i really need some help please!

[saesae2808]

I have been having major stomach pains for a little over 2 years now. I am lost on what to do and I can't handle these pains anymore. As I'm typing this I'm laying in the fetal position on my living room floor having a gallbladder attack for an hour so far. I finally went to the emergency room for the first time and they had done blood test and barely looked at me and told me that I was fine. so I went home but they pains kept coming and now worse than before. the pains I get are far more worse then when I gave birth to my daughter. I went again for the second time to a different hospital and they told me that I had gallstones! I had no idea that's what it could've been. well I followed up with a doctor and they say I have multiple gallstones but there is nothing wrong with me. But these pains just will not stop! I'm scared it's going to rupture or that there is really something wrong. But I can't get any answers!?  can anyone help with advice or experience? please!?

[Christopher R Watters, MD]

Let me get this straight. You have had recurring bouts of upper abdominal pains for over two years. The pain is intermittent and episodically severe enough to curl up in fetal position on the floor with pain that lasts from a few minutes to several hours. In between episodes things are fine. An ultrasound shows multiple gallstones without stigmata of acute cholecystitis. After 2 years of intermittent symptoms an EGD shows "mild" gastric irritation of the stomach. One physician says that you are OK because your white blood cell count is normal. A GI doc says that one of the stones is "larger than he would like", implying tha multiple small stones would be OK. And "they" don't want to put you through the pain of surgery because it might not be your gallbladder.

I am glad I don't practice in Texas. Have you actually seen a surgeon or are these decisions being made by physicians that haven't seen an operating room since medical school? I don't know where to start. You have classic biliary colic symptoms. It would be bizarre if gastritis of some sort could persist for two years and make you that miserable and still be merely "mild" on EGD. As for the GI doc, the idea that big stones bad, small stones good documents sheer ignorance. The most deadly complications of gallbladder disease come from the passage of small stones down the common bile duct. The other comment that I must make is that the reason that we remove gallbladders is not to relieve symptoms but to improve your chances of living out your normal life expectancy. If you are symptomatic you have roughly a one in three chance of going to the ER with a complication such as the acute cholecystitis that your one physician seems to require before referral. Although the data was generated in the era of open gallbladder surgery, the risk of death jumped from one in a thousand to 7% when we were forced to deal with these patients in the face of a complication. Relieving the symptoms just makes us popular with the patients, it is the reduction in mortality rates that justifies the surgery.

Have you seen a surgeon or are non surgeons that ignore the NIH consensus report guidelines calling the shots?

[saesae2808]

Yes I went to a GI doctor. I am not really sure why nothing has been done about this. The doctors office performed a test where they put a tube with a camera down my to my stomach for ulcers and then had ordered and ultrasound to confirm gallstones. Well, I never got a call or was told when the results would be in. I got scared when I didn't hear anything and that is when they told me that I have multiple gallstones and that one is larger than what they would like (1.3 cm large) but that everything else is okay and that I'm fine. Also that I had irritation in my stomach. I'm lost!

[saesae2808]

They had said that I have multiple gallstones and mild irritation in my stomach. But, that they did not want to do surgery because they did not want to put me through the process and pain of surgery when it could possibly not be my gallbladder. And they told me that my white blood cell count was normal and that i was okay. I did not get much more than that. I just cant handle the pain anymore.  

[Christopher R Watters, MD]

From the info you give you give a good history of biliary colic. Time to see a surgeon. What did the physician that you saw think was causing your pain if not the gallbladder?

[patient915]

Welcome to the gastroenterology community!  If they told you that you had gallstones why haven't they dealt with this?  Have you seen a GI doctor about this?  What testing has been done?

[saesae2808]

also it scares me because I keep losing weight. Im scared to eat now all kinds of food because it destroys my stomach.