please only answer if you have had gall bladder problems or know someone who has, and please be exact. dont just say go to the emergency room. the person who gets 10 pts will give me some details about their story. thanks in advance.

When the pain becomes almost chronic. My best friend had gall bladder problems and she kept putting off the surgery. a scan showed she needed the surgery but she had kids and was worried about how "everything would get done around the house." She actually took prescription pain killers for many months. Finally it got so bad that they took her by ambulance and she needed emergency surgery. afterwards they told her that her gall bladder was completely yellow (meaning totally infected). Pls. don't wait that long. if you have chronic and severe pain on a daily basis, speak to your doctor and get his/her input. then when you have all facts as is related to you and know the risks vs. benefits, you can make an educated decision. Pls. don't wait till it's a life threatening emergency, and have to take all those painkillers. My friend was almost addicted by the time the surgery was done.

Some people experience pain different than others. My mom has a very high pain tolerance. She never had medicine for all 4 of us kids. Other than giving birth, she had never been in the hospital.

Well, one day she was at work and feeling a little discomfort on her side. She didn't think much of it, but later that day she got one sharp pain. so painful she knew something was wrong. She called her dr and he said her symptoms were serious and to come in. She called my dad and he took her to the dr. the dr immediately sent her to the hospital. they did a scan and found she had gall stones that needed to be removed. She went straight into surgery because of the size of the gall stones. When they got in there, it turned out her gall bladder was gain green. it was very serious. the dr later explained that most people would have had serious pain before my mom did.

So if your having pain, you need to have a dr check it out because everyone takes pain differently.

Hope everything is ok with you.

I don't believe in living with pain–think about it. My father is so much happier now that he had his gall bladder removed. if the pain has been bad enough that you ended up in the ER–it's bad enough.

I am having excessive phlegm, sometimes bloody, sharp knife-stabbing pains in my lung and shoulder blades, 24/7 headaches and hard hard time with breathing. Walking 10 feet, I have to hang on to things and catch my breath.
I have been suffering from a genetic disorder Alpha1, and have been on meds, recently 3 strong antibiotics one right after the other, but not clearing anything up – but now it seems I have gotten worse, so I am wondering if the lung is about to collapse and give up.

This isn't the time to be on Yahoo answers, you need to go to the hospital. your lungs are obviously a vital organ, so a professional is required. your symptoms could get 3x worse very quickly and by then you might not be able to reach a phone to ring an ambulance! your health is nothing to play with, take care of yourself, you are worth it, this is not something you can tolerate.

I thought it could of been my diet, so i decided to change it (bad idea). I started eating lots of fruit, wholemead bread and realized I was going to the toilet even more!! For some reason i did not tell anyone, i left it for a few months then people at work would comment about my weight, saying i looked like i had lost alot. They was right, I’d lost a whole stone in one week. I was getting extremely weak, but yet i still chose to ignore it and carry on working (big mistake). My mum was very concerned and i started to throw up so she rung an ambulance and the lady was very rude and told me to stop tensing my stomach (which i clearly wasn’t) whilst she felt it and tried to tell me i was pregnant. I was then rushed into A&E and they told me i was ver y dehydrated and immediately gave me a bag of fluid through a drip, i was given 5 of those, i was then sent home…still running for the toilet and loosing loads of blood, the whole toilet was filled with it. I was then booked in for a colonoscopy and was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis on the 21st November 2009. I was given Mesalazine tablets to take, 6 a day…they worked for 2 weeks then i was back to square one. They started to irritate my bowels, by this point it seemed to get worse and i had lost so much blood now it was impossible to stand up, my vision was blurry and every time someone spoke to me, it would go through one ear and out the other, i was just laying there, useless. They told me i had lost half of my blood and if i had lost any more that would of been it. as i was rushed back into hospital to get my bed that they had ready for me, the nurse told me there was a miss understanding on the phone and there was no bed for me, but thankfully a lovely nurse from another department of t he hospital saw i was in desperate need and took me in herself.I was then given 3 bags of blood, and the drip kept clotting which then they had to pump some liquid through my veins which was very painful, but i was just happy i had my blood and some energy back, i was then given steroids to take…they worked wonders, i put on tons of weight and i felt fantastic!!!when it was time for me to come off of the steroids, things were ok…but i started to get a little more tired quickly and was loosing my appetite. I was then given a new tablet before my 18th birthday called Mercaptopurine, a very small pill but made me very very sick. this is when i thought enough was enough, i couldn’t care less what would happen to me and to be completely honest i just wanted to die, the pain was unbearable. Without telling anyone, i decided to come off all of my tablets (i have been off of them for almost a year now) and i feel brilliant!!! I told my consultant, she told me i would have flare ups and what not, which is obvious as i have had a couple, but its all about watching what i eat and that’s how i control it. I know what agrees with my bowels and what doesn’t. I’m glad that I made that decision, i’m working part time and enjoying life!!! I now do believe in miracles.

