It is a big deal

After a week cooped up in the hospital taking pain meds and antibiotics my system was a mess, but with the help of some stool softeners things are getting back to normal and you never know how good it feels to poop after being constipated for so long.

More detail as to why I was in the hospital:

This basically started 8 years ago. I began having minor pain on my right side, around the gallbladder area. Tests were done and nothing was found. A year later the pain was still bothering me and that was when they found that there were stones in my gallbladder and it was removed. After I recovered the pain still didn't go away. CT scans, MRIs and ultrasounds all showed nothing. One doctor felt it was a pinched nerve in my back and I'd have to go for a sitting MRI to find out since the problem only seemed to occur when I was sitting. I accepted this answer and learned to live with the minor pain. I found putting pressure on my back seemed to help it go away. This further reinforced the idea that it was a pinched nerve and that by arching my back it meant that the nerve wasn't being pinched. I didn't want to have back surgery over a minor pain so I kept living with it.

Back in May of this year I had pancreatitis. Which means that my pancreas was being blocked somehow. It was excruciating and meant 3 days in the hospital. The normal causes of pancreatitis didn't apply to me and they never figured out the cause.

Last Monday I found myself in severe pain again and went to the ER. After waiting for 2 hours I was taken back, the pain meds were a huge relief. After a CT scan, x-ray, EKG and blood work they found that my liver enzymes were elevated. I was admitted and the doctors who had cared for me back in May assured me that they'd figure out the problem. Over the next few days my total bilirubin started to skyrocket. Bilirubin is a product of the liver. Basically your red blood cells only live for 20 days and then die. The liver filters out those dead blood cells and dumps them into the bile duct. This is what makes your poop brown. If the bile duct is blocked, then the bilirubin back up into the liver and into your blood.

All of this caused me severe pain and jaundice (turning yellow). While I was under anesthesia my doctor preformed what is called an ERCP, which means they put a scope down your throat and pass it through your system until it reaches the sphincter of Oddi. Once they were there they could see that there were gall stones blocking the sphincter. My gallbladder was removed back in 2009, but stones can still form in the bile duct. They preformed a sphincterotomy which means that they cut open the sphincter of Oddi. This allows the stones to easily pass through my system and it helped my system to begin returning to normal.

Now I'm getting better. I am still sore, but not suffering agonizing levels of pain. Thanks for being here to entertain me during my hospital stay imgur. I love all of you crazy assholes. And if you ever find that you are experiencing "minor" pain that is persistent, don't ignore it. Get it looked at, get a second opinion if you need to. Just because it doesn't hurt much now doesn't mean that it might not get worse in the future and it could be an indication of something serious.