Hello again, I posted here in July shortly after I had my surgery. I didn’t however tell my story of how I ended up needing the operation yet, and since it’s thanksgiving (in Canada) I thought I’d come talk about how I’m doing now and how the first big holiday meal went without a gall bladder. A bit of a warning, this turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it would, so if you decide to read it, thank you XD if not, no problem lol

So first my horror story -_- the first time I noticed a problem was in 2007. I had a particularly unhealthy weekend starting with pizza with some scotch on Friday which gave me some stomach pains 20 minutes or so after eating that ended up going away in a little while. Saturday the same pain after my meal but it went away. I wasn’t yet too worried and thought I just had a bug or something. Sunday however was different. I had a spaghetti meal and after 20 minutes that pain came back again, only this time it didn’t go away, it got worse. So I layed down, and it got worse, so I paced around, and it got WORSE, then I was sick and with the pain being so intense, realized it was time to go and wait for hours in the emergency room. My dad gave me a ride there and while waiting in the ER the pain mostly went away. I ended up going home with some percs and a scheduled ultrasound exam for the morning, which my family doctor revealed those results to me, being that I had sludge in my gall bladder :/ so I went on a diet of rice and veggies for a year -_-.. that sucked loll I couldn’t really have a whole lot else without getting pain. After that however it seemed I was cured. I was back to eating and drinking what I pleased.

Fast forward to Christmas 2010 and I got the pains again, which rally bugged me because I knew what that meant.. change my diet again for a year.. I was pretty put out thinking I was done with that. So I tried that for a while and it seemed to be going ok. Then, in June 2011, I agreed to go on the annual fishing trip some family and I try to go on regularly. I knew I had to watch my diet so I brought a lot of my own food. I think where I messed up was not being a part of the guys that cooked, or noticed what they were cooking with.. most everything was being cooked in butter X) now I should mention where we were here. We weren’t at a sort of camp site near much civilization, we were at an old hunting cabin in the bush, where we had to load our gear up on a boat and get out to from the river. It takes several trips to get all the stuff across the river to the cabin that is itself out in the bush from the river. So when at 1am one night I started to get pain, I was pretty worried. I tried to stay calm and tell myself “if I just relax and let this happen it should pass in time”.. nope. I fought the pain in bed till the sun came up then went down to the river to walk around and get fresh air. We had a black bear destroy our BBQ late at night the one year so I didn’t want to be going out there at night with a flashlight just for some air. So, I was down by the water and started throwing up all the water I had been drinking trying to help me out through the night. After that was gone from my stomach I was throwing up bile. I was sick more times than I could count -_- and the pain was getting worse. I was screwed. I honestly thought I was gonna die out there lol. So thankfully for everyone else’s sake this was our last scheduled day out there and we were basically packing up and leaving that day. So I didn’t ruin anyone’s trip too badly I hope. But everyone had to scramble to get things together and boat to the cars and pack up the trailers and start the driving trip down the bumpy old logging road to the main road, which takes about 40 mins to an hour to get to from that damn logging road. After that it’s a 5 hour trip home. We could have gone to a closer hospital probably 100km or so from where we got to the main road but it would have been a real hassle I think, it’s 4 hours drive from where I live. So we went all the way home, then to the hospital -___- so I suffered with that attack for 15 hours before getting to the hospital, where I was sick again while waiting in the ER and finally got in there and got a shot of some sort of anti-inflammatory that took a lot of pain away. I then had another ultrasound and they found stones this time in my gall bladder. So I think it was roughly 2 weeks later I had surgery and thank the lord that thing is GONE. Which I hope means I’ll never have to go through something like that ever again. so far that seems to be holding true, I had few post-surgery problems in late July but that went away and since then I’ve been ok to eat basically anything. The only things I’ve noticed now are that; 1, I can’t seem to handle orange juice, it makes me feel nauseated so I am just avoiding it for now. I’ll try it in a few months again. 2, if I go a long time without eating, the next time I DO eat, I’ll be having some explosive toilet adventures accompanied by the typical stomach pain anyone would get with that sort of thing X( but I can handle that happening from time to time compared to what a gall attack is like.. good lord.

Today I returned to my parent’s place to celebrate Thanksgiving, my first holiday without my gall bladder, and I didn’t hold back. I had a plate of so much food I’m not sure how I got it all in there. I felt a little bit of a “possibly gonna need to get to the bathroom soon” pain, but it went away and I’ve been fine. This was 7 hours ago or so, so I think I’m good 😀 I already can’t wait for Christmas dinner X)