Sorry this is kinda long, but it's kinda complex.
I started getting intense pain a week ago on Saturday – it woke me at 4:30am, and it was so bad I couldnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t get back to sleep. I went into the ER, and they thought it was an infection related to some minor surgery I had a couple of weeks ago (an area looked very inflamed), so they opened that bit of the incision up, and gave me some antibiotics and sent me on my way. That night we ate a kind of greasy tri tip, and that night the pain started again, and by 1am I was in excruciating pain again – worse than the night before. We went back to the ER where they admitted me and ran a heap of tests.
Blood tests and a culture of my incision area showed staph infection, and also showed my gall bladder is full of gallstones, but otherwise everything was normal. The strongest IV pain meds they could give werenâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t helping, but it was only sore when I moved. If I lay still I was fine.
There was pain in the centre of my chest where the incision area was, but the worst of it was to the right, just below my right breast under my ribs, and the pain went around to my back, and thatâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s what had my almost screaming in pain whenever I moved.
I ended up spending 4 days in hospital while they ran a bunch of other tests and tried to deal with my symptoms. I also had ongoing nausea, and threw up a couple of times despite being pumped full of anti-nausea meds. They did an ultrasound and confirmed my gall bladder is full of stones - my cardiologist said it looks like a pebble graveyard, but there was nothing indicating any of the usual cholecystitis (or whatever gall bladder problems are called) signs. I had been on antibiotics for 2 days by this stage.
I got a PICC line “installedâ€, which is an IV line that can stay in for up to a month or so and it goes into your upper arm, then through a vein until it hits the superior vena cava, and then I could get released. The point of this is to deliver 24 x 7 antibiotics from home to deal with the staph infection that they believe is in my blood. Because Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]ve had previous heart surgery, they treat any potential blood infections aggressively as the risk of an infection damaging the repair they did is increased.
Anyway, so I had one doctor saying he couldnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t be sure if it was staph in my blood because they only took a blood sample from one site, and thereâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s a risk of cross-contamination of the sample from the needle going through your skin as staph lives on your skin. Another doctor said that didnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t matter because it also showed up in the wound culture they did, and they are going to treat aggressively anyway because of the heart surgery. Then yet another doctor said sheâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s not convinced that gallstones had nothing to do with my pain since the majority of the pain was just a little higher than typical gallstone pain.
Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]m still getting pain at night. If I wake up in the night, my side area hurts, and rolling over is uncomfortable, and when I wake up, it still hurts a bit, but goes away not long after I get up. The pain is nowhere near as bad, but I am wondering if it could still be gallstone related?
Anyone had similar problems? Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]m going to get all my test results tomorrow if I can and take them to my regular doctor – having a cardiac team diagnosing abdomen problems isnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t the most useful
I started getting intense pain a week ago on Saturday – it woke me at 4:30am, and it was so bad I couldnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t get back to sleep. I went into the ER, and they thought it was an infection related to some minor surgery I had a couple of weeks ago (an area looked very inflamed), so they opened that bit of the incision up, and gave me some antibiotics and sent me on my way. That night we ate a kind of greasy tri tip, and that night the pain started again, and by 1am I was in excruciating pain again – worse than the night before. We went back to the ER where they admitted me and ran a heap of tests.
Blood tests and a culture of my incision area showed staph infection, and also showed my gall bladder is full of gallstones, but otherwise everything was normal. The strongest IV pain meds they could give werenâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t helping, but it was only sore when I moved. If I lay still I was fine.
There was pain in the centre of my chest where the incision area was, but the worst of it was to the right, just below my right breast under my ribs, and the pain went around to my back, and thatâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s what had my almost screaming in pain whenever I moved.
I ended up spending 4 days in hospital while they ran a bunch of other tests and tried to deal with my symptoms. I also had ongoing nausea, and threw up a couple of times despite being pumped full of anti-nausea meds. They did an ultrasound and confirmed my gall bladder is full of stones - my cardiologist said it looks like a pebble graveyard, but there was nothing indicating any of the usual cholecystitis (or whatever gall bladder problems are called) signs. I had been on antibiotics for 2 days by this stage.
I got a PICC line “installedâ€, which is an IV line that can stay in for up to a month or so and it goes into your upper arm, then through a vein until it hits the superior vena cava, and then I could get released. The point of this is to deliver 24 x 7 antibiotics from home to deal with the staph infection that they believe is in my blood. Because Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]ve had previous heart surgery, they treat any potential blood infections aggressively as the risk of an infection damaging the repair they did is increased.
Anyway, so I had one doctor saying he couldnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t be sure if it was staph in my blood because they only took a blood sample from one site, and thereâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s a risk of cross-contamination of the sample from the needle going through your skin as staph lives on your skin. Another doctor said that didnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t matter because it also showed up in the wound culture they did, and they are going to treat aggressively anyway because of the heart surgery. Then yet another doctor said sheâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s not convinced that gallstones had nothing to do with my pain since the majority of the pain was just a little higher than typical gallstone pain.
Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]m still getting pain at night. If I wake up in the night, my side area hurts, and rolling over is uncomfortable, and when I wake up, it still hurts a bit, but goes away not long after I get up. The pain is nowhere near as bad, but I am wondering if it could still be gallstone related?
Anyone had similar problems? Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]m going to get all my test results tomorrow if I can and take them to my regular doctor – having a cardiac team diagnosing abdomen problems isnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t the most useful