The Great Gallbladder Break-up: 6 months later

Six months ago, I broke up with my gallbladder. I’ve written a few updates since then. The first month was a little rough. I spent a lot of time pretty uncomfortable in a number of ways. Three months in, things were starting to improve. So what about six months later?

A month or so ago, I started to realize that I was having fewer and fewer side effects. Sometimes there are still strange tummy issues, which I suspect will never fully go away. I am still 100% nervous about drinking any alcohol. I have stayed clear of tomatoes in a lot of their forms, but that might be unnecessary at this point. There is no mystery organ pain anymore or weird anesthesia symptoms. I still have scars, of course, but those are even starting to improve.

I was pretty nervous after the first couple of months that I would always be running for the bathroom or might always have little ghost pains. I’m pretty confident that those days are behind me. Of course, I don’t eat a lot of greasy foods very often, as that seems to be what most horror stories I read seem to be about.

All in all, I’d say I feel pretty good about the surgery now. It was something that had to be done whether I liked it or not, but I’m glad that I can be okay with it. I know some people are not as fortunate as I am post-surgery. I have pretty much lived my life normally, even when I was having problems. I’m grateful that things have settled down and my body has adjusted well. Way to go, body. You did something right!

The Great Gallbladder Break-Up: 1 Month Later

A month ago today, I broke up with my gallbladder.

Yesterday, a friend and I were talking about it and he put it a really good way: It’s like when you’re short-staffed at work. You still do the same job that you had to do anyway, but it’s a little harder and you can tell something is missing.

That pretty much sums it up.  After the follow-up with my surgeon, I was still having problems.  Incidentally, my GP had gotten all the reports from the hospital about my surgery and her office called to see if I wanted a follow-up with her.  I did.  I like my surgeon a lot.  This is the second surgery I’ve been through with him and I trust him to do a good job and take care of things.  He will answer any questions I have and address any concerns, but he is very straight-forward and a little short when he talks. I needed a little bit more than that.

When I went to see my GP on the 31st (about 3 weeks after the surgery), I was still having pain at the main incision sites (one on my upper stomach, one below my bellybutton). I was also still feeling lightheaded and I had a very scary experience where I no longer felt able to talk right.  It happened at work one morning and I felt like I was slurring my speech, unable to get my tongue to do what I needed it to do to make words happen. I was also concerned about my digestion and stomach problems.  My surgeon had told me everything was normal under the circumstances and my GP said about the same thing.

What they don’t seem to tell you when you undergo anesthesia (or at least what they didn’t tell me), is that your cells suck that stuff up and hold onto it.  Your cells then decide to randomly release some of that medicine.  She said it happens for most people in the afternoon and they get really tired.  For me, it seems to happen about 10 in the morning or so and that’s also when the speech problems happen.  Like clockwork, every time I’ve had the problem, it has been the same time of day. This is normal for about two months after surgery.  It also helped explain not being able to stop myself from sleeping 11-12 hours at a time.  I am doing that less, but I can tell you that I’m still tired  A LOT. Normal post-surgery, but a pain nevertheless.  The lightheaded feeling is probably also connected to the anesthesia, so hopefully that goes away within the month also.

As far as pain from the incision sites: 1 year.  The doctor said it can take up to a year for that to go away.  Really?!?  No one told me that either! She took a look at my scars and said that I was having some hypertrophic scarring.  Luckily, I am not developing keloids, but in order to help the scarring stay more minimal, she recommended applying something like Bio-Oil to them with as much massaging as I could handle.  I have already been able to tell a difference.  The worst scar is below my bellybutton and it has the most raised scar tissue.  I’m not sure if it’s shrinking exactly, but it looks like it’s healing better. (A side note: I had a dream that the Bio-Oil worked so well that it started to make my bellybutton disappear. Not reality, thankfully.)

My stomach problems have been the worst part, really.  Here is also where we get into TMI territory, so consider yourself warned and feel free to skip this paragraph. After I eat, I almost always feel stomach pain of some sort. It’s not constantly awful and sometimes it’s just a minor annoyance, but it is a marked difference. I also have noticed an increase in gas.  I have discovered that eating spaghetti with tomato sauce is a giant NO. The acid is just too much and I end up laying on the couch wishing I hated pasta.  I also think that I can’t drink a lot of alcohol anymore.  I had a couple of glasses of wine one night and everything seemed fine. At a friend’s wedding, I consumed about 3 rum and cokes over a several hour period.  The next day, I almost shit myself.  I can’t trace any food I ate that night to that sort of reaction again, so I can only assume it was the alcohol. I haven’t drank since.  Everything in general seems to move through my system a little faster now than it used to and I have had to become more comfortable with public bathrooms than I ever expected.  Overall, I seem to be able to eat most things without much problem, which is a relief.  The doctor did suggest that I start on a probiotic in order to get myself a little more regulated and a little less uncomfortable.  We’ll see how that goes as I haven’t noticed a difference yet.

