Gallstones and weight.

[worriedpartner12]

Hi all,

I'm after a little advice. I'll explain the situation first, and apologize but it's going to be a fairly lengthy one.

Firstly, my girlfriend isn't on the small side. Um, When she got pregnant, I think she gained around 3-4 stone. During the pregnancy, things were difficult, she got SPD which made movement very difficult, She got kidney stones and she found out she has that Group Strep B bacteria? um our beautiful baby came out at 11lbs, which we needed to be rushed to theatre and then some suction etc to assist her birth.

Since this pregnancy, my girlfriend has now lost 4 stone, is now down to 18 stone and still working on reducing that number considerably. We have however hit a bump, a couple months ago she had excruciating pain in her chest, paramedics came out and said it was indigestion so got her some gaviscon and some indigestion tablets prescribed. Even with this, the pain continued on a daily basis, After calling 111 several times and several visits from paramedics, including the odd trip to hospital she was diagnosed as having gall stones, From the sounds of it alot of them.

Since being diagnosed, she was sent home and told to just get some paracetamol for the pain, two trips later she was then prescribed codine, and some other drugs. some of the time these helped. Other times following 2 or so hour waits, we had to call ambulance again. In a month and half we have had to have an ambulance take her to hospital 6 times.
Including being kept in twice for several days each time.

Sunday morning was one of these cases where she was taken in at 5am, released around midday.

Then yesterday eve another of these cases. But she spent last night in, and is spending tonight in there.
Due to my girlfriend also being diagnosed with PND last Thursday, I had to work from home for this week until (hopefully) the anti depressants kick in. So luckily I've been able to work from home and look after our 6 month old baby.
However, she has now been told that she has pancreatitis which may have been an escapee stone in her pancreas or something. But she has been told that even though she's planned to have an operation in mid Jan, she may not have the op if she hasn't lost enough weight, what that weight target is no one knows..

We also have private health insurance with our work, so she's due to go in Monday for a consultation. Today I found that the NHS consultant who told her he wont operate is the same private one so likely to cancel that appointment monday.

The reason why my girlfriend is being kept in tonight is she's in a queue for a MRI to see if the stones are found any where else and if they are definitely in her pancreas. Which if she doesnt have the MRI tomorrow she'll be sent home and told she'll be given an appointment for the MRI next week.

Now the problem is that with all that's going on, the fact I work in London, we live in Suffolk, my girlfriend has PND, and gallstones and our baby is dependant on the girlfriend 12 hours a day during the week. Waiting possibly months to have gall stones removed (which flare up on a daily basis no matter what she eats) (even when our baby accidently knocks her chest she gets a flare up), just isn't really something we can do. It also wont help her PND at all, if anything will make her worse.

Does anyone have any kind of advice on what we can do to possibly speed up this process?

Thanks for your time and sorry for the lengthy post.

No advice I'm afraid , just seen your having a shit time !
Hope it all goes well for you all

That all sounds shit. There are a few good threads about gallstones already, if you go to advanced search and limit the time to the last two months, you should find a lot.

She needs to go on a Zero Fat diet. Also no eggs.

I don't mean to be abrupt, but I am on my phone, as otherwise I would have found them for you. I was told to avoid all fat and eggs. So no crisps cakes chocs biscuits etc or chips. Skimmed milk and fat free yoghurt. I have been eating a lot of fish and veg soups. Not had pain for more than two weeks, and lost a bit of weight too

Sorry for this difficult time you are having. I think its dreadful
what your gf has been through, no wonder she has PND!
it is very hard for you with your work. Do you have any relations who could help?
one thing I know about the gall stones diet is that you must count fat grams rather than just sticking to low fat products and not counting. You can still eat too much fat if you eat too much of a low fat product otherwise. Others can give more advise than me on this though.
Please try all you can to not make your gf feel guilty or bad about her situation. I know it is very hard for you and worrying, but she really needs to keep a positive mental attitude. This will help her depression and help to prevent any comfort eating. I expect she feels bad and guilty already so do all you can to reassure her and encourage her.
to her and to you x

can you not ask your private healthcare for a different consultant? say you need a second opinion- that would be reasonable.

question the weight loss thing- exactly what is the weight she needs to be? i ask that because I recently had a hysterectomy- i was told by the consultant to lose as much weight as possible but that he had put me on the short list for surgery- i managed a stone in the 3 weeks before the surgery. He would have operated anyway because the need for surgery outweighed the risk from being overweight. My bmi was just over 30 when i saw the consultant and is 28 now. in hospital, there were other patients who had waited a year for surgery because they were more over weight and their surgery was not quite as urgent.

it sounds like she has done really well up to now and i am sorry you are having such a tough time.

OP, I had gallstones and understand the pain your DP is going through, mine were undiagnosed for nearly 10 years.

Once I was diagnosed I went onto a very very low fat diet, I was basically eating a small selection of bland foods that I worked out would not cause flare ups. It was hard and such a relief to have it removed.

If you have private healthcare I really advise you to use it, my company allows me to select the consultant I want to use, I always ask my GP for a recommendation but then as we have a few good private hospitals in our area and I use the consultant profiles on the website to select the one I would like to use this usually includes the hospital(s) that they work in so you should be able to avoid them.

I was overweight when I was diagnosed and yes the consultant did weigh me and calculate my BMI at the first appointment, I think I weighed about a stone less than you DP at the time but I am tall. He advised me to try to lose weight but not that he wouldn't operate on me, in fact as soon as I'd had my MRI scan he could see how bad the situation was and just wanted to get me in as soon as possible.

Once I was on the restricted diet I lost weight anyway, in any case if you lose a lot of weight in a short period of time in increases the risk of gallstones.

It must be extremely difficult to deal with this as well as PND, I was very scared once I had been rushed to hospital and been in pain that just didn't go away until I was given morphine so restricting my diet was easy, I just didn't want that again. It may be harder for your DP to 'get' this in her current mental state.