Pain, Pain Go Away

I mentioned last week that I was having an ultrasound to see if we could determine a cause for some random attacks of pain I was having. After waiting a long three days, I finally heard on Thursday morning that I do in fact have gall stones.

I have an appointment scheduled with the surgeon this Friday morning and I couldn’t be more ready. Over the past two weeks, I haven’t had any attacks, but the discomfort and pain is becoming almost constant.

Thinking back, I think that these problems started when I was pregnant with Ava. During my pregnancy, I had major issues with digesting hamburgers. I chalked it up to pregnancy. Several months after I had her, I had two or three attacks. I didn’t really know what they were but they subsided and didn’t happen again and I went on my merry way. However, since then, I’ve had issues with discomfort after eating. I’ll have very intense feelings of feeling VERY full and miserable, no matter how little or much I’d eaten. That has been continuous over the last four years. Never ever did I begin to think it was related to something like my gall bladder. I just thought pregnancy had changed my body. I also had random episodes of chest pain but they’d end as quickly as they started and there was never any pattern to reoccurrence.

Certain foods are also harder for me to tolerate. The biggest things that made me feel ill were beef and pork. However, nothing ever got severe enough to look into it. Back in May, I had the first of these series of attacks. We were in St. Louis for my nephew’s birthday and the pain was so bad and so intense, we got up and left at 4am to come home. I thought I might end up in the hospital and didn’t want to be away from home if that happened. I felt better while driving home and was fine for 5 months, minus the full feeling. I had attacks both in September and October and mentioned all of this to my doctor at my wellness check two weeks ago.

I’m not looking forward to surgery, but I’m SO very thankful that there were stones present and that they showed on ultrasound. I’ve heard of so many people whose ultrasounds showed nothing and much more extensive testing that didn’t always show results were required. I am grateful I have to do none of that.

The past of couple weeks I have noticed the pain and discomfort has gotten much worse. It’s almost constant anymore. I don’t want to worry Ava so we haven’t mentioned much to her. I did have to tell her last night that I didn’t feel well because she wanted me to do something with her. We told her there was something broken in my tummy and that it needed to get fixed. I’m praying that nothing serious occurs during surgery, requiring a hospital stay.

So, anyway, surgery is pending. I’m praying it can be scheduled as soon as possible because I’m so ready for some relief! Please pray that the pain will not get too intense between now and my surgery date. When I know more, I’ll share more.