All in all, things are generally manageable.  I will be really happy if the probiotic helps my stomach and I will be especially happy if I can get these tired feelings under control as well.  I am still cautious about some foods, which I think is probably a good thing anyway.

I was talking the other day about how there are some things you can never undo.  Taking out your gallbladder is one of those things. I don’t regret doing it, especially since it apparently needed to happen, but I wish I had been better educated about exactly what I was getting into afterwards.  Nothing is unmanageable by any stretch and things can always be worse, but I didn’t sit down and think “Well, you could always have more stomach problems after” or “Be prepared to want to sleep for half the day.”  I think I probably should have planned to take some more time off of work or at least plan for an extra day off here or there so that I didn’t/don’t feel so drained all the time.  Whenever I get bummed about how something feels, I try to remind myself that it’s only been ___ amount of time. It’s only been a month.  I’m allowed to still feel tired or have stomach trouble or whatever it is after losing an organ only a month ago. Figuring out what things work (smaller meals, teas for digestion, etc) and what things don’t (alcohol, etc) is part of this process.  I have to give myself time to do that also.

In the Meantime…

This morning was my follow-up with the surgeon.  He took off my steri-strips, told me the incision and everything is looking good (though I personally think it looks kinda weird right now), and told me I have no restrictions.  He also said that the lightheaded feeling and a couple of other side effects may or may not be because of the anesthesia.  Some people are pretty sensitive to it, but that should go away. I also still have to play it safe, of course, and pay attention. For instance, I know because of the strain I feel at the main incision site that I have to be careful about lifting things.  And I still feel like I tire easily, but I think that will probably get better as I increase activity (lazy begets lazy) and still heal. Healing is tiring! My body is still probably looking for it’s gallbladder every now and then.

Today will be the third day this week that I’ve gone out walking.  I did a teeny tiny bit of jogging yesterday.  I mean teeny tiny and that was enough.  Hopefully today, I’ll get going a little bit more.  I am anxious to get my Couch-to-5k progress back on track. I know I still have a lot of work to do before I do the 5k in February.

 

So what would a beginning runner do with herself when she can’t train? Read.  Here’s what I’ve been getting into the past week and a half:

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

Barefoot Running University :: specifically this

HuffPo Countdown to the NYC Marathon by Emily Faherty

Running with Your Cat, How Much Running Should I Do on Pavement?, Breaking All the Rules :: Runner’s World

Post-gallbladder surgery running discussion here.

 

The kitten loves a good running book.

 

One Step at a Time

I haven’t run in 11 days.

My last week at the gym, I did 8.3 miles on Couch-to-5k over four days. The Columbus Marathon was on Sunday and seeing those runners made me so jealous. I don’t have much interest in a marathon right now (let’s complete that 5k first, shall we?), but it was something to see other people doing what I am just not allowed to do yet.

After feeling kind of poorly the last two days, I was anxious to wake up this morning and see about going for a walk. I took my time gearing up. I ate some breakfast, rested a bit, and then put those shoes on.

I was so excited just to walk! I had big dreams of breaking into a jog without any problem, but as soon as I started out, I knew that was unlikely. The movement of walking did cause some discomfort in my stomach at the surgery invasion points. I kept my hands near my stomach for most of the time out. I didn’t need my pillow for stability, but I needed a little something.

I started out walking on a route that I had mapped a couple weeks ago. I have wanted to transition to doing some road running since I have only been doing the treadmill. There are a lot of pluses to the treadmill: always knowing your pace and forcing yourself to adjust one way or another, climate controlled, etc. But there are a lot of nice things about the road. The boredom of a treadmill, whether you’re listening to your iPod or not, is still there. You’re running in place. The benefits have outweighed that downside for me for the most part, but being outside today really made me see how nice that was. I had interesting things to look at, fresh air, no one on the next treadmill screwing up my heart rate monitor (ha!), etc. It was really nice.

I also used the walk to test out two different apps on my phone for the purpose of outdoor running: MapMyRUN and RunKeeper. I did a total of 1.22 miles today, or about half of a mile out and back. The first half, I did with MapMyRUN. Maybe I didn’t understand what I was looking at, but the pacing part of the app was confusing to me. I appreciated the map and GPS capability, but I felt like the pace was off. On the walk back, I used RunKeeper, which seemed a little bit less complicated and more accurate with what made sense for my pacing (which wasn’t fast, believe me). After getting back and looking at what the two apps came up with, it seemed pretty comparable. I liked that RunKeeper automatically gave me 5min interval audio cues on pace and distance (something I imagine you could turn off, if desired). I also appreciated the ease of the RunKeeper website. Both the mapping ability and the work-out input function were simple and did all the math for you. Of course both apps automatically load your recorded work-outs onto their respective sites so you can look over your stats. Overall, I think that RunKeeper wins. I have been tracking my total mileage over at dailymile, but may start to switch things to RunKeeper.

