Not long after I had my eldest son, I started experiencing what I was repeatedly told was heartburn/indigestion. Friends advised me to drink milk and take gaviscon which I did and sometimes it would ease up but not go.
The pain would often get so severe that I would sweat, cry and be sick with it. Numerous times over the 6 years family and friends would call 999 because the pain was that bad. And each time I was told it was just heartburn. So I was left feeling extremely guilty for the paramedics being called out.
In 2017, we’d been out for some food as we were on a tight schedule to pick up our eldest from school, so the choice of food wasn’t the best. Shortly after we arrived back home, the pain hit me like I can’t not describe. I mean at this point I had two children with no pain relief and didn’t make a single sound, if that’s an indicator for you as to the level of pain I was in.
I was being sick again, sweating like mad, but I point blank refused to call the emergency services yet again for “heartburn”.
That night we went to bed, and I woke up screaming! My husband was petrified and worried sick as to what was wrong with me. He ended up calling an ambulance.
Two amazing paramedics turned up, asked where the pain was and saw the state I was in and instantly said “you’ve got gallstones”. Both of the paramedics both had it after having their babies and said how common it is. Only a short while before I had it, one of my best friends had it after having her baby.
They got me into hospital as quickly as they could and told me I’d need surgery. I’d never had any form of surgery before so I was extremely scared, but also excited for this pain to be gone.
A consultant came around to see me and explained I did need surgery as I had what was called “biliary colic” which is where a gallstone gets trapped in the opening duct of the gallbladder. She then went on to tell me that they wouldn’t be able to operate for 7 months due to the waiting list.
I cried and begged her to help me but sadly there wasn’t anything she could do. She told me to go away and eat a no fats at all in my diet, and to also cut out the majority of Green and red vegetables. We all know what a healthy diet is, but I struggled so much, having such a small variety of foods I could eat without making me ill. We went away a week after my admission into hospital and when we returned home, the same thing happened again, this time worse.
I was put on a ward nil by mouth for 2 days before there was a space for me in theatre. It was a very horrible time.
When I came around from surgery, I woke up screaming in such intense pain, I had a nurse putting syringe after syringe of pain relief into my cannula. When I returned to the ward, the consultant and registrars who were doing my operation came around to see me. He explained that things hadn’t gone straight forward during surgery. Upon getting to my gallbladder, they found it was so full of stones it had grown into my liver, they had to cut my liver open (which then caused a lot of bleeding) to remove my gallbladder. This wasn’t the only issue, during the surgery itself, despite me being fully out due to the general anaesthetic, my vitals showed that I was in excessive amounts of pain and that’s why I woke up screaming the way I did when I came round. They instantly diagnosed me with a chronic pain disorder-fibromyalgia.
All the years of pains I’d had, my knee pain, spraining and twisting my ankles and wrists always seemed so much more painful than everyone else who’d done this. We now had an answer.
Invisibly Disabled Me 