Stay positive, there is definitely a light at the end of every tunnel x

-Samiya

Samiya’s story is now entered into the 2011 Ulcerative Colitis Writing Contest!!! You can Join too, click here for details

If you have lost a loved one through medical negligence, such as your son or daughter through blood poisoning, then you should think about consulting a medical negligence solicitor.

In his early twenties your son was a young man. when he stayed in bed late one morning, it wasn’t usual. he was active and sporty. he had plenty of friends with a good social life and career prospects.

Something was wrong. he was in bed with a raging temperature, complaining of terrible pain.

You rang the doctor’s surgery and asked to be put through to your doctor on the phone.

After a minute the receptionist’s reply came back informing you the doctor had said it was probably a fever and to get him to drink plenty of fluids and rest. you called again half an hour later as this was clearly not the solution. This seemed like a nightmare of medical negligence. His condition deteriorated and he was getting worse. he was sweating and weak.

You called the surgery again but were told to take him to casualty or wait for the home visiting doctor on his daily rounds. you felt as if you were being a nuisance.

You called an ambulance. two days later, your son died of meningococcal septicaemia. you believe that you have experienced medical negligence. you feel angry and betrayed and want an explanation. Had the doctor responded earlier he could have been saved.

After the inquest, the thought persists that this must be a case to take to a medical negligence lawyer. Surely this area of law covers refusal to attend someone who is so ill and gets a dismissal of symptoms? The hospital were brilliant, they did all they could to save him but it was too late. Is medical negligence still applicable in this case, applied to the GP, rather than the hospital?

A medical negligence solicitor will help to support you to find out. he will go through the history, the medical notes and call in an independent medical doctor to study the case in fine detail. a medical negligence claim is very rarely a short process and therefore you must be aware that whilst you are feeling your grief you will have to deal with long and complicated communications and likely court action. Making a claim against your doctor will not bring your loved ones back to you, but it might help stop mistakes like what happend to your family to anyone else.

When Janet Holmes ?suddenly started feeling dizzy, sweaty and had headaches, she just put it down to flu. the former mayor of ?Wakefield, West Yorkshire, also had a terrible pain just below her shoulder blades.

But because she’d just been walking with her husband on a bitter December morning — it was minus 3c — she assumed this was down to the cold. ‘so I took two aspirins and went to bed with a hot water bottle to try to warm up.’

But when she got up the next morning, Janet felt a crushing pain in her chest which went through to her back.  

Delayed diagnosis: Janet Holmes put her heart attack symptoms down to flu

‘It felt like someone was smashing a ?hammer in my chest,’ says Janet, 68. ‘then it dawned on me I might be having a heart attack. even then I didn’t think it was serious enough to call an ambulance and asked my husband Brian to drive me to A&E.’

Janet was given an electrocardiogram (ECG) to measure her heart’s electrical ?activity, but the nurse said the results were fine. ‘I asked for more pain relief, but the nurse said I’d already had two ?paracetamol and he had other patients to see. I was bent over double with chest pain. I felt like my heart was going to explode and was extremely frightened. 

‘I’d been in hospital two hours by then and had still not seen a doctor, so my ?husband found one and made him come and see me. I had another ECG and my heart attack was finally diagnosed.’

Janet was treated with clot-busting drugs and taken by ambulance to a specialist ?cardiac centre in a different hospital. Tests revealed four arteries were partially blocked and she’d need a quadruple bypass operation — where blood vessels are grafted from another part of the body. She was too unwell to have the ?operation for two weeks. However, since the surgery in January, she has ‘felt fine’.

THE WARNING SIGNS YOU SHOULDN’T IGNORE

The characteristic signs of a heart attack are crushing pain in the centre of the chest (which can spread to the arms, neck or jaw), as well as feeling sick or sweaty and/or shortness of breath.

Less common symptoms, thought to be more common in women, but also ?affecting men, include:

Feeling as if you have a bad case of indigestion.

Dull pain, ache, or ‘heavy’ feeling in the chest.

Mild discomfort in the chest that makes you feel generally unwell.

Light-headedness or dizziness as well as having chest pain.

