Gallbladder, initial signs of trouble?

hi everyone!

I am curious, what were the initial sign of your gallbladder giving you trouble?

I am four months out and I started having little pings of pain on my right side kind of to the end of my rib cage.

if it continues i'll contact my doctor. I'm just curious what others experienced!

thanks!

Gall bladder pain for me started in the middle front of the abdomen in the area of the bottom of the rib cage. The pain would travel around the right side and end up in the back exactly opposite of where it began. It could last for hours for me. I had well over 100 gall stones and gravel. Do not let it go because it is dangerous. I let mine go for 18 months and ended up with pancreatitis and stayed in the hospital for 117 days (one hundred and seventeen days!). I was very ill and was out of work for six months.

Below is a copied and pasted reply of mine on a post from almost 5 years ago. My gallbladder went kaput at 3 months out from my RNY.

The pain started off feeling like a cramp, way deep inside my gut. Very mild, I thought it was gas. About 15 minutes later I started having sharp pains. The pain stayed in one area, but that area seemed bigger. It went mostly away, and I laid down and slept for about an hour. About 20 minutes after I woke up, I got really severe sharp pains in that same area. I could not take a deep breath. I knew something was really wrong, so I called my surgeon's office. I cried like a ***** to the nurse...lol. I felt like such a weenie for that.
The pain would die down, go away and then come back suddenly.

Mine came on all at once and felt like extreme acid reflux and a heart attack combined. Pain radiating from under my rib cage on the right side and making my back cramp up, nausea, sweating, hard to catch my breath. I'd usually throw up and feel somewhat better, so for the longest time I just thought it was bad reflux. Until I ended up having emergency surgery. This was before my WLS though. Once it was out, I never had a single episode.

Mine started as a dull achy pain under my right lower rib. Eventually it started getting worse. I had s couple stones pass and they were VERY painful. I have to be careful with eating certain foods or it will bother me. I'm currently on medication to dissolve them. If they get worse or you get extreme pain for more then 12 hours...go to the ER (this is what my doctor has told me) as a stone can be stuck.

Mels,

My gall bladder was taken out at time of my WLS. right side pain,nausea....

You need to get in to see the Dr and get it checked out..If it is early there are meds to clear it. They will want to do a scan or test of some kind to check function of GB. Do not put this off. it will flare at the most inoportune time.

Meinwhile avoid fats, breads,...lettuce, any other food that you eat and you have pain afterward. Milk Thistle is a liver cleanse and helps some people. Tumeric and Ginger helped my daughter in the early stages.1/4 tsp of each in a veggie cap 3x a day. She had a scan and Dr said GB full of sand sizd stones and larger ones. she passed all but the large ones..

It took my daughter 6 weeks of agony to get her surgery set up.Took an Uncle 4 weeks. He lost 24 lbs in 21 days, on clear liquids -until he could have surgery.

Hello!

I haven't been on this site in a very long time, but on doing searched for my problems, I ran across it again, and felt the need to at least post a reply here because this is very fresh in my memory.

I have about 14 years post RNY. But back in Feb, I started having a weird feeling after I ate. It happened with Taco Bell, a hamburger (twice), and a few other things I can't remember right now. My pain wasn't typical as it just seemed to be a very uncomfortable feeling and back pain. It really felt like I couldn't get in a good position. The second time it happened, I got immediate chills (serious chills like I have never had before and fever. I knew something was more seriously wrong and I suspected it was gallbladder related just because of these symptoms: fever, chill, back pain, dark urine. The 2 or 3 days following each attack, my urine would remain dark. Since I was shivering for hours at a time, my body was also sore. After blood tests, the Dr. agreed the gallbladder would need to be removed. So after more tests, ultrasound, CT Scan, and MRIs (2 MRCP scans) it was finally concluded my gallbladder would need to be removed because one of the worst possible situations for me was happening. MRIs revealed I had a fairly large stone in my common bile ducts. I was then sent to more specialist and surgeons (I had already seen 3 by this point). Exactly one week ago, I had my gallbladder removed. What should have been a 2 hour surgery turned into 5.5 hours because of the difficulty in getting at the stone in my common ducts and all the scar tissue I had. Normally they would go through the stomach to access, but since the RNY, the part of the stomach they needed access to was bypassed. Basically they had to do 2 separate surgeries, and even though it was laparoscopic, turned into a much more major ordeal than I expected. I have 11 incisions and a drain. They had to actually cut all the way in to me to the old stomach, puncture that with the instruments and continue though. Tomorrow my drain comes out. The surgeon told me there were cheers in the OR when they finally got the stone out.

Between this surgery and the OPEN RNY I had before, I am honestly not sure which I would choose to live through again. I didn't eat for 4 days and when I did, it was honestly like learning to eat again after RNY. Food repulsed me, the amount I could eat was minimal, food tasted weirdly spicy (even though it's not).

The surgeons did tell me that people with the stones the size I had in this common ducts is usually a much more emergency type situation, but I didn't have serious pain with it.

The point I guess I am trying to make here is

1. Don't let this get to a situation when you are more likely to have common duct stones like I did.
2. Don't let this situation turn into an emergency and you get a surgeon that isn't familiar with your new anatomy (if you had something like RNY). This was always the greatest fear of my surgeons I saw

Good luck to you and I really hope your issue turns out not to be the problem. Feel better soon and don't let this go.