Quite the gall

Last night I had what was by far the worst gallstone attack I've ever had. I hadn't had a recent attack since the ones I mentioned back in July, I think, so I was hoping I was in the clear. I couldn't have been more wrong.

It started around 1 a.m. when I woke up to get some water. I drank a glass and headed back to bed, but my back was pretty achy and I had trouble getting back to sleep. Within half an hour, the pain was localized in the gall bladder area on my right side, right under my ribs, and it was tolerable at first but progressively became worse. Pretty soon, though, it became unbearable and I began vomiting about every five minutes--for the next four hours. The pain was both dull and sharp at the same time, and no position I would lie in could make it feel better. As before, neither Tylenol nor a heating pad did anything to help.

My worst attack before had lasted less than two hours, so by 3 a.m. I was hoping it would start to subside, but no such luck. In fact, it became even worse at that point rather than better. The constant vomiting continued until about 5:30 a.m., though the pain was still there. I was exhausted by this point and managed to doze off (despite the under-rib pain still being there) around 6 a.m. and when I woke up 15 minutes later, the gall bladder pain was gone, just like that. I still didn't feel great, but at least I could (in theory) finally get back to sleep.

I contacted my work and told them what had happened and said that I would aim to come in around 10 or 10:30 since I'd only gotten sleep from 10 p.m. until the pain started at 1 a.m. Unfortunately, I still didn't get any sleep from 6:15 until I had to get up at 9 a.m., but I figure just resting pain-free in bed was helpful. When I got up, I still felt kind of "off" (not really nauseated, but not really great, either), and my throat was (and still is) torn up and raw from all the puking. I managed to get down some Crystal Light and yogurt this morning but have been afraid to eat anything else that might irritate my throat further. I'm still working on just three hours of sleep, but at least it's Friday, so that's helping get me through the day.

I did have some ice cream last night (well, frozen yogurt), which is what I suspected caused it last time, but I've had ice cream or frozen yogurt every day for the past few weeks and haven't had a problem, so I don't know if that's it or not. Unfortunately, there's literally no home remedies that work for gallstone attacks. I knew this beforehand, but still looked it up anyway, to no avail. I'll mention it to my doctor on the 18th just so they have a record of further attacks in case I have my gall bladder removed after pregnancy. Until then, all I can do is try to figure out what causes it for me and avoid the trigger. That sounds like quite a potentially painful experiment.