Gallbladder Attack

Last night at like 7:30pm I was talking on the phone and started to feel cramping in my stomach, within a few minutes it was getting extremely painful. I got off the phone and tried walking around, sitting, laying trying to get comfortable but nothing was working.

Lee had just finished putting the kids to bed and came downstairs with me and went to go get tylenol to see if that would help. This had come on so fast and so quick I started to have a hard time breathing, so I told Lee to call 911.

While we were waiting for the ambulance I was having a hard time breathing, my fingers and toes were going all tingly and my mouth was extremely dry, and I was in huge amounts of pain in my upper stomach area.

When the paramedics had gotten here they asked a million questions which I was getting irritated with since I just wanted some pain medication. They explained the reason I was having a hard time breathing, and feeling all tingly was because I was hyperventilating and I had to slow down my breathing. I was getting so bad that my hands and feet were numb and my hands started to look like this picture (Carpopedal spasm )

and I was going in and out of consciousness. With help I got my shoes, coat on and they helped me in the ambulance. I started to watch my breathing and was able to calm the hyperventilating down and the pain had started to subside just a tiny bit. They hooked me in an IV and took me to a urgent care center downtown (supposedly it was going to be alot quicker to get in there then to go to Peter Lougheed Hospital). By the time I got there I was doing alot better, the pain was almost gone so I had to sit in the waiting room for awhile...

Lee had beat the ambulance to the hospital while my parents took the kids to their house for a sleepover. After about 45 minutes waiting (9:45 pm) the pain had come back and I was once again in huge amounts of pain. I was extremely thirsty and they wouldn't let me even have an ice chip since they weren't sure what the abdominal pain was from, and the doctor would have to see me first. After about another hour (10:45pm) in huge amounts of pain in the waiting room I was called in and got a bed in urgent care. I kept asking for pain medication and they said I would just have to wait till the doctor saw me. They took blood and urine samples and sent them off to the lab. I had to get 4 different veins poked because each time they would start filling up a vial my blood would just stop flowing, so they would have to try different veins. After many hours of tossing, turning, moaning in pain it had started to subside around 2:00am. The doctor was able to come see me at 2:30am after I was feeling alot better, besides being tired. She said that my liver enzyme levels were off and that's a big indication of gallstones, and my symptoms were textbook symptoms for gallstones. She sent me home with a fasting ultrasound booked for the next day and that if I had another attack during the night to come back. Lee and I got back home around 3:30am this morning.

I won't get the ultrasound results for another couple days, so i'll have to see if I should be getting the gallbladder removed or not. I have had a gallstone attack when Zoë was about 6 months old as well. Reading on the internet I figured out some pills I have been taking could have been a partial factor in my gallstone attack as well.

The Calgary health care system is SO horrible. I can't believe they couldn't have sped up the process while I was in huge amounts of pain, or at least give me pain medication. In Edmonton, the first time I had my gallstone attack I was on morphine within 5 minutes of being there and was able to skip the huge waiting room lineup and that time I didn't have an ambulance drive me.