I had my gallbladder out on February 25, 2013. After taking two trips to the ER in January and having all tests come back normal, I finally saw my GI doctor on February 13th. I told him when they injected the nuclear medicine it set off my headaches and all my "right sided" gut and back pain. He said that was enough to warrant taking out the gallbladder and sent me to a surgeon. The surgeon said I was a "million dollar test" patient because when all the tests come back normal they have to go on symptoms, so she took out my gallbladder and I feel much better. My chronic daily headaches are gone. My gut and back pain from eating are gone. I'm still having my normal chronic back pain and I had a real bad widespread pain episode last Friday night after trying to do yoga earlier in the day, but I think all in all I'm doing better.
The pain behind my ears and in my temples I have found to be associated with high blood pressure and that is under control for the most part. Caffeine, chocolate, and seratonin related drugs, and cold medicines aggravate it. The problem is that those seratonin drugs used to really help with my chronic back pain so my back pain is out of control. So basically I am treating the greater of the two evils, the headache. I did get some trigger point injections in my back on February 14th, but they haven't been very effective.
When my widespread pain hit last Friday I took one Oxycodone, then a few hours later took two more and got in a hot bath. When that didn't help and I was still going out of my mind in pain, I took a Lyrica. That did help calm things down and I was able to go to sleep. My pain had resided by the time I woke up but I felt hung over and my body was limp, like a wet noodle. I continued to take Lyrica for several evenings but found that I cannot wake up in the morning when my alarm goes off. My daughter was late for school yesterday and today we just totally blew it off. I did not take the Lyrica before bed last night and I woke up at 2am and as of now, 4am, I am still awake. I can't win for losing. Oh well, at least I'm not in pain right now. I can live with a little lack of sleep if it's not caused by pain.