Chest pain spreading to the back or stomach.

She says: ‘the delay in diagnosis could have cost me my life. It didn’t help that I didn’t ?recognise my symptoms as a sign of a heart attack, but I can’t help thinking it might have been diagnosed sooner if I was a man.’

Like millions of women, Janet’s heart ?disease symptoms were overlooked because doctors — and patients — still regard the condition as affecting mainly men.

Yet women’s deaths from heart and ?circulatory disease are outstripping men’s — 99,000 women under 75 died of heart and circulatory disease in 2008 compared with 91,000 men, ?according to the British Heart Foundation. 

There are more than a million women registered as living with heart disease, but experts say many go undiagnosed. in a survey, one in ten women aged 50 or older said their doctor had never ?discussed heart disease with them. 

As Mike Knapton, a GP and ?associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, says: ‘If you ask GPs, they’ll say they are aware of the risks of heart disease in women. but our survey clearly shows the subject is not being raised enough with them.’

The survey found only 47 per cent of women would call 999 if they were suffering the  symptoms of a heart attack — many did not realise the danger of their symptoms.

One problem is women’s ?symptoms (see box above) can be slightly ?different, says Dr ? Knapton. ‘People are still hooked on the myth of the Hollywood heart attack, where a stressed-out, ?middle-aged ?businessman collapses clutching his chest,’ says Dr Knapton. ‘but heart attacks can be less dramatic than that and just make you feel tired and have pains in your back or jaw.

‘Women may be less likely to have central chest pain and may have more atypical symptoms like acute vomiting, sweating or ?feeling ?generally unwell, although the ?evidence for this is not clear-cut.’ 

It’s thought these differences might be due to women’s different physiology and pain perception.

‘Women tend to make light of their symptoms, so they are less likely to be investigated  and treated promptly,’ adds Dr Knapton.

The equipment used to diagnose heart attacks can cause problems for women, says Dr Ghada Mikhail, a consultant cardiologist at ?Imperial College, London. ‘even when they get to hospital, it is harder to ?diagnose a heart attack in women, as abnormal heart rhythms in females are more ?difficult to pick up with ECG equipment.’ 

Some experts believe oestrogen interferes with electrical activity in the heart — guidelines say ?electrocardiograms should be read only by health professionals who have received ?training in how to ?recognise abnormal ?electrical activity.

‘Women also have smaller ?coronary arteries, so procedures to insert stents (tubes to open up the arteries) or perform bypasses can be more challenging,’ says Dr Mikhail.

But as well as lack of ?awareness about heart attacks in women, there’s also a failure to understand the risk factors and symptoms of heart disease, says Dr Knapton.

For most women, breast cancer remains their ‘number one health fear’, adds Peter Collins, ?professor of clinical cardiology at the Royal Brompton Hospital. He says: ‘in fact, they are ten times more likely to die of heart disease.’ 

Heart disease kills three times more women each year than breast ?cancer. ‘Their misconceptions are partly due to women developing heart disease later than men.’ the female sex hormone ?oestrogen is thought to ?protect women’s hearts until the ?menopause. ‘A 65-year-old woman has the same risk of cardiovascular ?disease as a 50-year-old man — but that doesn’t mean they are at no risk,’ says ?Professor Collins.

‘we are trying to ?encourage ?physicians who see women about their menopause symptoms to be more proactive about screening women for their heart disease risk factors such as being overweight or having high blood pressure.’ the British Heart  Foundation is advising women over 40 to ask for a heart check-up from their GP.

‘Too many lives are lost each year to a killer which is largely ?preventable,’ says Dr  Knapton.

Janet Holmes, who has a son and four grandchildren, wasn’t a ?typical heart attack victim — at 5ft 3in, she weighed 8st 7lb, had normal blood pressure and a ?cholesterol reading of 4.8 (under 5 is ideal).

‘the only risk factors I had was the fact I smoke the odd cigarette, my father died of a heart attack and two of my brothers had heart attacks in their 50s. 

‘looking back, I’d been unwell for two years — I suffered from ?tiredness and my sisters used to worry because I was thin and pale and always looked exhausted. my doctor had never discussed heart disease with me and was shocked when I had the heart attack.’

‘Ironically, I was always more ?worried about my husband’s health than mine — he had high blood ?pressure — and I was always ?anxious he shouldn’t overdo it.’

Janet urges all her friends to have their heart disease risk ?factors checked. she adds: ‘I thought heart attacks were something that ?happened to men — my ??ignorance nearly cost me my life.’

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