Life gets unpleasant quickly when your gallbladder stops working. TMI alert.

I spent all day Friday with sharp pain in my abdomen, diagnosed as spasms from my gallbladder trying to expel a stone. It eventually wore off in the night.

I spent all day Saturday with intense, cannot-lie-down heartburn from miscalculating what food was gallbladder-safe, trying to avoid a repeat. Oops. And I couldn't even keep the food down! A micro-portion beat me up.

I spent all day Sunday with bad things coming out of every hole in my body, to borrow an old sitcom line. I lost 10 pounds of water over the weekend.

I spent all day Monday exhausted because I had nothing in my system. I have a-fib, so my heart kept fluttering from lost electrolytes (Pedialyte wasn't helping), and the fluttering caused hours of coughing as an involuntary reaction.

I spent all day Tuesday spewing apparently long-dormant phlegm loosened by all of the previous coughing. Ew.

So it seems that a single gallstone can mess you up for five days with a domino effect, especially if you're in bad shape like me. Today, Wednesday, I'm mostly recovered, if worried about the future.

The doctor decided not to operate unless more attacks occur, since these things can sometimes be isolated incidents, so it's up to me to experiment with different food triggers. I've researched plenty into what foods are safe and unsafe with this condition, but websites have conflicting advice (don't believe everything you read online), and their advice is often impractical, especially for dining out (undressed salad with half of the ingredients removed, cool thanks).

And there's one more thing: I have a compulsive eating disorder, so far untamed by extensive therapy and medication. I can tell you right now that in my heart I want to eat a gallbladder-safe diet for the rest of my life, but the thousands of failed commitments to eat better in my past don't leave me with any confidence that it will last. I feel like I'm doomed to suffer more gallstone attacks eventually, unless I luck out as one of the few people for whom this is a true one-time fluke.

Someone tried to tell me that this was a common condition and I wasn't suffering alone, but all that made me feel was guilty for whining about something that other people manage to live with. Why should I feel good that so many people live with this painful, miserable, and untreatable condition? I'd feel better if this was one of those medical rarities that something like 50 people in the world suffer, because there'd still be no treatment and at least I'd know that almost nobody else had to go through it too.

Sorry for all of the complaining, but as with everything else, I have a lot to get out of my system.


One Reply to Unmitigated Gall

Scott Hardie | March 2, 2022
Kelly was so helpful throughout this, taking me to medical appointments and assuming my household chores and just assisting me to get comfortable. I'm lucky to have her.

What did I eat that triggered the attack? Nothing too terrible I think. I had a store-brand Caesar salad around 6:30, then a 12-oz Stouffers mac & cheese around 9:30, then soon after I went to bed, then I woke up at 4am with the abdominal pain. That's some dairy and grease, but not an insane amount. I don't think it helps me figure out what to avoid in the future.


Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

Amazon Appreciation

I just wanted to take a minute to thank Amazon.com. They've been my primary retailer for over a decade now, not to mention the seller of most prizes in the goo game and Oscars contests on this site. Once they started offering their Prime service ($80/yr gets you free 2-day shipping and discounted overnight shipping), they leveled the playing field against local retailers: No longer did I feel the need to save up a list of several items and buy them all at once to save on shipping. Go »

Falling Snow

It was twenty years ago today that my father passed away. I almost didn't write something today, because I don't feel particularly creative enough at the moment to do his memory justice. But a plain remembrance is better than none at all, and besides, he's been on my mind a lot this week. Go »

Windbag

I don't know what Polaroids he has of whom, but somehow Tom Skilling has elevated himself to some kind of all-important weather-broadcasting god. When I grew up in Chicago, I watched him gradually get a bigger and bigger budget for his animated graphics, and gradually get a larger and larger timeframe to deliver his dull reports. By the time I left town, he had a whole 20 minutes of the hour-long midday newscast for the fucking weather, and boy did he find trivia to fill it: Average dew points across Cook County on this day in 1854, theta-e temperature predictions for every Cubs home game next season, you name it. Go »

Hungry Hungry Kitty

When you want your dinner, you want your dinner: (link) I do the same thing at China Buffet when they try to take the chicken lo mein off the line. Go »

Revisiting Survivor: Australia

Since I'm a fan of Survivor and I missed the first halves of early seasons when they aired, lately I've rented them on DVD to see what I missed. And it's given me an opportunity to reflect on how the show has changed over twelve seasons. The first two seasons had a special quality that has largely been missing every since, which is the genuineness of the cast. Go »

Midevil Mayhem

On Sunday evening, besides indulging in a few rounds of the ever-popular Munchkin with Miah, Ines, and her boss Denise, we tried one round of Midevil, a spinoff of the apparently bestselling Zombies!!! game that my St. Pete friends will recognize. Go »