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Need Help: Panic attack sufferor worried about gall stones
by Brother786, May 23, 2007 12:00AM
Dear Friends:
As you know through my previous mails that I am having panic attacks since 10 years. I take prozac, benzo and since I am bipolar also I take mood stabilizer DeVarporic Sodium. I am anxious lot of times.
One thing which keeps bothering me after every few days is that I have a 1 cm stone in my gall bladder. I don't have much digestion problem. Some doctors here tell me to remove the gall bladder as it can cause cancer and the others say that unnecessary surgery is not advisable.
I am really scared that what if there is an emergency that this stone get stuck in the bile or what if this stone left for long could cause cancer. I found out about this stone 3 years ago and since then the size of the stone is the same.
Now I am really anxiuos person and just the thought of surgery makes me panic. Should I do the surgery and remove the gall bladder or there is no need to worry and let it be there? In case of recomending surgery if you had done for yourself please tell me experience and suggestion.
Pease help.
As you know through my previous mails that I am having panic attacks since 10 years. I take prozac, benzo and since I am bipolar also I take mood stabilizer DeVarporic Sodium. I am anxious lot of times.
One thing which keeps bothering me after every few days is that I have a 1 cm stone in my gall bladder. I don't have much digestion problem. Some doctors here tell me to remove the gall bladder as it can cause cancer and the others say that unnecessary surgery is not advisable.
I am really scared that what if there is an emergency that this stone get stuck in the bile or what if this stone left for long could cause cancer. I found out about this stone 3 years ago and since then the size of the stone is the same.
Now I am really anxiuos person and just the thought of surgery makes me panic. Should I do the surgery and remove the gall bladder or there is no need to worry and let it be there? In case of recomending surgery if you had done for yourself please tell me experience and suggestion.
Pease help.
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Today, however, has the doctor talked to you about laser surgery where they can zap and disintergrate the stone? This way you can keep the gall bladder!! Also, if it is not bothering you, I have heard that you should just leave it alone....if it ever gets stuck in the bile duct you will know it and you will feel a lot of pain....
So it is really your choice. Get a second opinion and see if it is worth removing.
Angel
I expected to feel much better after the surgery but never really did. A little, maybe. It took them so long to figure out what was making me so sick that I developed this anxiety/panic disorder, it turns out. My panic mimicked the symptoms of the gall bladder troubles. It took them another year and a half to figure that out.
The surgery itself wasn't so bad. My stomach was so sensitive I was unable to take the pain meds they gave me. It hurt pretty bad because of that but I lived. I remember doing weird things when I came home from the surgery, like walking to the post office (only a couple of blocks, but still, I'd literally JUST came home from surgery!). I didn't sit down that whole day. They told me I'd probably sleep all day long but I didn't feel like it at all.
The recovery was pretty uneventful. It's not like I could never get around, even without pain meds. I was driving the next day. Back at work late the next week (if I were a "normal case" it would've been sooner than that, but like I said, I had extreme anxiety and panic). The worst part about it is the air pockets that are left inside you when they stitch up the incisions. They eventually travel up to the shoulders and neck, and that can hurt! They go away, though, and it wasn't like a constant thing. If I were taking my hydrocodones I may have never felt them.
Another thing...they told me that every time I'd eat, I could get the runs. That happened exactly once. The rest of the time it was the opposite, and I've had problems with constipation on and off ever since. Obviously, I'm a weird case. That probably won't happen to you. I'd never had problems like that in my life until that surgery, and the doctors all but refused to believe one had anything to do with the other. Well, they did. I don't know why, but some things you just know.
But I think that's the thing that bothers most people about the surgery: having to stay close to the loo after eating.
As for whether you need yours out or not, that's your decision. How many opinions do you have? If you have three from respectable physicians and two say it's unnecessary, don't do it. There's no reason to. It is an organ that performs a function, after all. If it starts to bother you, that's when you go for surgery. Cancer, though? That clouds things up a little. You may want to get regular ultrasounds or whatever if you elect not to have it out.
Now that I've gotten rid of all these stupid panic attacks, I can't tell that I don't have a gall bladder, though. I don't think it's a big deal. Most of the time, I feel the way I did before I ever got sick. And when I don't, it's pretty clearly due to anxiety that occasionally breaks through. I barely think about the gall bladder anymore.