having a reply to my e-mail as I thought you might still be bad.

Looks like any 'innards' problem starts showing as back pain as that's what I had when the kidney stones flared up the other year.

Luckily any severe pains since have turned out to be something stupid, like constipation! :-))

Please carry on getting well.

[wyrmwoud.livejournal.com]

For some reason, my gall bladder couldn't make gall stones completely, and kept trying, resulting in a bladder full of about 150 gall stones "sludge," unformed to completion, which apparently made my body go into some feedback loop and continue to produce them until finally, bloated and in much pain, I went to Massachusetts General Hospital and was told "Yeah, we're takin' your gall bladder out."

Add this to the chunk of flesh taken out of my leg a few years ago due to an infection that caused necrotic tissue to form, and I'm freaking Frankenstein's creation. I used to be pretty! /bawl

[silversliver.livejournal.com]

I hope you continue on the mend without many more incidents of digestive distress. Hopefully you can keep eating herbed roasted chicken and several other tasties.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

This is perhaps an odd place to leave this message, but -- happy birthday!

[caiteydid.livejournal.com]

I also emailed you, but never heard anything back. If you didn't get my email (which wouldn't surprise me, because hotmail is hateful and comcast is, well, comcast) just let me know and I'll resend it- I leave in... a week for three months, so I'm anxious to at least get you the moneys and my address so you can ship it... I don't mind if I don't get the book before I leave, since it'll still be here when I return.

[caiteydid.livejournal.com]

And also! Hope you keep on the mend, as it were. I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't eat any of those foods!

[were-gopher.livejournal.com]

Glad to know you're getting better tho it's a real shame you're having to give up the cheeses and choccies. Hope that once they've found out how bad the stones are they can sort them and you can work out what you have to give up for good and what you can take even if it's only in small doses.

Have a cat picture and the story behind it. Random Acts of Reality is one of the blogs I read regularly and it's nice when he has a feel good story instead of the usual litany of drunks and maternataxies.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lmg/501812392/

[were-gopher.livejournal.com]

Have a happy birthday as well.

[estara.livejournal.com]

Dear Mrs. Duane,

it's good news that you're doing better and better news that you're really watching your health, but please keep a careful eye on inflammation of your gall bladder. When it was my turn, I knew three weeks before my operation that my stones had moved to in front of the opening of the gall, but my doctor said I still had time to the easter holiday to have an operation. She finally sent me to the surgeon when the painkillers couldn't subdue the pain enough for me to sleep and the next day from when I was admitted to the hospital I was already in minimally invasive surgery.

Later on a young assistant doctor recognised me at a bedside visit because I had been the patient with the huge amount of pus (I still think my abdominal wall actually stuck out where it was) and that it had been very good I'd finally come in.

I'm not saying it has to be that way, just please keep a check on it, so it's not too close.

My aftermath was very trouble free except for being careful of what I eat especially in the evening.

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

See, when my doctor started saying things like "no fats", I--being a good Slavic boy--said, "Rip that sucker out." You don't put a Polish kid on a diet that doesn't involve sour cream and butter. And no one messes with my kiszka and kiełbasa! :)

[sfrose.livejournal.com]

Hi Diane! I had my gallbladder removed almost exactly three years ago. And I'm doing much better without it.

I was in the same situation, foods I really liked would sometimes invoke an attack, but I didn't know the cause was my gallbladder. Since it was generally ice cream or pizza, I started to think that I had a lactose intolerance forming. I had tests for that, but the doctor said it wasn't the case. But she didn't test to see what really was.

But since the removal, I can have those things again.

Good Luck!

[fullyarmdvishnu.livejournal.com]

Sympathy with you on the gallbladder thing. My sister Natalie had to get hers removed earlier this year. It took them so long to schedule it that when she had the surgery, they had to take a piece of her liver as well, since they had started to fuse. The good thing was that when they went in, they found about the abcess in her hip.

Hope you go/get well.