Hello and hope you are doing well.
In HIDA scans the gall bladder gets filled in 5-10 mins and sometimes longer. The emptying usually happens within 2 hrs. That's what happens if the test is normal--if something is blocked then the progression stops flowing along--usually either the gall bladder never fills or it never empties in an abnormal scan. CCK HIDA or HIDA with ejection fraction (EF) is seen to check for gall bladder ejection. There is nausea and some amount of pain with this medication.
Hope this helped and do keep us posted.
this sounds the same as a "Biliary Scan", which is an ejection of nuclear medicine to cause the GB to retract and see at what rate it expells the bile into the intestines. this is a fairly painless process, just very time consuming. mine, which was taken in June 2010 took about 2 hours. you lay on a table under a camera which is looking at your GB, the technician will inject the medicine, then followed by saline to push the medicine through. its just uncomfortable since you really can't move until it is over, so make sure you use the restroom before hand. only downside to this is that the medicine is known to cause cramping after the fact (mine didn't start till about 1.5-2 hours after the test) and it wasnt around long since i immediately went to the restroom to force myself to go