So now, for those of you keeping score, my current running apps:
C25k app – for Couch-to-5k training
Electric Miles – logging miles in dailymile
RunKeeper – outdoor running with GPS, routes/maps, stats, etc.

I hope to get back out and walk a little farther and/or faster tomorrow. I think as long as I don’t overdo, this can only help my recovery.

The Great Gallbladder Break-Up Part 2: Recovery

The day after my surgery, I was in a pretty good mood and ready to go home. I had been able to walk down to the nurses’ station sometime very early that morning. I had been able to eat dinner the night before, so breakfast wasn’t a problem.  I just felt like I needed to walk more.  By the time my mom showed up, I was ready to do just that.

Hospital breakfast of champions!

We did a couple laps around, slow and steady. Ever since the first time I got out of bed, the nurse had me holding a folded up blanket against my stomach.  This was advice I’d been given by several different people, including my mom. She had brought my designated pillow from home that morning, so there I was, shuffling along the hallways with my Jack Skellington pillow and my IV stand.  I can’t tell you how helpful that pillow has been. I’m not sure what it is about it that helps, maybe just the bracing effect.

The surgeon arrived one more time and asked again what I was still doing there. I said I was ready to go, so eventually those orders came again.  I don’t think I was officially discharged until about 11am. They gave me instructions, a prescription for painkillers, and wheeled me on out.

Most of that first day home I remember eating and sleeping. I had a little bit of a scare that night with feeling lightheaded when I was walking around again. Luckily, my mom was right there.  I can’t begin to tell you what a help she was. I had tried to deter her from coming up for my surgery, but I see now that there is no way I could have done it without her. From helping me out of bed to making sure I was eating okay to cleaning my kitchen, she was beyond helpful. I spent most of the next couple of days back and forth between the couch and my bed. It was also just nice to have the company. We walked down the street one night, which felt good. We watched some Netflix. I was grateful to be able to relax.

My mom left on Thursday night. I was pretty nervous about being alone, though I was perfectly capable of handling things by that point. Every day I was getting better, it seemed. Noticing progress was nice. The pain from the gas they used to pump up my stomach with was pretty intense at times, so when that started to dwindle and when the gas itself started to disappear (normal pants!), those were all good things. I had been feeling pretty good most of the weekend.  I wasn’t 100% comfortable and felt tired pretty easily, but still a lot better than earlier in the week.  My boyfriend was nice enough to come and stay with me and force some Indiana Jones movie-watching upon me.

By Sunday, though, I had started to feel kind of gross. I have been eating pretty normally since I left the hospital.  By normally, I mean that I haven’t seemed to have any bad reactions to things.  I even ate pizza on Saturday, something I had been dying to do since I was told I needed to stick with low-fat because of the gallstones.  My surgeon had told me there were no more restrictions on what I ate, though it was obviously wise to eat healthy and low-fat, etc.  Sunday came along and my stomach started to ache. It’s ached on and off since.

Aside from my stomach, I have also had more problems with feeling lightheaded.  Even while sitting down at times, I won’t feel quite right. This caused a bit of a problem yesterday when I went to Target for a few items and ended up feeling like I was going to pass out waiting in line to check out. I didn’t and made it to the car and off to get something to eat, thinking that maybe my blood sugar was low. I still haven’t figured out what is causing this feeling, but I do know that eating often and in small quantities has been helpful. This seems to curb some of the lightheaded feelings, though not all. I have been trying to stay well-hydrated also in case the problem lies in dehydration. Hopefully I can either figure out the cause of the problem or it can mend itself on its own soon.

I have also still been using the pillow for different things.  I haven’t driven much since the surgery, but feel best when I have the pillow against me when I do.  I’m sure that it looks strange to passersby, but it’s definitely helpful. I also use it at night. I still can’t sleep on my favored side (as I have 2 invasion points there), but sleeping on my back or other side require the pillow against my stomach for the most part. I keep it there partially to stop the cats from getting on my stomach.

The cats teaching me how to nap by example.

After Sunday and yesterday being kind of a bummer as far as feeling goes, I woke up this morning with the intention of getting out to walk to hopefully feel better. It seemed to work pretty well, but that’s for another post. I am hoping that today is the start of more steady improvement to feeling normal again.

Overall, the experience so far could have been far worse. I am really grateful to everyone who has been so helpful or sent a card or a gift. My mom, friends, family, and boyfriend have all been really wonderful to me.  I couldn’t be more thankful for that.

One of several get-well items that have helped brighten things up.

I still have a few days before I need to go back to work.  I’m hoping to get to walking more, resting more, and hopefully be good to go once I have to be back in the normal swing.  I have my follow-up with the surgeon on Friday, and I am hoping he clears me for all the fun things like working out too.