Comment by yodon
1 day ago
> What would be the sypmtoms?
Of an infected gallbladder?
Don't worry - the pain is so incredibly intense, there is zero chance you'll not be aware of it, regardless of how high you think your pain tolerance is.
1 day ago
> What would be the sypmtoms?
Of an infected gallbladder?
Don't worry - the pain is so incredibly intense, there is zero chance you'll not be aware of it, regardless of how high you think your pain tolerance is.
That’s what my doctor said when I came in with a fever that wouldn’t go away. I had some mild discomfort in my side a few days before and based on the location I concluded it was my galbladder. By the time I got to the doctor the discomfort was gone but I still had a fever. He poked me in the side a few times, I didn’t feel a thing, and told me it couldn’t be my galbladder as I would be screaming out in pain if it was.
I insisted it was, so he agreed to do a quick blood test for inflammation markers to easy my mind. Shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes for the nurse to get the results and send me home. 30 minutes later the doctor called me back into the office, apparently my values were off the chart and he already informed the hospital of my arrival.
Spent a couple of hours in ER, where the infected galbladder was confirmed, and was eventually sent home with some antibiotics. Since I wasn’t in pain they preferred not to operate while it was inflamed. Then a year or so later they tried and failed to remove it, but that’s a whole other story.
I read a neat trick someone had for the ambiguous "out of 10 where is the pain" question doctors give you. Find a reference point first: "If five is a broken leg, I am at a 7"
Otherwise my 3 could be someone elses 7, as someone who has had chronic pain and a shifted pain tolerance it's proven pretty useful as even doctors struggle to convey what a worrisome level of pain would be without knowing what you have been through.
As a doctor, that is a great way to report pain. Most of the time we’re asking for ballpark and trend reasons though. If I come and it’s a 3 first time, then a 5, then a 7, that’s good and I can do something about that. If it’s a 8-9 and the patient is in their phone, and it stays 8-9, well the absolute magnitude may be less of a concern to me.
Regardless, if someone comes in and reports high pain I am going to administer strong painkillers (I work in emergency departments)
I'm on a waitlist for this. I went to hospital for an attack about six months ago, and I started overthinking this question afterwards. Wondering silly things like 'is the scale linear or logarithmic?!'
~18 hour gallbladder attack where i could not keep any liquids in made me consider bashing my head into the wall next to my bed until i pass out.
(No longer have a gallbladder, thankfully.)
Yikes. I thought my 6 hour attack was bad. I can't imagine 18!
It felt like I was in a ring with Floyd Mayweather and a nuclear bomb in my stomach going up and down. Think twice if you want to play out deciding on a removal or not. You might be back again in a few years.