I came out of this winter feeling unusually lethargic and bloated after meals. Eventually I started feeling other symptoms, such as discomfort in my upper abdomen. It caused me some insomnia; I’d have trouble falling asleep at night, and would wake up really early in the morning. I figured it was all a result of being out of shape and having a relatively poor diet, so I improved my diet and started exercising regularly and vigorously. In a few weeks I went from hardly any real exercise to doing a middle distance group ride. I felt great when I was exercising, but off the bike, my feelings were actually getting worse. When the discomfort spread to my chest and back, I knew it was enough and I went to see the doctor.
He listened to the descriptions of all my symptoms and told me he thought I might have acid reflux or possibly gall bladder problems. They took blood and urine samples to rule out problems with my liver, and gave my heart a clean bill of health as well. He arranged for me to have a hidascan, where they inject you with a radioactive contrast dye so they can watch how it flows through you on an x-ray.
The evening before the hidascan I could feel a fever coming on. The catch with a hidascan of the gall bladder is you’re not allowed to eat or drink anything after midnight, so by the time I showed up for my appointment with radiology at 10:00 the next morning, I was feeling bad and getting worse. My usual reaction to a fever would be to drink lots of water and maybe some soup, and to stay in bed until it goes away. Yet here I was unable to eat or drink anything, and it turns out I had to lie on a barely padded exam table while they put me on an IV to inject the contrast dye, and then remain as immobile as possible for 1.5 hours while the dye worked through and they performed the scans! It was one of the grossest experiences I’ve had, definitely worse than getting patched up at the public hospital in Nassau after getting my foot caught between a 39 foot sailboat and a dock pile.
After the dye has worked through and collected in the bile in your gall bladder, they inject you with a drug that makes your gall bladder contract as if you’d just eaten a meal. By this time, I was lying feverishly on the table with my back, arms, and legs falling asleep from the lack of padding and awkward angles, wishing I could just get up and drink some water. Apparently the whole point of the test is to ask you some questions about how you feel while they’re injecting the contraction drug, such as, are you feeling nauseous? Why yes, I am feeling nauseous. Wouldn’t YOU be feeling nauseous after being stuck on this table for nearly two hours with a roaring fever? At any rate, a normal gall bladder will release about 30-35% of its bile, a number known as its ejection fraction. My ejection fraction was only 20%.
I went home from the hospital without knowing anything about the results of the test and just tried to get over my fever. It didn’t let up for another day and a half, during which time my arm and leg muscles became so sore and tired that I couldn’t apply enough pressure to open a bottle of vitamins. In 15 years of competitive swimming, I never got that sore. It was like swim camp times a hundred.
My family physician called me in a couple of days later to tell me the results, and said that because of my low ejection fraction, he thought I should have my gall bladder out. So I did some research on gall bladders, which I suppose I should have done before the hidascan, and asked some questions like, well, it doesn’t seem like I necessarily have gallstones. Isn’t there something with a little lower impact than permanently removing an organ that we can try first? His response was, essentially, no, I don’t think so, but you can talk to the surgeon about it.
I wasn’t really looking forward to the surgical consultation, but really had been starting to feel better, possibly due to the anti-reflux pills the doc had prescribed for my symptoms. A few days before the surgical consultation, I finally decided to act on some suggestions from family and friends that I try something else in the meantime. I went to the chinese herbalist in town, he listened to this story, poked and prodded my trunk a bit, asked me some questions, took my pulse, charged me $100, told me my problems were likely caused by being anxious, and said to come back in two hours to pick up my tonic.
Have you ever brewed beer? This tonic is about the color of liquid malt extract, only with a strange yellowish stain added to it, similar to what you get when you cook with turmeric. It also tastes like the inside of the herbalist’s shop smells. I don’t remember all of the dozen herbs he mixed up for me, but they included liver and gall bladder flushing agents, stomach settling agents, and some vitamins to help with my apparent anxiety and sleep problems.
The same day I started taking this tonic, Andrea and I decided to add a puppy to the family. The morning after I started it, I awoke from a great night’s sleep and didn’t feel any of my now-familiar symptoms at all. I felt 100%! I put it down to excitement about picking up the new puppy that afternoon. It’s several days later now and while I don’t always feel 100%, I don’t dip below 85% either, which after spending a few months at 50-80% still seems pretty good.
In preparing for my surgical consultation, I resolved to ask a lot of questions of the surgeon, including how exactly the gall bladder works in a healthy person, how it can malfunction, the differences between gall stones and other gall dysfunctions, and lots of questions about life without the gall bladder.
To my surprise, I really didn’t have the chance to ask any of the questions. When I described the symptoms that led me to go to my family physician in the first place, then told him about the hidascan experience, and finally told him I had been feeling pretty good for the past several days, he said, “Hmm, I am not convinced your gall bladder needs to come out. It sounds like you had some kind of nasty virus during the hidascan, which makes me not trust the results. Let’s sign you up for an ultrasound to determine if you have gallstones or a shrunken gall bladder, just to be safe. Otherwise, if you are able to manage your symptoms through dietary modifications and exercise, I would not recommend surgery. Of course you can always revisit this later, but you can’t put the organ back in once you take it out.”
Well YES, thank you, I like your logic!
So I will finish off my tonic and see how that goes before making any decisions. I feel a tremendous weight has been lifted from my mind. I am exploring all the options that make sense, and I hope one of them will fix me up, but if I end up having to get the surgery at any point in the future, I will always know I tried what I could do and will not have any regrets or harbor any resentment, because I have lucked out by having a surgeon who would rather not use his skills if he doesn’t have to!