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TLDR: Basically the title 😅

I knew I’ve had gallstones since 15 years ago when I had my first gall bladder attack. I was only in my younger 20’s at the time. I went to the ER and they did an ultrasound of my gall bladder and found stones. But there weren’t a lot and they weren’t blocking anything, so they recommended I keep an eye on it and schedule surgery if it ever becomes more of a problem.

Since then I would get attacks here and there, but not very often. Moreso if I spent a weekend drinking a lot of alcohol and/or eating greasy food. It never was a huge problem, especially since I basically stopped drinking 2 years ago. I’ve been trying for a baby for 2 years/dealing with infertility. I’ve finally kind of given up on being perfectly healthy and went back to living my life. The increase in drinking and fatty foods has triggered more gall bladder attacks, which suddenly reminded me- OH. I have gall bladder issues. Maybe I should address this before becoming pregnant because this can worsen in pregnancy. And surgery during pregnancy either isn’t an option or is very dangerous. Can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier, but everything in retrospect.

I want to note- it’s not like I went hog wild with drinking/greasy food either. I went from drinking maybe once every couple months to once every other weekend. Only a couple drinks (seltzers or beer) each time.

After one particularly bad attack recently I went to the ER. They scheduled me for surgery. Surgery went well. I felt fine until about 10 days post op, when I stretched and felt a sharp pain in my abdomen. The next day I went to the ER because the pain worsened. They didn’t find anything wrong and sent me home with pain meds. The next day, I was home alone and felt the pain going up my back and into my shoulder blade. At this point, I wondered if it was a tight muscle from surgery, being in bed/inactive, etc. I decided to foam roll AROUND the pain in my back, thinking that might help loosen things up. Being careful not to directly foam roll over the painful spot. 60 seconds after foam rolling I was in the worst pain I’ve ever been in my life. I was writhing on the floor, screaming and crying. I called 911 and could barely talk or breathe.

That morning I took oxycodone and then 2 hours later took it again because I was in such pain (prior to foam rolling). In the ambulance they gave me fentanyl. None of this touched the pain. Once I got to the hospital I got dilaudid. That didn’t help. Finally got some relief with toradol, but it only went down to an 8/10 pain.

They did a bunch of tests, including a HIDA scan and found nothing. I was again sent home with pain meds and no answers. My surgeon called me the next day and told me the radiologist read the report wrong, and that I DO have a bile leak. Back to the ER I went.

I had an ERCP done. I felt wonderful after the surgery. I even ate a BLT, salad and angel food cake at the hospital with no issues. I was to spend the next few days at the hospital to make sure everything was ok before I went home.

That night the nurse gave me dilaudid. It had been working for me once my pain was under control, but this time I had INTENSE abdominal cramping 30-60 seconds after it was given. It felt like my organs were flipping over each other. I was screaming and went to the toilet in case I was going to get sick. Then my abdominal insides BURNED like someone poured poison into my abdominal cavity. My scars from my surgery burned especially badly. It was so strange. The nurses and doctors did not have an explanation, however my surgeon thought it could be because opioids can cause the sphincter of odi to cramp. And this was exactly where my stint was placed.

This spasm/pain episode lasted 5-10 minutes and then lowered to a more tolerable, sore pain. This pain persisted and I was scared that my abdominal cramping caused the stent to move out of place. Multiple CT scans confirmed that it did not move, but it was weird that I felt so good after surgery, and then after this episode could not go without pain, even with pain meds. I had a drain placed, which did get rid of some bile, but didn’t really help with the pain.

Because of all the inflammation and bile underneath my diaphragm, it pushed the right side of my diaphragm up, causing atelectasis (partial lung collapse) in my right lung. This was also caused by breathing shallow due to pain. I had pulmonary effusion around my lungs. I started to have a hard time breathing and needed to be on oxygen because my spo2 levels were in the 80’s, lower if I got out of bed and moved at all.

On my 6th consecutive day in the hospital, they said I could go home. I felt a little uneasy about this, because my pain had not lessened at all and I was still having trouble breathing (by day 6 breathing had improved, but not much). But I was also desperate to leave because I missed home. I decided to leave and had a follow up CT scan a few days later. This CT showed that the stent DID migrate, and that I was leaking bile again. I don’t know why it didn’t show up until this CT, maybe it truly didn’t move until then. But I really feel that it moved after my dilaudid abdominal cramp episode, about a week prior. I guess we’ll never know.

I had another ERCP. I did not feel as good after the second one, maybe because my body was still trying to heal from the first surgery. But I am 3 days post op and slowly starting to feel better. 10mg oxycodone only gave me partial pain relief before, and only for about 2 hours and now it is covering my pain completely, as long as I take it on time and eat low fat foods.

I feel like I am finally moving in the right direction. I had no idea this would be such an ordeal… it’s supposed to be a routine surgery. I had to miss a whole month of work. I wonder why this happened to me and why my doctors were so puzzled. My gall bladder surgeon said I was only the 3rd in 1,000+ surgeries who needed an ERCP. It’s hard to know if this was just some freak thing or if I should be upset with/feel let down by my medical team. I am in the medical field, so I understand things don’t always go to plan. Anyway. Has this happened to anyone else? Thanks for reading if you made it this far!

I'm not really sure how to word it, but my mom always likes to oppose any of my intentions/ideas about something. It's like she wants me to change my mind and use HER idea instead.

For example. My husband built a huge lean to in our backyard to store firewood. We just cut down a bunch of dead trees so we have tons of firewood, plus we really like having bonfires. And the space we put it in is basically an unusable space, so it doesn't take up any of our free space in the yard. So why not build a large wood shed? It makes total sense for us.

Instead of "Wow that'll be great for you guys!" she starts listing all the stuff we could use it for instead of firewood. "You could build shelves in there and store other stuff!" "You could just use half and in the other half put the lawn mower!" "The firewood looks good where it is already, don't worry about moving it around!" etc.

It totally shut me down and triggered me to my core. I didn't want to talk to her anymore after that. If anyone else made a suggestion like that I'd probably be like "cool!" and move on. But because it's coming from her it feels judgey and like she's saying our idea was stupid/that her idea is better. It feels like all our hard work was for nothing and that now we have to use one of my mom's ideas about OUR shed. I showed her something I'm excited about and she stomped all over it with her own stupid ideas.

I don't think she intends it that way? But she doesn't let it go either. She keeps coming up with things after I'm like "nah, we intended it to be a wood shed, so we'll just store all our wood in there." "Well you don't need all that room for firewood, put something else in there!" Etc. It's not up for debate??

Also, if we (her children) don't like her ideas, she gets upset about it. "You guys never want to hear what I have to say!" So it's like we have to coddle her and be like "Awesome idea!" while also trying to not let it affect the lack of support we feel from her. It's so draining having emotionally neglectful or immature parents.

PS- my whole point in writing this was to ask: What is this called?? Is there a term for it? It feels very specific to my mom and it would be great to have a word or phrase to describe it without writing paragraphs.

ETA: Also negative comments! There is always at least one negative comment about something positive I share with her. "Well you know you're just building a shelter for animal pests? Rabbits, squirrels... They're all going to live in there. They wouldn't live in it if you just kept it a wood pile." Uhm. Yes they will because they already live in the existing wood pile and it's not a big deal?