About a 18 months ago I thought I was having a heart attack, but the doctors found nothing wrong. When it happened a week later I didn’t waste time at the ER again, I just pushed through it. I had been eating a vegetarian diet for quite some time and had only recently began eating meats again, so I suspected it was my gall bladder, despite what the doctors said.

A couple days ago I began to be sore around my right rib cage and thought I must have pulled a muscle. Then it got worse… way worse, back to that same feeling of a heart attack again. Now I’ve never had one, but I imagine that your chest, back, sides, and everything being in such pain that all you can do is rock in a fetal position and find no comfort anywhere, would be kind of what it feels like. If you’ve ever had an abscessed tooth, multiply that in size by 50 and imagine that in your chest. So I knocked myself out with a double dose of codeine meds left from my shoulder surgery, and managed to get some sleep last night. When I woke up, it was still awful so I went to the ER and of course all the tests came back normal. Here we go again I thought.

At the last minute they decided to do an ultra-sound and found gallstones. Not too bad they said, only one was large. (you can clearly see my gall bladder in full attack mode in the picture) They suggested surgery, especially if the attacks are frequent. Last night I would have cut that sucker out myself and stomped all over it had I known, however, after they mainlined me with morphine I was pretty mellow and decided not to do anything rash at this point. Three attacks in one and a half years is not frequent, and maybe I can eliminate the problem with a better diet anyway. So, for now I will try to eat right again, probably sticking to a vegetarian diet for a while. Certainly no fatty foods and red meat.

gall bladder in attack mode

Whats kind of odd is, that it’s been several months since any meat has tasted that good to me. Even in good restaurants, the steaks and other meat dishes have seemed bland and unsatisfying. The hardest part about eating a vegetarian diet is how much work it is… it takes a lot of effort compared to just popping some burgers and dogs on the grill, not to mention the extremely limited choices you have in eating out.