All me

About 3 years ago while I was 7-9 weeks pregnant with Ike I had this awful chest pain. It woke me up during the night it was so bad. I had barely gotten to sleep when it happened. I tried different positions but nothing was working. I got up and sat in one of our recliners. It just kept getting worse. It hurt to even breath. It hurt more to inhale than to exhale. Finally I decided I should go the the ER to get checked out. The pain was right under my chest bone. I kinda wondered if it was my heart.

I check in to the ER. With chest pain, the hospital immediately will take you back. They took me straight back and checked my blood pressure in both arms. It appeared to be fine. They got me a bed and did some more test. The EKG also showed normal. So hopefully it wasn't really my heart! After awhile they decided on indigestion. They gave me a concoction of Mylanta, Tylenol, and Lidocaine to slurp down. Well after the numbing medicine I did start to feel better. I had also been in there for a few hours and the pain was slowly starting to fade anyway. I left with them saying it was "indigestion due to pregnancy." I highly doubt it was due to pregnancy since I was not far along yet but whatever.

I remember having this pain before but never this bad. It always happened at night. It only happened rarely. Fast froward to a week and a half ago. We were out of town staying at my in laws house. They were gone so it was just us there. We ordered a pizza shortly before bed.

We went to bed late, like every night. Max had fallen asleep on me while we were laying on the couch. My chest hurt a little and I was pretty sure it was from the position I was laying with the weight of Max on top me. I lay down in bed and try to get some sleep. I think I did fall asleep some but was woken up by Ike coming to join me in bed. I couldn't fall back to sleep after that. Later max joined us in bed. I could not get comfy because my chest was starting to hurt even more. I changed beds. Propped myself up with pillows but nothing was helping. I then felt sick to my stomach and threw up. I went the couch with a recliner and turned on TV. I wasn't sleeping anyway by this point. I figured it was indigestion since we had a pizza before bed. I was sick a couple more times and felt like crap! Just to mention.... I never have heart burn or indigestion except when I'm pregnant then I get a burning feeling in throat. And no, I'm not pregnant!

The next morning I finally manged to get a little sleep. Maybe 2 hours. I felt better but my chest felt sore. Not really painful anymore though.

I was telling my mom about this during lunch time. She then told me she thought it was my gallbladder. She had hers removed when I was in 7th grade. She said the pain was the same. She said gallstones were a form of cholesterol. And we know my cholesterol is insanely high! Remember, I just started meds a couple weeks ago for that. Also, the weight gain and lose of pregnancy helps form gallstones as well. She had me convinced that I have gallstones within a few minutes.

I looked up gallstones and gallbladder info online and most every symptom on there sounded like me.

Next day, Monday, I go to the doctor to talk about what to do to check for gallstones. The nurse had the same stories as me and said she had gallbladder removed when she was 28 years old. The doctor seemed to be leaning towards my gallbladder as well but couldn't be sure if it was that or indigestion. He would get me set up with an ultrasound and in the meantime give me meds for indigestion. Fine, but I wasn't gonna take those horse pills. The pain only happened rarely anyway. How was I to know if the meds really helped or not?

Ultrasound was scheduled 2 days later. Yes, we were all sick that day but the chance of going to this appointment ALONE sounded pretty nice. Pete could stay home and all the kids could be there with him. I was close to canceling that appointment in the morning but then my brain started working and I kept it. How often do I go to a doctor appointment alone? Pretty much never.

Ultrasound office had the wrong orders. They thought they were going to be doing an OB sono. So I had to wait for around 30 minutes for them to get the correct orders. It took forever it felt like to have this exam done. I asked towards the end if they saw stones. Of course, I knew they would say they weren't really supposed to say. They did say that but said, yes, they see stones. Multiple stones. 2 pretty big ones and another that was not as big. They showed me this on the screen but I really have no idea what I was looking at. They pointed out the stones to me.

That same afternoon I got a call from my doctor's office. They said to see a GI doc. I called a GI doc a couple days later. After playing phone tag the lady told me I really should see a surgeon instead a GI because a GI will just refer me to a surgeon. Skipping a step sounded nice to me. I called my doctor back asking for a surgeon referral. I got a name and called them up. I am set to see them today. I'll let you what goes on. I am guessing a surgery is in my near future.

Have anyone of you had experience with gallbladder surgery? If so, please share.